Science on the front line

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Tags: awards and prizes, engineering, middle east, winter-2011

UQ alumnus Professor Michael Steer has used his skills and knowledge to tackle improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the Middle East

Imagine trying to defuse an explosive device from a distance, in the dark, and with no hands.

That was the challenge faced by UQ alumnus Professor Michael Steer, one of the world’s leading electromagnetic experts and an unlikely hero in the fight against improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

For four years the electrical engineer devoted himself to remotely disabling these weapons – a leading cause of casualties in modern warfare, particularly in the Middle East.

His research has been no less than “a game-changer” according to Major General Nick Justice, who last year presented Professor Steer with the Commander’s Award for Public Service at North Carolina State University, where he now teaches.

Professor Steer says improvised explosives have steadily gained popularity since the Nazis employed them to lethal effect in World War II.

“Of course back then the IEDs were not radio controlled and relied on timers and signals sent over wires to set them off,” he explains.

“What has happened over the last 10 years is that low-cost radios have become ubiquitous. Insurgents have been able to leverage the results of a multi-trillion dollar industry. The bombings in Bali, UK, Spain and Russia have all used IEDs. We can be pretty certain that IEDs will be an important part of conflicts for a very long time.”

So how did a UQ-educated engineer help save the lives of service personnel in distant, dangerous battlefields?

With the support of his family, Professor Steer worked through weekends and holidays from 2002–2005 to lead a crack research team at North Carolina State University. The project was an all-consuming one, and saw him dedicate 80 to 90 hours a week to the task. Even Christmas was not off limits, requiring 5.30am starts to get the job done.

But despite receiving one of the US Army’s highest civilian honours, Professor Steer – a naturalised American citizen – insists he was simply an academic doing his job.

Professor Steer (left) receives the Commander’s Award for Public Service from Major General Nick Justice

It’s telling that such groundbreaking research had an equally extraordinary beginning: the September 11 attacks in New York.

Stuck in San Francisco on business and unable to return home, the electrical engineer started thinking about how his unique skills could be put to good use.

“I had no idea of what to do but I knew that I had a better understanding of how circuits, that is communication devices, and electromagnetic fields interact,” he recalls.

“If this was ever going to be a solution to a problem then I needed to make sure that I worked on it. It seemed that my entire career was getting me ready to solve this type of problem.”

Upon returning home, Professor Steer continued work that had started in Brisbane several decades before as a postgraduate student.

In the 80s, he completed his Bachelor of Engineering, honours and PhD at UQ, tinkering with microwave circuits to gain a better idea of their behaviour and composition. He did this by embracing complex non-linear equations that allowed him to visualise and test the circuits’ design more accurately.

The details of Professor Steer’s IED work remain classified, but the quest for answers began when he beamed electromagnetic energy at communications devices to test their response. Research based on this work has helped prevent terrorists from triggering roadside bombs wirelessly.

“If you want to learn about your environment from a distance there are not too many kinds of physics that you can use,” he explains.

“You can use electromagnetic fields (radio waves). You can use imaging say from a video camera, or you can use acoustics or sound. About half my work concerns using acoustics to probe the environment.”

A creative way to visualise this process is to look to the tricorder device from sci-fi favourite Star Trek.

“A tricorder was a handheld cellphone-sized device that would tell the user if there was something unusual in the environment. That is one of the concepts I had, to find out if there is something there that should not be there. It seems that science fiction is a good predictor of science fact,” he says.

While the breakthroughs eventually came, there was a long period where Professor Steer and his team struggled to find focus and adequate support. Growing tolls on the battlefield compounded their frustration.

“About halfway through no one had shown particular interest and we thought that perhaps we had it all wrong,” he recalls.

“We had the passion and eventually people of goodwill really came to understand what we were saying. We were asking people to think in an unconventional way and we were also covering an incredible breadth of concept – from the physics involved to communication theory.

“When the right people were convinced, lots of resources were brought into play to turn the concept into reality. This was a courageous move as a large number of scientists and engineers had to drop other promising concepts that they were working on at the time.”

Although the team hoped their work would make a difference, Professor Steer says the true impact was measured in the responses he received after the award from those serving on the front line.
“The messages from soldiers and marines who were in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and later stick in my mind. The common theme is that they were wondering if anyone cared or was working on the problem of improvised explosive devices,” he says.

“It must be a terrible feeling to be doing your country’s duty and be faced with what looked like insurmountable life-threatening difficulties and have doubts that anyone back home cared. I think that all members of our militaries need to be reassured that there are many people who work hard to support them.”

Professor Steer’s belief in the importance of giving back reflects the provenance of his current position as Lampe Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“I have an endowed chair that enables me to do those things that I could not do otherwise. The endowment is used to host visitors, conduct workshops and meetings, to do high-risk research that no one would ever fund, and to travel to meetings outside my research area,” he explains.

“Universities in the US would not be nearly so strong if it were not for alumni donating buildings, providing scholarships to students, and supplementing the salary of academics.”

Professor Steer is also a proud member of the Association of Old Crows, an international fraternity named after the “ravens” who were involved in electronic warfare during World War II.

He says one of the simplest concepts has proven to be the most pivotal in his career to date – the importance of networking and sharing ideas with others.

“Diversity is the spice of ideas. It does not matter what you do or what business you’re in. People must be exposed to a range of different ways of thinking to be in a position to make a difference,” he says.

“It has been incredibly true for me. It is as though my whole professional career was designed to solve some of the very challenging terrorism and insurgency problems that the world faced in the last decade.

“Always try and learn from whatever situation you are in; don’t tune out. It is surprising how much this approach bears fruit.”

By Cameron Pegg

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