Grants & Opportunities

Enhancing marine bathymetry using new generation satellite sensors. Highly accurate marine bathymetry are currently lacking in 72% of the global ocean including around Australia, particularly in shallow seas and near-shore coastal zones, contributing to various navigation and marine safety accidents. Ship surveys of the seafloor are time-consuming and expensive. Satellite altimetry data provide an alternative solution. This project will improve Australia’s marine bathymetry by using spatially comprehensive and unprecedented data from new radar and laser satellite sensors. We aim to develop techniques for integration of the new data with other independent data sources, producing the most precise marine bathymetry for coastal terrain mapping, marine transport and safety management.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0909 - Geomatic Engineering. Lead: Hon A/Prof Xiaoli Deng

The Role of Energy Absorbing Rubber Grid on Ballast Track Performance. Breakage and excessive displacement of ballast lead to instability and regular maintenance of railways. The project aims to study the fundamental mechanics of ballast aggregates interacting with the apertures of recycled-Rubber Energy Absorbing Grids (REAG). The role of REAG on enhanced track performance by damping the cyclic wheel loading and impact will be quantified via rigorous mathematical methods complementing a computer-based numerical model and validated by laboratory & field data. When placed within the rail substructure REAG will enable reduced ballast movement and breakage while attenuating noise/vibration. The research outputs will facilitate improved rail track design enabling enhanced longevity and reduced cost of maintenance.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0905 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Prof Buddhima Indraratna

The Holocaust as an Australian Story, 1933-1954: An Intimate History. This project intends to explore the connections between Australian and the Holocaust between 1933 and 1954. In doing so, the project will generate new ways of understanding how Jewish families and the community responded to, and actively resisted, Nazi genocide in Europe. Through detailed and micro-historical archival analysis, it will argue that the Holocaust was an event that both touched and changed Australia during a period of immense local transformation. The expected outcomes include a deeper understanding of the personal connections that have existed between parts of Australia's society and victims of genocides worldwide, and a new migrant and family-centred Australian history of the Holocaust.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 2103 - Historical Studies. Lead: A/Prof Jan Lanicek

Circadian photoreceptor sensitivity and impacts of modern lighting on sleep. Light has powerful non-visual effects, including effects on sleep. These non-visual effects are mediated by cells in the eye that are most sensitive to blue light. There are large individual differences in sensitivity to non-visual effects of light that are not understood and that would give great insight into suboptimal sleep, which has become widespread in modern society. This study will be the first systematic examination of individual differences in the effect of blue light on sleep and will uncover how alterations in the gene responsible for the effects of blue light on sleep (OPN4) contribute to these differences. This will lead to scalable individualised solutions to the unmet problem of how modern light environments impact sleep.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1701 - Psychology. Lead: A/Prof Andrew Phillips

Evolutionary dynamics in deep time: faunal turnover during the Ediacaran. This project aims to investigate the world’s oldest faunal succession in the fossil record by determining the presence and extent of a sedimentary gap and confirming the role of time in the control of fossil distribution. Significant breakthroughs and capacity building are expected in the areas of palaeontology, evolutionary biology and geology using a hitherto unrecognised hiatus in the rock succession. Project outcomes include enhanced understanding of the first animal communities on Earth – these should provide significant benefits, such as revealing Australia's unique record of oldest complex organisms, while bringing additional tourism to the region, and increasing the strength of the Flinders Ranges UNESCO World Heritage nomination.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0403 - Geology. Lead: A/Prof Diego García-Bellido

Channel Coding for Beyond 5G. Significant improvements are required for ICT services if they are to meet the needs of rapid urbanization and industrial transformation while also addressing the current digital divide, which sees half of the world's population currently without sufficient access to the internet. The 6th-generation (6G) of mobile standards will be a key solution to the constantly increasing demands on our communications infrastructure. This project will develop novel communication strategies for 6G to service new applications with requirements way beyond what 5G can achieve. The outcomes of the project are expected to significantly improve users' data rate and enhance the reliability and coverage of mobile networks.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0804 - Data Format. Lead: A/Prof Mahyar Shirvanimoghaddam

Crisis as Opportunity: Societal Change in Early Middle Kingdom Egypt. The project aims to address political and social shifts in the ancient Egyptian early Middle Kingdom c. 4000 years ago. For the first time, and with exclusive study concessions from the government of Egypt, material data of the two most significant cemeteries of the period will be investigated. The project not only expects to generate new knowledge about human interaction during crisis but will utilise interdisciplinary research strategies to investigate the emerging opportunities, such as social mobility, for individuals from all strata of society. It will provide significant benefits such as understanding the mechanics of post-crisis political leadership and the cultural impact that enabled the classical period of ancient Egypt to emerge.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 2101 - Archaeology. Lead: Prof Naguib Kanawati

Hunger flexibly modifies hypothalamic neural circuits responding to threat. Animal and human behaviour frequently involves a choice between actions or goals with conflicting positive and negative outcomes. However, the appropriate action or goal in conflicting situations often depends on physiological pressures like hunger, stress and mating opportunities. For example, the need for resources within an environment, such as food, drives approach behaviour, whereas threats to survival, such as predator cues, enhance avoidance behaviour. This project will uncover the neural circuitry and endocrine mechanisms through which hunger influences hypothalamic threat-detecting circuits that suppress food intake. These studies provide a new hypothalamic model to understand risk/reward decision in the brain.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1701 - Psychology. Lead: Prof Zane Andrews

Russian Immigrants and Anti-Communism in Cold War Australia, 1946-1966. The project explores the experience of Russian immigrants in Australia during the Cold War. It examines the ambiguity and complexity of what it meant to be Russian at a time of heightened anti-Soviet and anti-Communist sentiment, when ‘Red’ and ‘Russian’ were often equated, and when ASIO took a keen interest in the Russian migrant community. The project will generate new knowledge in the fields of immigration and politics, by exploring the factors that influence political activism for newly arrived migrants and diasporas. Expected outcomes of the project include a deepened knowledge of Australia’s Cold War and immigrant politics, and important benefits for Australian understanding of migrants who carried significant political baggage.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 2103 - Historical Studies. Lead: Prof Ruth Balint

How do protein quality control mechanisms maintain neuronal ageing? This project aims to interrogate how mechanisms of protein quality control act in the brain - an organ that is particularly vulnerable to a high load of misfolded protein - to maintain normal physiology during ageing. This project expects to make advances in cellular biochemistry and neuroscience, using an innovative proximity labelling approach to identify quality control regulators in neurons that specifically engage with misfolded proteins during ageing, within the nervous system of a living animal. Expected outcomes of this project will generate new knowledge of brain physiology and ageing relevant to all animals. This should provide significant benefits, such as a greater understanding of long-term brain functions including memory.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0601 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Lead: Dr Yee Lian Chew

Learning Robotic Navigation and Interaction from Object-based Semantic Maps. Our project aims to develop new learning algorithms that enable robots to perform high-complexity tasks that are currently impossible. Compared to existing methods that rely on low-level sensor data, we aim to achieve this by learning from a high-level graph representation of the environment that captures semantics, affordances, and geometry. The outcome would be robots capable of using human instructions to efficiently learn complex interaction and navigation behaviours that transfer to unseen environments. Our research should benefit new applications in domains of economic and societal importance that are currently too complex, unsafe, and uncertain for robot assistants, such as aged care, advanced manufacturing and domestic robotics.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0801 - Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing. Lead: Prof Niko Suenderhauf

High Predictive Performance Models via Semi-Parametric Survival Regression. This project will develop novel statistical models for high prediction performance. When applied to help doctor to treat patients, these models allow the users to include gene or other biomarkers for predicting effectiveness of a treatment. When applied to risk management in finance, these models are capable to include an organization's or individual's ongoing finance status to predict, for example, the probability of or time to loan default. Innovative computational methods will be developed for fitting these models. Compared to traditional prediction method, this approach allows greater flexibility while being superior in terms of statistical accuracy and bias. Extensive analyses of healthcare data from diverse fields will be undertaken.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0104 - Statistics. Lead: A/Prof Serigne Lo

Innovation in police gender equity management: Looking back, moving forward. This project aims to investigate gender equity recruitment and career support policies in all nine Australian and New Zealand policing agencies. A wide range of equity initiatives that have been implemented across police agencies will be examined, along with affirmative action measures including recent 50/50 male/female recruitment targets. The project expects to generate an advanced best practice model that can be used by domestic and international police agencies. This will allow police organisations to better manage equity issues and support a more inclusive and representative workforce. The benefits of this project are significant, they range from stronger police-community relations through to better service delivery by police.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1602 - Criminology. Lead: Dr Jacqueline Drew

Estimation and Control of Noisy Riemannian Systems. Many application areas such as satellite control, computer vision, coordination of rigid bodies, require the estimation and control of systems subject to geometric constraints. Most current algorithms for doing this are deterministic and can fail catastrophically in the presence of noise. This project aims to provide: (i) Methods for analysing and then redesigning deterministic algorithms to ensure stability in the presence of noise; (ii) New design methods that deal with noise in an optimal way; (iii) Noise resistant methods for distributed consensus seeking systems and cooperative control systems. The outcomes will advance and benefit spatio-temporal data analysis and coordination in areas such as transport, health and video-security.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0906 - Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Lead: Prof Victor Solo

All-on-chip twisted light modulator for ultrahigh-capacity data processing. The project aims to develop a conceptually new all-on-chip twisted light modulator via photonic integration of a customised twisted-light metasurface with on-chip optical waveguides. The goal is to replace current bulky, slow, and costly spatial light modulators by a compact nanophotonic chip for the generation and detection of multiple twisted-light modes. Project outcomes include new knowledge in photonic integration and 3D meta-optics, and novel nanophotonic devices for twisted light, which will expand applications of twisted light for all-on-chip fibre-optic communications and holographic displays. The ultra-compact, high-capacity, efficient twisted-light modulators are expected to have a practical impact on many photonic applications.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1007 - Nanotechnology. Lead: Dr Haoran Ren

Next-generation epigenetic analysis: direct reading of DNA methylation. This project aims to develop a new molecular tool to directly and dynamically read chemical modifications on genomic DNA (epigenetics) by utilizing advanced nanomaterials with the unique features of Raman spectroscopy. Epigenetics affects cellular processes and controls genetic programs by turning them “on” and “off" but there is currently no direct method to measure modifications on DNA. A new technology will be designed to avoid complicated procedures/chemistry for DNA epigenetic analysis providing a specific molecular fingerprint. The anticipated outcomes include a new technique and advanced knowledge in nanomaterials and DNA functions, thus strengthening the economic viability of Australian manufacturing and biotechnology sectors.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1007 - Nanotechnology. Lead: Prof Yuling Wang

Inorganic/organic Hybrids for flexible thermoelectric generators. Flexible thermoelectric generators can directly harvest electricity from body heat, offering a new technology for wearable electronics, but their unsatisfied performance limits their applications. This project aims to design high-efficient and mechanically robust flexible thermoelectric devices based on novel hybrids with quantum dots and conducting polymers as key components. The key breakthrough is to establish unique devices with record-high thermoelectric efficiency and to illustrate the underlying mechanisms for searching new-type flexible thermoelectrics. The expected outcomes will lead to innovative technology for energy conversion and advanced manufacturing and place Australia at the forefront of energy and manufacturing fields.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1007 - Nanotechnology. Lead: Dr Xiaolei Shi

Genetic architecture and evolution of complex traits across populations. Most human traits have a genetic component and display substantial diversity within and among populations. How natural selection changes and maintains genetic variation in human traits is a long-standing question in evolution that the proposed project aims to answer. Using innovative statistical methods and largest genomic “big” datasets ever across populations of different ancestral backgrounds, this project expects to generate new knowledge on the roles of natural selection in shaping the genetic variation in traits and identify key factors that drive the differentiation of human populations. These outcomes will significantly improve our understanding on the evolution of human traits and adaptation of populations to changing environments.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0604 - Genetics. Lead: Dr Jian Zeng

Singular solutions for nonlinear elliptic and parabolic equations. The analysis of many models fundamental to physical and biological sciences is obstructed by singularities. This project aims to discover and classify the singular solutions for two important types of nonlinear equations: elliptic and parabolic. The project expects to generate novel methods to decipher singularities by using innovative approaches from geometric analysis and dynamical systems. Expected outcomes of this project include new and powerful tools to advance a more general theory of singularities. This should provide significant benefits, such as new mathematical knowledge on key issues on singularities lying at the forefront of international research and enhanced expertise in an area of worldwide recognition for Australia.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0101 - Pure Mathematics. Lead: Prof Florica Cirstea

Novel Mathematics and Efficient Computational Techniques for Human Vision. This project aims to develop a new mathematical framework to understand elastic properties of human corneas. The project expects to generate new knowledge in understanding bio-mechanical models for human corneas, as well as other engineering applications involving materials with random fluctuations of elasticity. Expected outcomes of this project include new mathematics and computational algorithms for solving complex mathematical equations which describe elastic and hyper-elastic materials such as human corneas. This project will benefit Australia by enhancing the standing in cutting edge research trends in computational mathematics such as uncertainty quantification and machine learning.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0103 - Numerical and Computational Mathematics. Lead: Prof Josef Dick

Developing Ecosystem Services Economies for northern Australia. The project aims to advance economic opportunities for Indigenous communities across Northern Australia by developing culturally appropriate ecosystem services economies. The project will offer new alternatives for collectively addressing chronic Indigenous socio-economic issues and pressing environmental issues. Expected outcomes include a co-developed ecosystem services economies business model with a toolkit, involving Indigenous and business stakeholders, for establishing innovative enterprises across northern Australia. Key benefits include new ecosystem services-based enterprises; sustainable land sector development; jobs in remote locations; improved well-being of Indigenous peoples; and better environmental management. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0502 - Environmental Science and Management. Lead: Prof Kamaljit Sangha

The Political and Economic Agency of Africans in Australia. This project examines the nature and impact of political and economic agency among African migrants in Australia, using mixed methods (survey, interviews, media and policy analysis). With the right policy settings, African migrants and Australian communities stand to benefit enormously from projected African population growth. However, due to a two decade research focus on African refugees, little is known about the successful navigation of political and economic life among the wider African diaspora. This project will generate new knowledge offering a blueprint for such policy settings. Outcomes include a monograph, 8 papers, and evidence-based policy advice on enhancing African migrant political and economic engagement in Australia. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1608 - Sociology. Lead: Prof Farida Fozdar

Economic, political and cultural brokers in remote Papua New Guinea. This project aims to understand the role of brokers in shaping flows of knowledge and wealth at in resource frontiers in Papua New Guinea; the intent is to investigate the demands that brokers service, their positioning, and the tensions they mediate. The project plans to generate new knowledge by studying cultural, political and economic brokers in a region where encounters with church, state and corporations are comparatively recent. Expected outcomes include contributions to the scholarly literature on brokerage, and building capacity of PNG researchers. This should provide significant benefits, informing better management of processes that threaten viability of development projects, legitimacy of the state, and stability of communities.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1601 - Anthropology. Lead: A/Prof Monica Minnegal

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A New Model of Economic Governance? China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) involves thousands of projects in the world, with a combined value over USD 1 trillion. Under the BRI, China is constructing new norms and legal institutions to govern international economic activity. But the opacity of the BRI means that little is known about the details of these arrangements or their operation in practice. This socio-legal project will examine how the BRI is changing the way that cross-border economic interactions are governed, and explore the implications of these changes for how power and authority are exercised in the global economy. The project’s findings will equip Australian policymakers, businesses and publics to navigate more astutely the changes that the BRI is advancing.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1801 - Law. Lead: A/Prof Jonathan Bonnitcha

Locating Giurgola: From Philadelphia School to Global Practice. This project aims to conduct the first major systematic assessment of the architectural career of Romaldo Giurgola (1920-2016), the principal architect of Australian Parliament House. It will review all known archives relating to his life and works, including significant collections in North America and Australia, and it will survey the full range of his architectural projects. The project expects to result in a new and complete assessment of Giurgola's architecture, figuring important Australian buildings into an international landscape of professional practice. The primary outcome of this project will be a large critical catalogue, presenting the full extent of his career for the first time and locating APH in that career in new terms.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1201 - Architecture. Lead: A/Prof Cameron Logan