Simulation Australasia Award Winners 2021
Congratulations to team Shoal, and some top performers who recently took out three Simulation Australasia Awards at the Australasian Simulation Congress 2021.
The annual awards are held in recognition of important contributions to simulation in Australasia.
Pictured: Mat Gardiner with Ben Schubert who continue to work on our Flight Analysis tool
Simulation Australia Project Innovation Award
The Project Innovation Award is a prestigious national competition which recognises and celebrates innovation and excellence in simulation by project teams around Australia and New Zealand. The award won by the Shoal team was for outstanding results in utilising a simulation capability in a new and improved way.
For this project award, Shoal supported the Australian Space Agency to provide advice to ensure the safe return to Earth of asteroid samples from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa2 mission. Shoal’s our Shoal Aerospace and Risk Capability (SHARC) (formerly Next Generation Flight Analysis Capability) was used to develop a representative model of the Hayabusa2 return capsule. This unique capability also enabled Shoal to perform re-entry flight-path analysis that included modelling different failure modes and assessing their impact on the risk to public safety and property.
The SHARC tool will continue to be developed to support launches and powered descents, which will further strengthen Shoal’s position as providers of rigorous, assured, flight safety analysis.
Ray Page Lifetime Simulation Achievement Award
The Ray Page Lifetime Simulation Achievement Award is presented in recognition of an outstanding contribution, made over an extended period of time, to the advancement of modelling and simulation in Australia or New Zealand. This year, Jawahar Bhalla (JB), Principal Systems Engineer at Shoal took out this award.
JB provides systems engineering guidance, advice and assurance on Shoal programs and projects and across the capability life-cycle.
JB is a passionate Systems professional with 30+ years’ experience established across multi-national organisations in technical and strategic leadership roles delivering complex capabilities across sectors. He continues to contribute to the advancement of Systems Thinking, Systems Engineering and Modelling & Simulation locally, regionally, and globally, through leadership roles in peak bodies including the Systems Engineering Society of Australia (SESA) and Simulation Australasia.
John Mitchell Early Career Innovator Award
As a young engineer, Mathew (Mat) Gardiner was fortunate to be part of the development of SHARC that saw the safe return of JAXA’s Hayabusa2 asteroid sample return capsule to Australia. Mat has found a niche in the regulatory space and will build on his work by enabling space service providers to navigate through Australia’s regulatory framework while upholding and improving standards for defensible, simulation-based risk assessments for space operations.
The work that Mat completed in developing this modelling, simulation, and analysis framework has provided Shoal with a strong foundation for future flight safety analysis.
About Shoal
Shoal are a team of experts in physics-based Modelling, Simulation, and Analysis (MS&A) in flight performance and safety across a wide range of aerospace vehicles including complex guided weapons and space launch and return vehicles.
Thanks to Chris Butt, Tim Carter and Mat Gardiner for their work on SHARC that won the Project Innovation Award. The tool continues to be developed by the team at Shoal.
