Did You Know?

Plantic^®

Cervical Cancer Vaccines

Research conducted at UQ’s Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine by Professor Ian Frazer and the late Dr Jian Zhou forms the basis of the cervical cancer vaccines, Merck’s Gardasil® and GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix®, which protect women against about 70% of these HPV-related cervical cancers.  The vaccines are now available in over 110 countries worldwide.

Campus Kindy

The house that forms the core of the Campus Kindergarten on the St Lucia campus is a surviving building from the Farm School that operated on the land on which the University is built.  The house, which had served as the home of the Principal of the Farm School became the residence of the University Caretaker.  Moved firstly to make way for the Great Court, it was located on what was then part of Mill Road on the site of the future J D Story Building.  In preparation for that development, its second move was to the south.  When the Skerman Building was planned for the site it occupied in the early 1970’s, the Caretaker’s House was moved for a third time to College Road, where it today forms the nucleus of the Campus Kindergarten.  The role of the University Caretaker was subsumed into the University Security Service. 

Cromwell College

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The Pitch Drop Experiment

The Pitch Drop Experiment was created by UQ’s foundation Professor of Physics, Thomas Parnell, in 1927 and is now the longest running scientific experiment in the world.  The experiment demonstrates that pitch, while appearing to be a solid, is actually an extremely dense liquid. In the 83 years since the experiment began, eight drops of pitch have fallen.  It falls at such a slow rate because pitch has a viscosity of approximately 100 billion times that of water.  You can see the experiment for yourself in the foyer of the Parnell Building (Building 7) on the Great Court.

Triple P

Sydney Olympics 2000

UQ modelled on the University of Birmingham

The University of Queensland Act 1909 was based on the constitution of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, which was considered by the State Government founders of UQ to be the most modern university in the world in 1909.  Parts of the 1909 parliamentary debate of the University of Queensland bill were re-enacted at Parliament House on 10 December 2009, during the last Senate meeting of the year.  You can view the footage of this re-enactment here.  More information on the University's history and a link to the text of the 1909 version of the Act is available here. 

James Cook University

In 1960, in its Golden Jubilee Year, UQ sponsored the foundation of the Townsville University College.  There was great enthusiasm and support throughout North Queensland for the new off-shoot of the University of Queensland.   Interest was so great that the College, having originally intended to commence classes in 1961 in only Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Geology and Engineering, proceeded to appoint lecturers in English, French, History, Education, Botany and Zoology to expand the subject offerings.  Graduates were awarded University of Queensland degrees.   In 1970 the College became a university in its own right, the James Cook University of North Queensland.   James Cook University therefore celebrates its 40th anniversary this year and the University of Queensland extends warm wishes to JCU in its anniversary year.

UQ Olympians

UQ's first Olympic competitor was Beatrice Lyons (married name Welch), who won a silver medal in swimming (200 metre backstroke) at the 1948 London Olympic Games.  She then won a gold medal in the 1950 Empire Games and competed again in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.  Our first gold medal winner was David Theile, again for swimming (100 metre backstroke), at the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956.  He repeated this victory at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, both times setting a new Olympic record.  He also won silver as a member of Australia's first 4x100-metre medley relay team.  The University swimming pool at the St Lucia campus is named in his honour.  One UQ Olympian has competed in both summer and winter Olympic Games.  in 1984, Paul Narracott represented Australia in track and field events at the Los Angeles Olympic Games.  He was later a member of the 2-crew Australian bobsled team at the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympic Games.

Civil 55

In 1955, 23 young men formed bonds of friendship in the 4^th and final year of their Bachelor of Engineering degree in Civil Engineering.  In 1956, the year of their graduation, they reunited for a dinner.  The Civil 55ers have gathered annually for dinner ever since.  Their engineering careers saw them make substantial contributions to the development of Queensland's infrastructure.  They marked their 50^th dinner in 2005 by producing a book that documented the life stories of all 23 of the original group.  In 2010, 11 members of the group attended the annual dinner in Brisbane on 13 February: one had flown up from Melbourne, two from Sydney and one from Darwin for the occasion.  We wonder if there is any other graduating cohort that has kept in touch and remained good friends in this way?

UQ Goes Solar

In 2010, UQ has installed the largest flat panel photovoltaic array in Australia, which is amongst the largest at any university around the Globe. The state-of-the-art smart micro-grid is designed to produce 1.75 GW hours per annum, which is about 5% of UQ’s peak power requirement (~20MW), saving the equivalent of 1.75 x 10⁶ kg of CO₂ emissions and saving $6.6 million in electricity costs over 10-15 years.

The panels have been installed on the tops of the multi-story car parks on Sir Fred Schonell Drive, the Sir Llew Edwards Building and the UQ Centre at the St Lucia campus.   The project creates a test-bed for new technology innovation in solar energy, and will generate trustworthy and meaningful data to answer key questions about solar energy deployment. Online monitoring of the performance of the system, viewable by the public, will allow the community and school students to inform themselves about this important aspect of renewable energy generation.  Switch-on for Stage 1 is set for the end of the Centenary year.

Land For Wildlife

In January 2009, the St Lucia campus became a member of the Wildlife Conservation Partnerships Program – Land for Wildlife. The three areas that have been registered are the Lakes Precinct, the river bank (along John Oxley walk) and the Alumni Teaching Gardens.  The detail of the UQ membership covers the restoration of wetlands, the restoration of the eucalypt woodland along the Brisbane River and improvement of  ecological, academic and social values.

St Lucia is the second UQ site signed up to the program, the first being the Indooroopilly Mine site.

On this site