Grants & Opportunities

ARC Training Centre for Biofilm Research and Innovation . The ARC Training Centre for Biofilm Research and Innovation aims to transform biofouling management strategies for maritime platforms by building on local and international expertise to mentor and train the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists and engineers. Anticipating evolving regulatory stringency, this project expects to establish a dynamic environment for industry partners, students and scientists to collaborate and develop biofilm management strategies. Expected outcomes include new and enhanced collaborations that advance and translate knowledge to better manage biofouling. The significant benefits will include a generation of industry-focused researchers critical for growing Australia’s Defence industry.. Scheme: Industrial Transformation Training Centres. Field: 4015 - Maritime Engineering. Lead: Prof Sophie Leterme

Decentralised Data Management for Edge Caching Systems in 5G. This project aims to deliver a suite of decentralised data management approaches to facilitate practical edge caching systems in the 5G mobile edge computing (MEC) environment. Edge caching offers great promises for Australia's post-COVID economic recovery and resilience with the ability to enable real-time mobile and IoT software applications in various domains, e.g., telehealth, online learning/working, advanced manufacturing, etc. This project tackles new and urgent challenges in edge data storage, manipulation, maintenance, and protection with optimisation, distributed consensus, graph analytics, and cryptography techniques. The outcomes should build the pillars of edge caching systems and promote Australia's 5G software innovations.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0803 - Computer Software. Lead: Prof Qiang He

Undocumented Migrants- Unearthing Knowledge on a Key Source of Farm Labour. The Australian horticulture industry has endemic labour challenges, both in terms of labour supply challenges and a systemic problem of non-compliance with labour standards. A core component of both problems is the entrenched reliance on undocumented migrants. Given complex supply chains transiting fresh fruit and vegetables from the farm to the consumer, undocumented workers are largely invisible. There is very little research on undocumented workers on farms. Addressing this critical Australian and international knowledge gap, this project is the first study to comprehensively analyse the role of undocumented migrants in the horticulture industry from a multi-stakeholder approach, involving government, employers and workers.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1801 - Law. Lead: A/Prof Joanna Howe

Optimising Digital Compliance Processes in the Financial Services Sector. This project aims to develop a new approach to optimise digital compliance processes in Australian financial services firms. Effective digital compliance is needed to reduce growing regulatory burden and improve compliance with increasingly complex laws. This project expects to deliver new ways to optimise digital compliance that drive innovation and reduce the societal risks of non-compliance for end-users. Expected outcomes include industry guidance strategies and innovative digital tools that capture the complexity of digital compliance and inform practical solutions. This will provide significant cost reduction benefits for firms and ensure that new digital compliance processes promote the public interest goals of law and regulation. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1801 - Law. Lead: Prof Anna Huggins

Breeder-ready genetic tools for sustaining wheat yields under heat stress. Yield losses in wheat due to heat stress are increasing with climate change, driving an urgent need for new heat-tolerant varieties; however, few resources for heat tolerance are available for use in breeding. This research aims to use comprehensive genetic and agronomic approaches to provide breeders with the tools and evidence to select WtmsDW, a newly discovered genetic region that protects pollen fertility and sustains grain yield under heat stress. These tools are expected to significantly boost productivity for the $9.8B Australian wheat industry, benefitting rural communities and industry partners and supporting food security, both directly and through longer-term extension of novel heat tolerance mechanisms to other crop species.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0703 - Crop and Pasture Production. Lead: Prof Matthew Tucker

Career change teachers: Addressing teacher shortages in Australia . Australia is facing a teacher shortage crisis. Consequently, there have been concerted efforts by governments to attract people into teaching from other sections of the workforce. However, career change teachers often do not stay longer than five years in the profession. There is little evidence on how their retention can be enhanced. This project aims to better understand the differing motivations and experiences of these teachers from diverse backgrounds, and to determine how they can be better prepared and supported through their early years of teaching. A clear benefit of this project will be the longer term success for career change teachers and their schools and will ensure young people are not disadvantaged by high teacher turnover. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1303 - Specialist Studies In Education. Lead: Prof Martin Mills

Nurturing Australia's Little Multilingual Minds. Despite its substantial multilingual capacity of more than 300 languages, Australia has been described as a 'graveyard for languages'. In partnering with community organisations we will facilitate polyglot early learning, commencing with Spanish and Vietnamese. Expected outcomes are a deep understanding of multilingual families’ experiences, a model to support lifespan multilingual education, and openly-accessible database of child language in heritage languages. Benefits include a pivotal contribution to early childhood education with the creation of a tailor-made, principle-based program, which will enhance children’s academic achievement, familial social and mental wellbeing, and cultural and economic opportunities for all Australians. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1702 - Cognitive Sciences. Lead: Prof Paola Escudero

Transforming Cultural & Natural Resource Management workforce capabilities. This project aims to implement a transformative program of transdisciplinary cultural and natural resource management and workforce development research in Northern Australia’s Arnhem Plateau region. This project expects to create new knowledge in the areas of cultural knowledges, wildfire, feral animal, invasive plants, mine-site rehabilitation, and climate change, as well as Indigenous training effectiveness. Expected outcomes of the project include practical learnings for application in broader Indigenous community/First Nations capability and supportive policy development contexts. The expected benefits are a long-term platform for enhancing cultural and environmental landscape management and sustainable employment opportunities.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0502 - Environmental Science and Management. Lead: Prof Jeremy Russell-Smith

My Air Space: the Science of Buildings that Make us Thrive. Nothing is more necessary in human life than the air we breathe, mostly indoors where air quality has been relatively overlooked. This project aims to deliver new science and technology as a foundation for optimising indoor atmospheres to improve health, wellbeing, and comfort. Expected outcomes include innovative, efficient, low-cost diagnostic sensing of indoor atmospheres and human–space interactions, real-time detection of airborne pathogens and particles that host them, and cost-effective localised conditioning of spaces for comfort at points of actual use. Benefits should be seen in areas of health, productivity, reduced energy use, and new industries for the design, modernising, and operation of buildings across Australia and beyond.. Scheme: Australian Laureate Fellowships. Field: 4010 - Engineering Practice and Education. Lead: Prof Lidia Morawska

The many lives and deaths of high redshift massive quiescent galaxies. This Fellowship will investigate the recent discovery of very massive, extremely early forming quiescent galaxies and explain their exceptional origin, death, and ultimate place in the local Universe. It is a multidisciplinary project that seeks to produce new knowledge using high-performance computing, software engineering, and sophisticated data analysis techniques. Expected outcomes include novel and improved supercomputer simulations of several billions of galaxies processed through a virtual observatory, providing tools and fundamental knowledge for observational, theoretical, and computational astrophysics.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences. Lead: Prof Darren Croton

Uncovering the First Stars and Galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope. This project aims to find "First Light": the first stars and galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. Understanding the astrophysics of the first galaxies, their explosive growth, and how they set ablaze the remaining gas in the Universe have long been among the most important unsolved mysteries of astronomy. Decades in the making, the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in December 2021 marks a watershed moment. This project uses privileged access to the revolutionary space telescope to find "First Light" and contribute to rewriting the first chapter of our cosmic history. The project is expected to significantly enhance Australia's international standing through leadership in use of the world's flagship scientific facility.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences. Lead: A/Prof Ivo Labbe

Preventing child sexual abuse by understanding perpetrators’ motivations. This project aims to investigate, for the first time, the experiential motivations of child sexual abuse perpetrators. Using a novel theoretical and methodological approach, it expects to discover new knowledge about the motivations of child sexual abuse perpetrators. Expected outcomes include new theoretical explanations for child sexual abuse perpetration and transformed policy and practice measures to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse in Australia and beyond. This should provide significant benefits, such as reduction of the widespread, severe and costly impacts of child sexual abuse, and an evidence base to support and enhance government initiatives such as the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse. . Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 4402 - Criminology. Lead: Prof Kelly Richards

Gut-brain control of cue-induced feeding behaviours. This proposal aims to determine how food cues (e.g., advertisements) trigger our desire to eat. Using modern virally-mediated strategies, behavioural and histological techniques in a transgenic rat, this proposal seeks to characterise novel gut-brain circuits that mediate cue-induced feeding behaviours. This is significant as food cues can cause overeating, which is problematic in the current obesogenic society, yet the mechanisms are unclear. This project expects to provide new knowledge on how the gut communicates with multiple brain regions to control cue-induced eating. This work should benefit the advancement of knowledge and establish a framework for future research on gut-brain mechanisms in cue-induced feeding.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 5202 - Biological Psychology. Lead: Dr Zhi Yi Ong

Reducing rocket resonance is the key to safer spaceflight. This fellowship considers a particularly dangerous component of rocket launch, which is the potential for destructive feedback loops to form either in the nozzle, or between the nozzle and the launch pad. CI Edgington-Mitchell is a world leader in the study of resonance in jet engines, having developed best-in-field methodologies for the problem. In this innovative fellowship, he will apply these methodologies to better understand the dangerous resonances that can occur during rocket launch, using a combination of experimental, numerical, and theoretical techniques, in partnership with NASA, Stanford, and the CNRS.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 4012 - Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Engineering. Lead: A/Prof Daniel Edgington-Mitchell

Understanding and controlling neuropeptide GPCR-transducer coupling. G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are physiologically essential, yet the spatiotemporal complexity of receptor function has limited our understanding of their function and success in drug development. Using a multi-disciplinary approach integrating GPCR signalling, trafficking and drug delivery, this research program aims to understand, and control, the molecular mechanisms that enable a single receptor to respond to different ligands to promote unique cellular processes. The anticipated outcomes include an enhanced capacity for understanding fundamental biology, and stronger national and international collaborations. It will provide significant benefits including expanded basic knowledge and advancement of drug delivery technology.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 3214 - Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Lead: A/Prof Nicholas Veldhuis

Next Generation Photocatalysis for Chemical Synthesis and Manufacture. This project aims to discover new methods for the activation of energy demanding bonds in organic molecules as a general strategy in chemical synthesis. A key conceptual advance in this project is the development of multiphoton photoredox catalysis as a powerful tool to activate traditionally unreactive, yet abundant chemical bonds in organic molecules including C-H bonds in alkane and olefin feedstocks. With application in fields that range from fine chemical production to drug discovery, the overarching aim of this research is to establish new bond activation reactions and to demonstrate translations to the invention of new pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and advanced chemical manufacturing processes that will have societal impact.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 3405 - Organic Chemistry. Lead: A/Prof Anastasios Polyzos

New-generation flexible thermoelectrics for wearable electronics. This project aims to develop lightweight, flexible, and durable thermoelectric thin films for wearable electronics using a computation-guided approach, coupled with novel device design and materials nanoengineering strategies. The key breakthrough will overcome the stereotype of fragile thermoelectric materials and their low thermoelectric efficiency for achieving localised, instant, and controllable power generation and/or cooling with record-high performance in carefully designed wearable thermoelectric devices. Expected outcomes include new understanding of thermoelectrics and innovative technologies for achieving electronics/energy applications, which will provide significant economic and educational benefits for Australia.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 4016 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Prof Zhi-Gang Chen

Cave microbial metabolism as a missing biogeochemical sink. The aim of this project is to unveil the microbial biodiversity, novel metabolic capabilities and chemosynthetic primary production of subsurface ecosystems, such as those found in caves. Leveraging a powerful blend of geospatial, molecular and biogeochemical approaches this project expects to identify the microbial basis of subsurface biogeochemical processes driving the earth’s major elementary cycles. Expected outcomes include a predictive framework to assess and upscale the impact of these microbial communities on the environment. Benefits include predicting and responding to climate risks, such as the desertification of agricultural soils, by uncovering how microorganisms respond to nutrient and carbon depletion.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 3107 - Microbiology. Lead: Dr Sean Bay

An Efficient Computational Solver for Complex Engineering Problems. This project aims to address significant gaps in the existing knowledge about solving complex engineering problems that involve conflicting objectives and unquantifiable features. In these problems, the decision-maker is interested in knowing high-quality and dissimilar solutions that determine the trade-off between the problem objectives. The intended outcomes of this project include a novel robust computational solver that can automatically find such solutions. The decision-makers can then choose the final solution based on their expertise and preferences. This expects to offer significant benefits to diverse engineering disciplines by finding superior and more practical solutions to their complex multidisciplinary problems.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4602 - Artificial Intelligence. Lead: Dr Ali Ahrari

Harnessing social norms to find a socially acceptable energy transition. This project aims to discover the potential of social norms to enable energy-producing communities to explore and define a socially acceptable energy transition. By implementing and evaluating a new social norm change intervention in the Upper Hunter region, this project expects to generate new knowledge about what matters most to communities facing transition, and how norms, identities, and networks interact to enable or constrain change. Outcomes include direct input to energy transition planning, enhanced collaboration with policy and civil society, and new international research networks. This should provide significant benefits by helping Australian communities and policy-makers navigate the local impacts of global energy transition.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4408 - Political Science. Lead: A/Prof Rebecca Colvin

Supporting the inclusion of siblings when a family is in crisis . This project aims to explore the inclusion experience of siblings during a significant family crisis – a child’s critical illness. Exclusion from a family crisis can have lasting impacts, however sibling experiences of inclusion when a child is critically ill remain unstudied. Through observation and interviews with children and their families, this project expects to generate new knowledge about sibling inclusion in this family crisis. Expected outcomes include guidelines to enhance sibling inclusion and a resource to support family togetherness. This project should provide significant social benefits, such as changes to local and national sibling and family policies, and improved family wellbeing for all Australian families in crisis.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4203 - Health Services and Systems. Lead: Dr Ashleigh Butler

Precision Rulers for the Visible - Chip Scale Optical Frequency Combs. This project aims to create a photonic chip technology that generates hundreds of coherent laser lines in the visible spectrum from a single chip for accurate sensing, imaging unknown objects and measuring gas emissions. The project expects to introduce this new capability in the current photonic chip technology, which currently only operates with infrared light. The expected outcomes are inexpensive, stable and energy-efficient devices the size of a fingernail that will enable measurements with unprecedented accuracies. This should allow these devices to be mounted on drones, satellites, and robots, making them attractive for defence, information security, imaging, autonomous vehicle, and sensing applications.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4009 - Electronics, Sensors and Digital Hardware. Lead: Dr Andreas Boes

Automated People Management: When algorithms manage employees. This project aims to explain the impact of technologies that automate people management. Through four integrated studies, this project expects to generate new knowledge on a currently invisible set of managerial and industrial practices that are profoundly reshaping work and employment relations. Expected outcomes include the first typology of automated people management technologies that will be used to reveal where and how automated people management is occurring in Australia and its effects on managers and workers. This much needed research should provide significant practical benefit to organisations and inform emerging policy and frameworks for the responsible adoption of AI and digital technologies in Australian workplaces. . Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 3505 - Human Resources and Industrial Relations. Lead: A/Prof Penelope Williams

Photo-thermal ammonia decomposition . This project aims to develop of novel catalysts targeted to utilise light and heat for the photo-thermal decomposition of ammonia to produce hydrogen and generate new understanding on the role of light in thermal catalytic reactions. The emergence of the hydrogen economy has resulted in the urgent need for safe and efficient hydrogen transport and storage vectors. Ammonia, a hydrogen carrier, is being increasingly considered as a potential key to facilitate the hydrogen economy due to its relative ease of storage. The development of catalysts tailored toward capturing light for ammonia decomposition will enable a new potential pathway for the hydrogen economy, with ammonia as a hydrogen vector. . Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 3406 - Physical Chemistry. Lead: Dr Emma Lovell

Mapping the genetics of brain connectivity. The brain is a complex biological system that gives rise to our consciousness, thoughts, and experiences, yet we still do not know how this complexity emerges. This project aims to comprehensively investigate the genetics of brain connectivity combining cutting-edge techniques in neuroimaging, genomics, mathematical modelling, and cognitive neuroscience, focusing specifically on the connectivity of functionally important brain network hubs. The outcomes will provide a mechanistic understanding of the genetic origins of brain network formation and an explanation for how genetic influences on brain organisation shape human behaviour advancing the fundamental knowledge about the complexity of the brain.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 5202 - Biological Psychology. Lead: Dr Aurina Arnatkeviciute