On Tuesday the 17th of May 2022, our centre had the honour of welcoming Ms Judith Zielke PSM, Australian Research Council (ARC) Chief Executive Officer, to the ARC Training Centre for Joint Biomechanics headquarters at QUT (Queensland University of Technology).

It was a wonderful opportunity for us to show Ms Zielke our working spaces and to present our vision, achievements and plans for the coming year. Ms Judi Zielke was been appointed as Acting CEO of the ARC, starting on 1 February 2022. and comes from  CSIRO where she has been the Chief Operating Officer. She has extensive experience in the public sector in areas of policy advice, and implementation with positions held in Trade, Attorney General’s, Industry and Innovation and Infrastructure.

We thank Centre Director prof. Yuantong Gu, Centre Deputy Director Prof. Peter Pivonka, Mr Michael McArdle, A/Prof. Saulo Martelli, Prof. Graham Kerr, Miss Yilan (Olivia) Zhang, Dr Wolbert van den Hoorn, and Ms Maddie McIntyre for all of the preparations and for delivering a wonderful overview of the centre priorities, achievements, and strategic objectives thus far.

We would also like to thank the Australian Research Council for the opportunity to  bring together leading researchers, industry partners and end-users to train a new generation of interdisciplinary and skilled graduates to tackle industry-focused challenges in joint biomechanics. The centre will continue to provide advances required to transform personalised surgical treatment of joints through integrated technologies of computer tools for pre-surgical planning and decision making, the computer simulation system and robot simulators for surgical training and medical device assessment, and post-surgical assessment tools.

We are grateful that the ARC has recognised the significant collaborations at the centre between our industry partners, clinicians, and academia where the centre will significantly contribute to Australia by improved health outcomes, economic benefits, and a skilled workforce able to advance this joint biomechanics fields during and after the planned life span of the centre of 5 years.