Grants & Opportunities

Outfoxing the fox: new cost-effective ways to protect threatened species. This project aims to address the damage caused by invasive foxes by applying new methods of protection for threatened species. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the areas of conservation biology and invasive species management by comparing the effectiveness of fox control strategies for improving the population viability of declining freshwater turtles. Expected outcomes of this project include a community-based conservation model that prevents turtle extinctions in south-eastern Australia at considerable cost savings. Significant benefits include improved management of the impacts of invasive species, and restoration of ecosystem services provided by the scavenging role of freshwater turtles for maintaining water quality.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0502 - Environmental Science and Management. Lead: A/Prof James Van Dyke

An early warning system for police workplace health and performance. This project aims to build a comprehensive organisational model of police workplace health and performance. This project answers the call for immediate organisational reform of police workplaces resulting from an Australian national study (2018) and Australian Senate Inquiry (2019). Police experience harm that must be addressed through organisational improvements, leading to more efficient policing. In the first study of its kind, this project will develop a practical early warning system that promotes strategic and front-line leadership capability of Australian police agencies in workplace health and performance. It will allow better identification of risk, resource allocation and tracking of these critical issues in policing.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1602 - Criminology. Lead: Dr Jacqueline Drew

Restoring diverse native vegetation using drone-based precision seeding . This project aims to make drone technology a viable solution for scaling up the restoration of native vegetation on degraded land. By integrating new research in plant ecology, microbiology and environmental economics the project aims to fill key knowledge gaps about the viability and application of drones in restoration. Expected outcomes are world-first research into the delivery of beneficial soil microbes using drones and the first assessment globally of the cost-effectiveness of drone restoration utilizing data from spatial analysis and extensive field trials. This should provide wide-ranging benefits for local land managers restoring remote degraded land and aid in reversing the cumulative effects of habitat loss on biodiversity. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0602 - Ecology. Lead: Prof Rachael Gallagher

Towards 'zero hunger': improving food relief services in Australia. This project aims to improve the effectiveness of the food relief sector in meeting the needs of >5m Australians experiencing food insecurity annually. Following an innovative co-design process with sector stakeholders and their clients, this project investigates food relief service models that satisfy emergency needs as well as address root causes of food insecurity. Expected outcomes include tested best-practice guidelines and auditing tools for improving, monitoring and evaluating food relief services. These will not only assist >2,500 volunteer-run organisations to deliver more nutritious foods to more people, through a more dignified, fairer and diversified service, but map a pathway for clients out of food insecurity.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1605 - Policy and Administration. Lead: Prof Svetlana Bogomolova

Understanding and Addressing Informal Voting in Victoria. Victoria's informal vote rate is high and rising. In order to combat the problem of hundreds of thousands of 'lost votes' at Victorian state and local government elections we must first understand it. This collaboration with the Victorian Electoral Commission addresses the problem at both state and local levels over 3 election periods using 4 distinct studies. We combine experimental data, aggregate-level data and individual-level data to provide a thorough and multi-dimensional picture of informal voting. We will then propose remedies to be trialled and assessed. Taken together, our studies will represent the first multi-dimensional analysis of informality to be conducted in any Western democracy. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1606 - Political Science. Lead: Prof Lisa Hill

Sparking Imagination Education: Transforming inequality in schools. This project will produce an Imagination Education Pedagogical Framework for use by teachers in schools. Imagination is recognised as beneficial for diverse groups of young people who experience educational inequality. This collaboration will support access to prominent industry insights on methods for using imagination practices to enhance educational equity. Using co-design with AIME and Social Ventures Australia, it will investigate how these insights can be translated to school contexts to enrich Australian schooling in an environment under intensifying external pressures. The outcomes of this project will support national education agendas for embedding twenty-first century skills of imagination in Australian schooling.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1608 - Sociology. Lead: Prof Valerie Harwood

Visualising Humanitarian Crises: Transforming Images and Aid Policy. This project aims to draw on the power of images to transform practices of aid. Prevailing visualisations of humanitarian crises are powerful but problematic. They often focus on violence and depict victims in stereotypical and dehumanising ways. The project develops new evidence-based visual strategies through interdisciplinary collaborations with leading industry partners in Australia and internationally. Expected outcomes include best practice guidelines that better equip humanitarian organisations to help people in need and contribute to enduring political solutions. Resulting benefits are more effective aid policies at a time when humanitarian concerns are increasingly central to global stability and Australia’s national interest.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1606 - Political Science. Lead: Prof Roland Bleiker

Efficient, durable and green chalcopyrite solar powered building steel. This project aims to develop a long-life, stable, high-performance, and green chalcopyrite solar powered building steel, which is expected to offer a shapable truly green building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) product for building deployment. This will be realized by synergising multidiscipline expertise, integrating established technologies of steel surface treatment, steel and solar cell integration and shaping, high-efficiency chalcopyrite, identified strategies for tackling its durability and toxicity, and advanced macro-to-micro characterizations. The project completion will accelerate the transition to the zero-emission building, establish Australia's excellence in green steel for BIPV, and access a share in the soaring BIPV market.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0912 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Prof Xiaojing Hao

Sustainable Hydrogen Certification: A Multistakeholder Governance Approach. The project aims to assist policy analysts to devise a sustainable certification scheme for hydrogen that meets multistakeholder requirements. Its significance lies in challenging a techno-economic mindset focusing only on the fuel’s carbon intensity within a production plant. Taking a comparative historical approach, and incorporating the views of energy experts and stakeholders, the expected outcome is options for a new sustainable certification scheme that addresses all technical, economic, social, environmental and governance requirements. The benefits to Australia are a ‘gold standard’ sustainable certification scheme that assures the country’s competitiveness in export markets and influence in global certification negotiations.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1605 - Policy and Administration. Lead: Prof Fred Gale

Accelerated tailings remediation with plant and microbial biotechnologies. The Australian alumina industry produces 32 million tonnes of bauxite residue (alumina refining tailings) each year, most of which is stored in perpetuity in landfill-type tailings storage facilities. The high pH, high salinity, lack of plant nutrients, and poor physical properties of bauxite residue are major barriers to safe storage and successful closure of tailings storage facilities. Existing remediation approaches are expensive, slow, and often ineffective. We will deliver new microbial- and plant-driven biotechnologies for rapid, cost-effective remediation of bauxite residue. This will enable safe, sustainable closure of storage facilities, and safeguard the strong contribution of this $15 billion industry to Australia's economy. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1002 - Environmental Biotechnology. Lead: A/Prof Talitha Santini

Everyday Heritage. This project aims to uncover everyday but overlooked forms of Australian heritage. Working collaboratively to bridge academic and industry practice, it seeks to develop innovative methods with outcomes expected to include enhanced collaboration between heritage, digital humanities, and historical research, and new resources for communities and the heritage sector. This should provide significant social and cultural benefits such as more inclusive forms of heritage, and broader intellectual and practical understandings of shared history and citizenship. The project will promote public debate on the role of the past in modern Australia through a range of new forms of history and heritage, digital resources and heritage management tools. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 2102 - Curatorial and Related Studies. Lead: Em/Prof Tracy Ireland

Next generation smart lighting to improve sleep and alertness. Light has a powerful influence on our sleep and alertness. The manipulation of the amount of blue in a light source and the visual brightness of a light source are key factors, but there has been no systematic study that can guide manufacturers in the design of the ideal light source for promoting either sleep or alertness. This study will systematically examine the impact of the amount of blue light in a light source and the visual brightness, creating a wide range of combinations that can be used to model the optimal light specifications for sleep and alertness, while maintaining visual acuity and colour discrimination. This will be the evidence base needed by the lighting industry to create the next generation of smart lighting.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1701 - Psychology. Lead: Prof Sean Cain

Better oceans, better futures:Indigenous knowledges and oceans governance . This project aims to re-imagine oceans governance by drawing inspiration and guidance from Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies. Using an Indigenous lens, it will explore opportunities for more inclusive approaches to oceans governance and economic development. Current systems privilege and valorise ‘rational’ knowledge and data, marginalising subjective, relational and cultural values. The project outcomes will include the identification of opportunities for better consideration of diverse values, knowledges and worldviews in existing governing systems.This will provide significant benefits, including greater agency for civil society, especially Indigenous communities at local, regional, national and international scales.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0502 - Environmental Science and Management. Lead: A/Prof Michelle Voyer

A novel method to stabilise expansive soils by alkali-activation . This project aims to address durability and sustainability issues with traditional lime-based methods used to stabilize expansive soils by alternatively advancing an alkali-activation approach. It expects to generate new knowledge in using alkali-activation to suppress the swelling potential of expansive soils which have been deleterious to roads, pavements and overlying structures. Expected outcomes of this project include development of a long-term durable treatment with reduced carbon footprint and use of waste materials. This should provide significant benefits commercially and critical insights to overcome expansive soils which cover approximately one-fifth of Australia’s surface area and six out of eight of its largest cities.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0905 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Prof Chin Leo

Nuclear and chromatin architecture in the replication stress response. DNA replication is an essential biological activity required for the transmittance of genomic material across cell divisions. If errors occur during DNA replication, this results in dangerous outcomes including mutation, genome instability, and cell death. Cells cope with challenges to DNA replication through a process called the replication stress response. This fellowship explores a newly discovered pathway in the replication stress response where changes to the architecture of a cell nucleus, and movement of the genomic material inside, promotes repair of genomic damage that occurs during replication. The result of this project will be an understanding of fundamental biological processes that protect human genomes.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0601 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Lead: Prof Anthony Cesare

Laser nanoprinting of active graphene micro-tag for terahertz digital ID. This project aims at harnessing the unique THz response of laser nanoprinted graphene metamaterials and developing disruptive micro-tag technology. Through actively tuning the structured metamaterials, THz micro-tags with ultrahigh data security and energy efficiency, low cost, flexibility and attachable to any object can be enabled. Such high performance graphene THz ID tags will be first of their kind and are expected to underpin every sector of our life including manufacturing, logistics, biomedicine, personal care, supply chain, retail and security. The outcomes will secure Australia’s international leading position in next generation tag and digitalisation technology and create significant social and economic benefits to Australians.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 1007 - Nanotechnology. Lead: Prof Baohua Jia

Integrated Nanoplatform for Multiomics Analysis of Cell-to-Cell Interaction. This project aims to develop an integrated nanoplatform for analysis of exosomes produced by host-pathogen interaction at the single cell level. This will be accomplished by engineering an innovative device involving plasmonic nanoparticles to probe exosomes molecular profiles over time. The intended outcome is a generic and robust platform for detailed molecular analysis of the consequences of cell-to-cell interactions. Single cell scale will greatly improve detection accuracy for heterogeneous cell populations. Benefits will include new knowledge of cell-to-cell communication and intellectual property in manufacturing, which will foster collaborations across institutions and Australian industry by providing new technological solutions.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 1007 - Nanotechnology. Lead: Prof Yuling Wang

Metal Halide Perovskite Metal-organic Framework Crystal-Glass Composites. This project aims to investigate the highly stable and efficient semiconductive composite materials, recently discovered by my group, consisting of metal halide perovskite embedded in metal-organic framework glass. An integrated experimental and computational approach will be used to study the structures and interfacial bonding mechanisms that govern the highly sought-after properties for the composites. Expected outcomes are a new generation of environmentally safe perovskite devices for energy, environmental and health applications, e.g. lighting, displays, X-ray sensing, photocatalysis and photovoltaics. This project will position Australia at the forefront of semiconducting device research and create commercial opportunities. . Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0912 - Materials Engineering. Lead: A/Prof Jingwei Hou

Indigenous solutions to global challenges in the Pacific Islands. The global COVID 19 pandemic represents a unique opportunity to understand the nature and potential of Indigenous sustainable development in Pacific Island communities, where Indigenous practices have been central in responses to closed borders and industry downturns. This project proposes to analyse the efficacy and cultural value of new, pandemic-era Indigenous sustainable development initiatives in sustaining island communities. It aims to culminate in a novel geographic theory of Indigenous sustainable development, and to identify new opportunities to support the expansion of Indigenous sustainable development. This should better enable the Pacific Islands region to respond to climate change, pandemics and other global challenges.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 1604 - Human Geography. Lead: Dr Carol Farbotko

Linking Stress Tolerance to Molecular Evolution of Grass Stomata. Salinity and drought are two detrimental environmental stresses, affecting agricultural productivity and ecosystem health in Australia and around the world. This project will focus on the evolutionary, physiological and molecular aspects of stomatal regulation between wheat, barley and their wild relatives for salinity and drought tolerance. This project will advance the scientific knowledge in the evolution of stomatal regulation in two staple crops wheat and barley. The project will also assist plant breeders with increasing crop salinity and drought tolerance for global food security.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0607 - Plant Biology. Lead: Prof Zhong-Hua Chen

Atomically thin membranes to transform chemical separations. Energy-efficient chemical separation is at the heart of modern resource and manufacturing industries, central to a prosperous and sustainable Australia. This project aims to develop next generation membrane technologies to transform chemical separations by employing recent breakthrough in materials discovery and nanofluidics. Expected outcomes include new fundamental understandings on sub-continuum transport physics and new atomically thin membranes that enable energy-efficient separations for processing challenging streams beyond water purification. This project aims to position Australia at the forefront of sustainable separation technology and make the local resource and manufacturing industries more sustainable and globally competitive.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0904 - Chemical Engineering. Lead: Dr CHI CHENG

Efficient and Scalable Processing of Dynamic Heterogeneous Graphs . This project aims to develop efficient and scalable algorithms to process large-scale dynamic heterogeneous graphs where graph nodes and edges are of multiple types and the graph structure updates dynamically. Key challenges are expected to be addressed including complex structure, high speed, and large volume of dynamic heterogeneous graphs. The anticipated outcomes include novel computing paradigms, algorithms, indexing, incremental computation, distributed algorithms as well as a system prototype to demonstrate the practical value. Success of this project will open up a new research direction to enrich frontier technologies and benefit many key applications in Australia including cybersecurity, e-commerce, health and social networks.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0806 - Information Systems. Lead: Prof Wenjie Zhang

Perovskite-Based Ferroelectrics for Solar Fuel Production. This project aims to develop perovskite-based ferroelectrics for photocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction to produce solar fuels. It is expected to reveal the relationship of ferroelectric polarisation and photocatalytic behaviour, thereby promoting solar energy utilisation and greenhouse gas reduction. Expected outcomes include delivery of a novel family of chemically and structurally controlled ferroelectrics and catalytic reaction prototypes for efficient carbon dioxide photoreduction, and in-depth understanding of structure-performance correlation to guide future polar catalysts design. This project should provide significant benefits in minimising fossil fuel consumption, increasing energy security, and expanding clean energy industry.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0912 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Prof Tianyi Ma

Robust and Explainable 3D Computer Vision. Computer vision is increasingly relying on deep learning which is fragile, opaque and fails catastrophically without warning. This project aims to address these problems by developing new theory in graph representation of 3D geometric and image data, hierarchical graph simplification and novel modules designed specifically for deep learning over geometric graphs. Using these modules, it aims to design graph convolutional network architectures for self-supervised learning that are robust to failures and provide explainable decisions for object detection and scene segmentation. The outcomes are expected to advance theory in robust deep learning and benefit 3D mapping, surveying, infrastructure monitoring, transport and robotics industries.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0801 - Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing. Lead: Prof Ajmal Mian

Scalable and Robust Bayesian Inference for Implicit Statistical Models. This project aims to develop the next generation of efficient methods for fitting complex simulation-based statistical models to data. Practitioners and scientists are interested in such implicit models to enable discoveries, produce accurate predictions and inform decisions under uncertainty. However, the associated computational cost has restricted researchers to implicit models that must have a small number of parameters and be well specified, impeding scientific progress. This project will develop new computational methods and algorithms for implicit models that scale to high dimensions and are robust to misspecification. Benefits will arise from the more routine use of implicit models in epidemiology, biology, ecology and other fields.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0104 - Statistics. Lead: Prof Christopher Drovandi