Keith Bullock

Keith Joseph Bullock FTSE (1931–2015) was an Australian engineer and academic at the University of Queensland.

Early life Bullock was born in Brisbane, Queensland in 1931. He attended Moorooka State School and the Church of England Grammar School. Bullock enrolled in the engineering program at the University of Queensland in 1948, gaining his B.E. with first class honours in 1952. He won a number of prizes and the Alfred Henry Darker scholarship.

Career Bullock was employed as a demonstrator after graduation. He commenced his PhD under supervisor Professor Mansergh Shaw. Bullock graduated with his PhD in 1957, the first engineering student to complete a PhD at the University of Queensland. His thesis studied the physical properties and milling of sugar cane with an aim to improve the costs and efficiency of machinery within sugar mills, particularly in Australia. His research was enabled by grants from the Colonial Sugar Refining Company and the Sugar Research Institute, and led to improvements in milling processes. and heavy duty road vehicles to reduce fuel usage and emissions. In the 1970s he pioneered research into hybrid vehicles, converting a Ford Falcon to run on a small internal combustion engine with battery and flywheel energy storage, with Dr Duncan Gilmore. He and Dr Frank Grigg, worked on a re-design of power trains used in underground load haul dump vehicles. He produced designs for submarines, buses and freight train locomotives. He developed a number of power system design improvements.

Bullock retired from the university in 1991 and continued in private work for Transport Energy Systems, a company which he established the same year.

Bullock died in 2015, and was survived by his wife Margaret and their two children.