I am pleased to be able to report that there has been solid progress on many fronts and several highlights, including our first CRC-ACS Associate, the Second Annual Meeting in Sydney, the joint Annual Conference with Composites Australia in Leura, and a visit by the Governor of Victoria.

As I noted in opening of the Annual Meeting, the composition and outlook of this Board are different from that of the previous CRC, which I chaired from November 2007. Our current Board is predominantly a skills-based board, which includes representatives of our two largest participants – EADS and PETRONAS.

The COmposite Fitting Attachment (COFA) system is a targeted assembly method for future Airbus aircraft. The system allows rapid attachment of brackets to aircraft interiors, and is currently going through the Airbus Technology Readiness Level (TRL) review process.

CRC-ACS student Luigi Vandi received a certificate of excellence at the Materials Innovation in Surface Engineering (MISE 2011) Conference held in Melbourne. The conference brought together international industries and universities working not only in the field of surface engineering of metal alloys and ceramics, but also adhesives for polymers.

The 28th Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS 2012) is to be held in Brisbane, 23-28 September 2012.  CRC-ACS Chairman, Dr Bill Schofield, AM, is to be honoured at this congress with the Daniel & Florence Guggenheim Memorial Lecture Award.

A three-year project on naval implementation of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has successfully demonstrated the combination of Fiber Bragg Grating sensors and environmental excitation in detecting damage in complex naval composite structures.

The Second CRC-ACS Annual Meeting held on 13-14 March was deemed a success with over 60 participant representatives and research and industrial organisations attending from all over the world.

Three CRC-ACS Participants – ACS Australia, RMIT University and UNSW, have recently commenced a new three-year European Union FP7 Project focussing on the design of robust composite structures for space applications. DESICOS is led by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and involves twelve partners.

On 13 February 2012 the Honourable Alex Chernov AC, QC – Governor of the State of Victoria, made his first visit to the heartland of the Australian Aerospace Industry.  This rare privilege was the result of an informal offer from the CRC for Advanced Composite Structures to brief him on recent developments at the Centre. 

"Diversity in Composites" - the ninth annual Composites Australia and CRC-ACS Conference 2012 was held on 15-16 March at the Fairmont Resort in the beautiful Blue Mountains, Leura, New South Wales and had an academic stream of peer-reviewed papers for the fitst time this year. This conference brought an update on the latest in research and development findings, projects, and trends.