Purple House

Make a meaningful impact to the lives of Indigenous Australians by applying your engineering expertise to real-world challenges in remote health care. Join the Purple House Vertically Integrated Project and collaborate with the Indigenous-owned non-profit health organization, Purple House, to co-design innovative, sustainable systems that ensure life-saving dialysis remains accessible, even in Australia's most remote, water- and energy-constrained regions.

As part of our team, you will support life-saving work for communities in Northern Territory, Western Australia, and South Australia by helping develop innovative water solutions, monitoring solutions, and biomedical devices.

This is a unique opportunity to merge engineering excellence with work of deep cultural and social significance. We are seeking the best and brightest to tackle critical challenges across several key areas:

Key Engineering Challenges & Projects

Our VIP tackles a diverse portfolio of projects to improve dialysis services and patient experience in challenging environments:

💧 Sustainable Water Systems & Efficiency

Dialysis requires significant quantities of water, making sustainability a critical challenge in remote, semi-arid, and desert regions. Projects in this area focus on:

• Rainwater and groundwater harvesting
• Spent-dialysate reprocessing
• Compact, water-efficient mobile system design

🌡️ Environmental & Infrastructure Innovation

Addressing challenges caused by environmental heat and lack of robust monitoring:

• Solid-state chiller design
• Low-cost water-system telemetry

🩺 Biomedical Devices & Patient Care

Innovating biomedical devices to improve patient experience and clinical efficiency:

• In-seat weigh-scales for dialysis chairs
• Robust off-road patient-walker

VIP ChallENG Research Goals

Our overall research goals are to:

• Develop sustainable, low-cost, low-maintenance solutions that reduce water consumption for dialysis in remote communities.
• Enhance monitoring and data collection through low-cost telemetry systems.
• Innovate biomedical devices to improve patient experience and clinical efficiency.

Research Areas & Disciplines

This multidisciplinary VIP welcomes students from a wide range of engineering and computer science backgrounds:

• Systems and Process Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering
• Electrical Engineering
• Biomedical Engineering
• Environmental Engineering
• Chemical Engineering
• Computer Science

Join us today! Be part of a mission that directly impacts health equity and merges high-level engineering with social responsibility.