The UDIA NSW Roy Sheargold Scholarship is awarded annually to individuals who demonstrate exceptional professional and/or academic achievement. They have leadership qualities, an ability to inspire others, and aspirations to achieve and perform at the highest level. Ultimately this award is about helping individuals get to the next level – our winners use the scholarship to conduct research, and further their education and/or professional linkages.
See below for more information on our previous scholarship recipients.
2020 Winner
Joshua Pineda, Orion Consulting
Joshua is significantly involved in the delivery of a smart cities technology park for one of UDIA’s members. The vision for the technology park is grand and aims be world class in this realm. The technology park is in a strategic location in Sydney that positions it to attract the world’s most innovative and forward-thinking companies. He intends to use the scholarship to contribute towards the cost of travel to other technology centres such as Silicon Valley in the USA, Singapore Science Park in Singapore and Kansai Science City in Japan and observe first hand as to what has made these key centres successful and invaluable to our society. Furthermore, Joshua would focus on how the infrastructure provided and technologies found in the public domain has attracted the world’s best companies, seeking to introduce those very outcomes within the technology park proposed here.
2019 Winner
Olivia Leal-Walker, Frasers Property Australia
Olivia is passionate about understanding how we can better serve Western Sydney, and is focusing her research on helping keep Western Sydney cool. With ambitions to turn every roof white and for every home to be connected to nature, to design real-world, cross-disciplinary solutions to the challenge of cooling Western Sydney, as part of her post graduate studies which she is currently undertaking.
2018 Winner
Tony Amidharmo, Aqualand
Tony is greatly interested in BtR (Build to Rent), presently a hot buzzword in the Australian property industry. He plans to use the scholarship monetary contribution to investigate the existing BtR models in the UK and US, and to challenge the BtR models currently being trialled in Australia, in an attempt to determine if the BtR is economically viable in Australia, and whether it is only viable to large scale developers and investors.
2017 Winner
Katrie Lowe, AECOM
Katrie has embarked on fact finding and thought sharing journey she has coined Urban CurioCity. This program sees Katrie travelling the world to learn about cities, their urban challenges through real life interactions and observations, and potential solutions available. She has launched an interactive blog covering her travels, experiences, research and meetings with on which she plans to share her ideas and discoveries from around the world. This will give her, and her blog followers, an insight into the interactions Katrie has with thought leaders in urban design, planning, and city shaping. As a result of these interactions Katrie hopes to profile emerging bright ideas that perhaps haven’t been talked of, or even considered, before – for her peers back home in Australia.