Rate My Professor Doreen Thomas

Professor Doreen Thomas, Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Melbourne, has made significant contributions to mathematics and engineering over a career spanning more than 40 years at the institution. She obtained her BSc from the University of Cape Town, an Honours degree in Mathematics from the University of Witwatersrand, and MSc and DPhil degrees in Mathematics from the University of Oxford, completing the latter in 1976. Her leadership roles include Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering from 2001 to 2006, during which she was appointed the university's first female professor of engineering in 2006; Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 2008 to 2016; inaugural Head of the School of Electrical, Mechanical and Infrastructure Engineering in 2017; and Associate Dean for Research and Research Training in the Melbourne School of Engineering from 2008 to 2016. She also holds an adjunct professorship in the School of Mathematics and Statistics.

Thomas's research centers on mathematical network optimization with applications to electrical and mechanical engineering, particularly underground mine design. She founded the start-up MineOptima to commercialize her optimization software, which designs efficient tunnel networks to reduce development time and haulage costs; the company was acquired by RPMGlobal, and the software has been licensed to major mining companies worldwide. She has authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications and technical reports, including key works such as "Network optimization for the design of underground mines" (2006), "Optimal Charging of Electric Vehicles Taking Distribution Network Constraints Into Account" (2015), "An exact algorithm for the bottleneck 2-connected k-Steiner network problem in L_p planes" (2016), and recent papers on curvature-constrained Steiner networks and mine pushback design. Her contributions have earned her the Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2011), Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (2012), induction into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women (2019), and Member of the Order of Australia (2021) for service to tertiary engineering education, research, and women in the field. As a passionate advocate for gender equity in STEM, she chairs the ATSE STEM Education Forum, and the University of Melbourne's engineering school offers postdoctoral fellowships named in her honor.