Congratulations to Malcolm Leinster, who teaches into our postgraduate programs based at CQUniversity Gladstone Campus. He has received a special award in recognition of his service to the engineering community.

Mr Leinster's award was among those presented during the 2009 Engineers Australia Local Engineering Awards dinner in Gladstone recently.

Malcolm Leinster (centre) receives his award

[Meanwhile, former part-time CQUniversity lecturer Edward Brooks from Wave Engineering received the Professional Engineer of the Year Award.]

A long-serving engineer, Mr Leinster is currently lecturing on advanced power plant and asset management systems in our postgraduate program while also working as a senior research engineer on railway engineering projects.

These projects include rail lubrication and rolling contact fatigue for the heavy haul coal lines, best-practice projects in railway grinding and economic modeling for maintenance decisions.

Over the past 33 years, Mr Leinster has promoted (and continues to promote) engineering to the wider community.

After starting work at Gladstone Power Station (now NRG) in 1976, he played a pivotal role in the engineering department. He was also a founding member of the Schools and Industry Science Group (which he continues to attend) and is also involved with the annual Gladstone Science Challenge.

Malcolm Leinster

During the 1990s, Mr Leinster was on the negotiating team for the sale of the station and was also a key member of the group which set up the NRG Superannuation Scheme. During his time as a Research and Development Engineer, he was responsible for the conceptual design of dry ash plants.

After retiring from the power station, he continued research work on predicting the life of high temperature components.  This culminated in the publication of a technical paper in an international journal, on the 'extrapolation of creep rupture properties of metals'.

Mr Leinster has also held executive positions with the Engineers Australia Gladstone Local Group, including Chairman.

According to a citation linked to his award, an indication of Mr Leinster's respect in the engineering field was evident when he retired from NRG ... he was given no time to put his feet up and was contacted by numerous colleagues to come and work on projects. 

"Since Malcolm has retired he has been able to select those projects which are close to his heart," the citation says.

"He has great interest in mentoring and has assisted a number of undergraduate engineers with assignments and studies. He has also helped with programs involving women in the field of science.

"You could be left thinking that Malcolm is all about engineering but he still finds time for ballroom dancing and his grandchildren.

"His son is a chemical engineer, and his daughter married a chemical engineer, probably much to Malcolm's approval."