We’re delighted to announce that the winners of the 2024 Trailblazer Prize are Dr Hoa Bui, Professor Ryan Loxton, Alex Massen-Hane, and Dr Elham Mardaneh from ‘Maintenance Schedule Optimiser’.
Maintenance scheduling optimisation is often seen as a type of resource-constrained project scheduling problem. Existing mathematical models and solution methods, including exact, heuristic, and meta-heuristic approaches, are not fully suited for the unique challenges of real-world scheduling problems in the resources and energy industry, characterised by their large-scale and tight constraints.
Developed by Curtin University researchers to significantly improve upon pre-existing automated maintenance scheduling technology, Maintenance Schedule Optimiser that has been shown to reduce downtime by 25% and headcount by 20% for large shutdowns, bringing systems back online faster and increasing productivity.
Dr Hoa Bui, lead researcher of the project, said of the win: “We developed an optimisation technology capable of automatically generating the shortest duration schedules for thousands of maintenance activities within minutes, taking into account job dependencies, time windows, and resource constraints… This is a testament to our team’s dedication to innovating shutdown scheduling in resources industry through advanced mathematical programming.”
On Friday 30 August, over 350 members of Western Australia’s elite business and academic community gathered at Optus Stadium to discover which exciting innovations developed through work, study or research at Curtin University would take out this year’s Curtinnovation Awards.
To recognise and celebrate the hard work and commitment of those developing commercial solutions for improving resources productivity and critical minerals production and processing, the Resources Technology and Critical Minerals Trailblazer sponsors the Trailblazer Award, awarded for the first time in 2022. Previous winners include Hydrobe (2023) and iFluid (2022).
The National Industry PhD Program brings universities and businesses together to co-design and deliver cutting-edge, industry-focused research. By embedding PhD candidates across both environments, the program enables deep collaboration on real-world challenges, translating advanced research into practical outcomes while building long-term innovation capability across sectors. About the Program The National Industry PhD Program is an […]
The National Energy Transition Accelerator (NETA) 2025 program wrapped yesterday with a demo night that celebrated and showcased the eight deep-tech protoventures that took part. Invited guests from 47 organisations gathered at Curtin 137 St Georges Terrace, representing partners from industry, venture capital funds and academia, to hear how the NETA 2025 cohort are advancing innovations across the […]
Banksia Minerals Processing is celebrating a major achievement after winning the Smarter Copper Processing Solutions prize at the Copper to the World (CTTW) 2025 Conference. The Trailblazer-supported venture commercialises breakthrough technology from Associate Professor James Vaughan and his team at the University of Queensland Hydrometallurgy Research Group that enables sustainable extraction of copper from low-grade […]
