Grants & Opportunities

Speed breeding with a twist for water-saving low-carbon rice. Rice has one of the highest environmental footprints among crops world-wide, because of the water use and methane emission during production. This project aims to combine drought and cold tolerance traits of rice, necessary for ecofriendly dryland production, through a field-based speed breeding approach. It will allow to rapidly advance and select drought and cold tolerant rice genotypes and will generate new knowledge on the genetic drivers of combined stress tolerance. Expected outcomes includes tolerant germplasms for further breeding and variety development purposes. This will lead to ‘climate smart’ dryland varieties and will provide significant benefit by transforming rice production to save water and lower the carbon footprint.. Scheme: Early Career Industry Fellowships. Field: 3004 - Crop and Pasture Production. Lead: Dr Szabolcs Lehoczki-Krsjak

New methods to protect honey bees from Varroa destructor mites. The most destructive pest of the honey bee is the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. This pest arrived in Australia in 2022 and eradication efforts failed in September 2023. We must now manage this pest if Australia’s honey bee industries are to survive. The aim of this project is to develop a new chemical free mite control method. In collaboration with two beekeeping companies this project will exploit a specific sensitivity of the mite to heat to create a heat based control method for commercial hives. The outcome will be a new robust method for mite control to enhance bee hive health and management. This will benefit sustainable apiculture in Australia which is vital for both pollination of food crops and honey production.. Scheme: Early Career Industry Fellowships. Field: 3003 - Animal Production. Lead: Dr Théotime Colin

Partnering with aged care providers to develop accessible outcome measures. This project aims to develop evidence-based tools designed for Aged Care organisations to drive inclusivity in self-reporting by older people as part of the National Mandatory Quality Indicator Program. Recommended by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, it will allow Aged Care providers to include people with dementia themselves when assessing their quality of their care. Expected outcomes include accessible-communication versions of the validated person-centred quality assessment tools recently implemented as part of the National Mandatory Quality Indicator program (namely the Quality of Life Aged Care Consumers and Quality of Care Experience Aged Care Consumers Instruments). . Scheme: Early Career Industry Fellowships. Field: 4203 - Health Services and Systems. Lead: Dr Rachel Milte

Conserving caves: Developing tools to safeguard subterranean biodiversity. This project aims to develop innovative techniques to document and protect the biodiversity of the Nullarbor caves, an iconic Australian ecosystem. We will develop standardised methodologies to monitor biodiversity, detect centres of endemism, and identify threats, plus guidelines to inform conservation. Novel techniques will be employed to survey areas inaccessible to humans, thus solving a major challenge to environmental monitoring of caves globally. Outcomes of this project are enhanced capacity to monitor cave biodiversity, prevent extinctions, and protect areas of high biodiversity importance, which we will translate to industry and the community via museum displays, talks, and conservation and sustainable development guidelines. . Scheme: Early Career Industry Fellowships. Field: 4104 - Environmental Management. Lead: Dr Jessica Marsh

Extraction of the critical rare earth elements from mine waste. The transition to a carbon-free economy requires substantial amounts of the critical rare earth elements, for which demand is likely to outstrip supply in coming decades. Vast amounts of rare earths are present in the mine waste of some copper-gold mines, but cannot be economically extracted. This project aims to use molten alkali salts to reprocess mine waste, and transform the rare earths to a readily exploitable form. This project expects to create a scalable industrial separation process to be implemented in existing mines, with the separated ore used as input for extraction. A benefit of this project is the unlocking of a previously inaccessible Australian rare earth resource, comparable in size to the largest deposits globally.. Scheme: Early Career Industry Fellowships. Field: 4019 - Resources Engineering and Extractive Metallurgy. Lead: Dr Michael Anenburg

Building Better Herbicides With 3D Boron and Silicon Building Blocks. This fellowship aims to develop a modern toolkit for building herbicidal molecules, comprised of 3D chemical building blocks containing boron and silicon. The significance of the project is that it uses strategies that have delivered successful pharmaceuticals, such as molecular shape and complexity, and applies these to crop protection to address serious challenges such as genetic resistance, which threatens the effectiveness of almost 70% of herbicide types. The expected outcomes are safer, more effective herbicides, resulting in benefits of increased crop production and alleviated pressure on our agricultural sector, farmers and the environment. . Scheme: Early Career Industry Fellowships. Field: 3405 - Organic Chemistry. Lead: Dr Ronald Brown

Behaviour change science for nature conservation. This project aims to harness human behaviours to improve nature conservation outcomes. This project expects to improve understanding of human-nature interactions through application of interdisciplinary sciences including behaviour change science. Expected outcomes include behaviour change methods and frameworks that can be integrated into policies and programs seeking protect native plants, animals, and ecosystems. This should provide significant benefits including reversing biodiversity loss, particularly in urban areas, and improving societal resilience through healthier human-nature interactions.. Scheme: Early Career Industry Fellowships. Field: 4104 - Environmental Management. Lead: Dr Lily van Eeden

Quantum clock for assured global navigation: Global Positioning System 2.0 . This project aims to develop a new high-performance atomic clock suited for operation on a satellite as part of a next generation Global Positioning System. With industry partner QuantX Labs, this project will design and deliver a high-performance clock with low size, weight and power consumption. Expected outcomes include a next-generation clock with 10 times improved performance when compared with current commercial clocks and reduced vulnerability to intentional disruption of next-generation satellite navigation signals. This will provide significant benefits through building sovereign capacity and providing a future of assured position, navigation, timing and robust satellite navigation service for all.. Scheme: Early Career Industry Fellowships. Field: 4009 - Electronics, Sensors and Digital Hardware. Lead: Dr Sarah Scholten

Advancing the Frontiers of Detection: Ultrasensitive Terahertz Sensing. This program aims to transform terahertz biosensing, creating next-generation sensors for rapid detection down to the sub-nanogram level. Terahertz radiation lies between microwaves and infrared - it can uniquely ‘fingerprint’ or identify substances. This ground-breaking program will investigate terahertz-matter interaction together with sensor design based on advanced materials, breaking current terahertz detection limits. This will enable rapid substance identification with exquisite precision at trace levels. This will revolutionise applications in security, healthcare, forensics, and space exploration. It will educate a new generation of research leaders in engineering and science, building sovereign capability in terahertz photonics.. Scheme: Australian Laureate Fellowships. Field: 4009 - Electronics, Sensors and Digital Hardware. Lead: Prof Derek Abbott

Molecular engineering and doping for efficient and affordable solar cells. The new perovskite-based solar cells, produced by low-cost coating technologies, have remarkable power-conversion efficiencies. The aim of this project is to make them more durable and therefore economically viable, using molecular engineering and doping techniques to maintain good photoactivity in the perovskite (a metal halide), and to replace gold electrodes with superior low-cost carbon alternatives that have well-tuned and highly efficient electronic and surface properties. Expected outcomes include a new generation of affordable, high-quality, long-lasting solar cells that can be manufactured at scale, advancing Australia’s position in a high-tech future-focused market likely to be worth billions of dollars to our economy by 2029.. Scheme: Australian Laureate Fellowships. Field: 3403 - Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry. Lead: Prof Hongxia Wang

Partial differential equations for propagation and aggregation . This fellowship develops partial differential equation (PDE) theory to fill in a gap in the mathematical modelling of propagation and aggregation occurring in ecological invasion, disease spreading, krill swarming and elsewhere. The existing models use PDEs over fixed spatial domains, where mature mathematical theories are available, but they fail to meet crucial demands in applications. To overcome this difficulty, we establish theories for PDEs over domains that are not fixed, but change with time, and build new models that keenly reflect the real world demands. Apart from the new mathematics and numerical tools, the project also produces a team of Australian researchers with critical skills in an area of keen international interests. . Scheme: Australian Laureate Fellowships. Field: 4904 - Pure Mathematics. Lead: Prof Yihong Du

Plate Tectonics, Critical Metals and our Habitable Earth. A grand science quest is to understand how our life-nurturing planet came to be. This Fellowship aims to use abundant geological information to build a tectonic, bathymetric and topographic digital twin of the Earth’s surface through its middle age (1800–500 million years ago)—then apply this to investigate how deep earth processes including earthquakes, volcanos and plate tectonics endowed our planet with critical metals and built a habitable world. Outcomes include ground-breaking data-driven geology and actualistic deep-time full-earth modelling that have not been attempted before. Expected benefits include de-risking mineral exploration, therefore providing jobs, and honing our responses to challenges facing the modern-day biosphere.. Scheme: Australian Laureate Fellowships. Field: 3799 - Other Earth Sciences. Lead: Prof Alan Collins

Islands in the Ice: Interpreting the future of Antarctic ecosystems. This program aims to better understand polar regions by combining data from key locations around the Antarctic continent to determine how vegetation in ice-free, coastal areas has responded to recent climate change. It will improve spatial and temporal climate data for Antarctica’s coastline, thus enabling more accurate modelling of the rates of environmental change and how this is affecting Antarctica's unique biodiversity. Outcomes will impact on climate science, policy development and Antarctic decision-making. The innovative technologies developed will be applied in a new continent-wide terrestrial observing system, enabling Australia and other nations to better manage their obligations to protect Antarctic biodiversity.. Scheme: Australian Laureate Fellowships. Field: 4101 - Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation. Lead: Prof Sharon Robinson

Game-Changers: Enablers of Indigenous University Students’ Success. This project aims to identify game-changers that enable Indigenous students to complete university capitalising upon research advances and a powerful synergy of Indigenous and empirical methods. The project will generate new knowledge about enablers of university completion, leveraging research-derived interventions, and Indigenous voice and agency. Expected outcomes include effective interventions, university completion and associated socio-economic benefits, and wellbeing. Benefits include identifying drivers of university completion, designing effective interventions, advancing data-driven Indigenous higher education policies and practices, promoting Indigenous socio-economic wellbeing, and building research capability and capacity.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4502 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education. Lead: Prof Rhonda Craven

Precursors for perovskite solar from an Australian minerals supply chain. The aim is to develop production processes for transforming Australian resources into photovoltaic (PV) perovskite precursor specialty materials for next generation solar cells. Expected outcomes of this project include: (1) sourcing Australian resources, including mine wastes, to secure supplies for precursor materials, (2) demonstrate at scale, using novel processing methods, the production of bespoke precursor materials, and (3) enhance knowledge in impurity impacts on perovskite efficiency and stability in order to develop capacity in building next generation PV perovskite solar cells. This research will develop significant sovereign capabilities to supply and produce new energy technologies to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4019 - Resources Engineering and Extractive Metallurgy. Lead: Prof Sara Couperthwaite

High Performance Photoinitiators for 3D Laser Lithography. To overcome key challenges of 3D printing on the micrometer scale, this projects develops next generation photoresists for 3D laser lithography. Based on a precision photophysical analysis approach, a blue print will be derived that creates the missing link between the chemical structure of photoinitators and their ability to print in two photon absorption processes. Based on this blueprint, high performance initiators will be synthesised and embedded into photoresists that break two barriers in contemporary 3D laser lithography: (i) Resists that decouple photopolymerisation processes from the printing process to eliminate volume shrinking during printing. (ii) Resists that allow to print 3D structures in the presence of living cells.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3403 - Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry. Lead: Prof Christopher Barner-Kowollik

Resolving bottlenecks in natural product biomanufacturing. Biochemicals that cannot be produced through synthetic chemistry are often amenable to biotechnological production, but industrialisation is hindered by inefficient enzymes at key steps. This synthetic biology project aims to address this important problem by combining ancestral protein reconstruction, machine learning for prediction of enzyme function, and multiplexed in vitro metabolic pathway prototyping. The power of this approach will be demonstrated by enhancing cytochrome P450 enzymes and prenyltransferases for biosynthesis of alkaloids and flavones. We expect that the project outcomes will reduce research and development costs associated with biotechnological manufacturing of high-value natural product biochemicals.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3101 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Lead: Dr James Behrendorff

Biorefining of Brewer's Spent Grain into Novel Dietary Fibres. Dietary fibres have a market value of multi-billion dollars. This project aims to produce novel dietary fibres from a food industry waste, brewer’s spent grain, using low-cost green alcohol solvents and novel enzymes. The expected outcomes include two types of novel dietary fibres, new knowledge in understanding of property-functionality relationships of the dietary fibres as well as improved process sustainability and economics achieved with the use of innovative biorefinery technologies. The biorefinery technologies are applicable to other cereal grains and grain processing by-products, such as wheat bran, accelerating the development of a new multi-billion-dollar nutraceutical manufacturing industry in Australia.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3106 - Industrial Biotechnology. Lead: Prof Zhanying Zhang

Development of rapid-drying barley for sustainable malting. Barley is a fundamental ingredient in the brewing and distilling industries, but traditional malting processes that germinate and dry grain are resource-intensive and challenged by rising energy costs. This project aims to identify natural genetic variation in barley that contributes to improved performance during gas-powered kilning, the most costly processing step for the $484M malt export industry. The multidisciplinary project team of seed biologists, maltsters, and breeders, is expected to generate new information regarding the basis for variation in grain drying. This is expected to deliver reduced-input barley varieties for Australian growers that require less energy to process and are highly valued in domestic and export markets. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3004 - Crop and Pasture Production. Lead: Prof Matthew Tucker

Bandgap engineered bismuth chalcogenides for uncooled infrared detectors. Uncooled infrared detectors are core enabling technologies in civilian and defense applications such as night vision, surveillance, automated driving, and firefighting. However, the industry application of two-dimensional materials in uncooled infrared detectors is hindered by their low device performance and poor fabrication scalability. This project aims to develop low-cost, high performance uncooled infrared detectors with high fabrication scalability by growing bandgap engineered two-dimensional bismuth chalcogenides with controlled doping and enhanced light absorption. This will place Australia in a very competitive position in the billion-dollar uncooled infrared detector market whilst benefit relevant Australian industry sectors.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4016 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Prof Wen Lei

Scalable fabrication of diamond quantum microprocessors . Quantum computing is rapidly emerging, bearing transformative economic and security implications for Australia. This project leverages expertise in diamond materials science and x-ray science to develop a scalable manufacturing process for a distinctive diamond quantum technology that will expand quantum computing to efficiency-critical edge computing applications. Expected outcomes include new capabilities for fabricating the fundamental components of quantum computers using light and plasma to manipulate the surface of diamond. This will provide significant benefits, enhancing Australia’s sovereign quantum capabilities and strategically positioning Australia to capitalise on the anticipated $106B global quantum computing market in 2040.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 5104 - Condensed Matter Physics. Lead: A/Prof Grant Van Riessen

Superior Cold-formed Steel Floor Truss Systems to Modernize Construction. This project aims to develop new and improved high strength cold-formed steel (CFS) floor truss systems for use in mid-rise CFS buildings worldwide. It will generate new knowledge of the true behaviour and capacity of various CFS truss systems using extensive experimental and numerical studies. Expected outcomes are improved truss systems through simple strengthening techniques, new connections and built-up sections with reliable design methods. New lightweight CFS floor truss systems made of optimised sections and truss configurations will also be developed. These outcomes will enable modernized off-site construction to produce faster, safer, sustainable, and low-cost mid-rise building solutions, thus addressing the current housing crisis.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4005 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Prof Mahen Mahendran

Optimising cost-effective services to the aged CaLD community. This project aims to help non-government service providers in the growing aged care sector to identify, develop and offer cost effective community-based services that can improve the lives and wellbeing of their culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) clients. Services in this sector will be mapped and costed. An online tool will be developed to (1) 'identify and standardise’ the potential range of services on offer, and (2) calculate the cost of offering each service. This tool will directly benefit providers by helping them to decide their optimal suite of affordable services and improve how they realistically cost these services when applying for funding from government entities and other sources.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3506 - Marketing. Lead: A/Prof Russel Kingshott

One-step separation and collection for pharmaceutical industry. This project aims to design and manufacturing large-scale separation and collection membranes with tuneable surface properties to achieve effective oil/emulsion/microparticles separation and collection performance by learning from natural one-step separation and collection functionalities. The outcomes will provide a realistic solution to the key challenges in separation and separation demands in current pharmaceutical industries, including high contamination, easy blocking, low-efficiency, and lacking sustainability. This project will advance the knowledge base of sustainable separation technologies and brings technological breakthroughs to industry partners, pharmaceutical industries, and separation end-users.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4016 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Prof Ziqi Sun

Novel decarbonisation via producing lithium carbonate with carbon emissions. As a critical metal, lithium will play a pivotal role in energy transition. Tianqi Lithium Kwinana is the first to produce battery-grade lithium in Australia in commercial quantities in May 2022. This project aims to make its refining process greener through effective decarbonisation and waste management. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of decarbonising the refining processes of critical minerals. Expected outcomes include a new technology for locking carbon dioxide into lithium products, and a novel approach for managing refinery waste. This should provide significant benefits, such as a boosted lithium production capacity for Australia’s exports, and invented leading technologies for critical minerals industry.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4004 - Chemical Engineering. Lead: Prof Hongqi Sun