College alumnus and 2015 University Medallist Daniel Marshall has been awarded runner-up in the IEEE Australia Council 2015 Student Paper Contest. 

The research for Daniel’s paper titled Performance Comparison of Device-to-Device Mode Selection Schemes was carried out while he was studying a Bachelor of Engineering (Research & Development) (Honours).

Daniel said the support from the academic faculty and the variety of research projects available to him were some of his favourite experiences at ANU.

“It provided a really challenging environment to boost my growth and exposure to a lot of really interesting technology and research that other degrees don't offer.”

He majored in electronic and communication systems and was supervised by Dr Salman Durrani, a senior lecturer from the Research School of Electrical, Energy and Materials Engineering, and PhD Candidate Jing Guo.

“The award is a recognition of the students’ ability to carry out high-quality research and to communicate their research finding at one of the top conferences for this research field,” said Dr Durrani.    

Dr Durrani said when he first met Daniel he was immediately impressed with his sharp intellect and thirst for knowledge.

“He indicated that he was interested in learning stochastic geometry, which is a mathematical technique to analyse large scale networks.

“In my experience, it usually takes PhD students at least a year to master this advanced technique.

“During the course of the project, he displayed academic and research abilities demonstrated by only the very best PhD students and mastered stochastic geometry within a semester!”

Daniel is currently completing his first rotation as a graduate engineer at Schneider Electric in Sydney.

He is working in process automation, focusing on digital logic and control and remote monitoring for factories, water treatment plants, mines, oil and gas.

“I get to deal with a wide variety of applications - from mines to manufacturing plants to wastewater treatment - and apply some of the really interesting and technical digital electronics skills I developed during my engineering degree.”

Studying the engineering degree in the R&D program at ANU helped prepare Daniel for the workplace and also helped him secure his first job after graduation.

“The research projects and publication of my paper helped me demonstrate that I had a strong technical foundation and could work with complex problems.

“We were exposed to a lot of team projects in the degree and some of those projects had industry affiliation.

“That helps prepare you for a workplace engineering environment where everyone works in teams and project deadlines matter just as much as the final result,” he said.

Dr Nan Yang also collaborated in the research and presented the paper at 2015 IEEE 26th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC).