Grants & Opportunities

Addressing reproductive violence in migrant and refugee communities. This project aims to address a critical gap in knowledge about migrant women’s experience of a serious form of family violence: reproductive coercion and abuse. Through a mixed methods design this project expects to advance understanding and identify opportunities to increase the safety of survivors. Expected outcomes include a new conceptual model, co-designed, culturally responsive resources for communities and health professionals, and recommendations for legislative and policy change. The results should benefit migrant communities, legal and health professionals working with migrant communities, and policy makers through improved conceptual knowledge, suggestions for legal reform, and evidence-based resources for workforce training.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4203 - Health Services and Systems. Lead: Dr Nicola Sheeran

Building integrity into the Nature Positive promise. Rampant deforestation, spreading invasive species, and climate change is causing mass biodiversity loss. This natural crisis poses a threat to human and planetary health. Many nations, including Australia, committed to the Global Goal for Nature, aiming for nature positive status by 2030. However, stakeholders including government and businesses lack clarity on how to achieve this goal. This project, a world-first in its comprehensive approach, aims to understand the state in which nature was in, as well as the trend of nature’s health over time. The outcomes include a framework for how nature can be measured and a decision-making tool to identify actions, as well as demonstrate progress towards nature positive success.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4102 - Ecological Applications. Lead: Dr Michelle Ward

Green fabrication of robust micro/nano hierarchical surface morphology. This project aims to fabricate coating material with robust micro/nano hierarchical structured surface in ambient conditions through mimicking natural biological processes. This study expects to generate knowledge for translating natural biological processes into cutting-edge sustainable and scalable low-cost manufacturing technique using biowaste, minerals and waste plastic through interdisciplinary approaches. Expected outcomes include potential next-generation environmentally friendly marine coating exhibiting self-cleaning and drag reduction. This should deliver significant economic and environmental benefits for maritime industry and contribute to further Australian standing in the field of circular economy.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4005 - Civil Engineering. Lead: A/Prof Lily (Yali) Li

Unravelling the molecular basis of CD8+ T cell development and behaviour . The immune system is essential in disease resistance and resilience across diverse species and ecosystems. CD8+ T cells are a critical component of effective immunity. However, the molecular mechanisms governing their development and behaviour are poorly understood. This project aims to explore these mechanisms in unprecedented depth using an innovative in vivo CRISPR/Cas gene editing platform. Expected outcomes from this project include transformative insights into the genetic networks regulating CD8+ T cell immunity, and the establishment of an advanced novel platform for studying immune cell biology. This research promises significant benefits in advancing fundamental immunology and facilitating future studies in this field.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3204 - Immunology. Lead: Prof Marco Herold

The stone toolkit of the first Homo sapiens from Africa to Australia. This project aims to explore the technological variability of Homo sapiens in their expansion out of Africa to Australia over the last 200,000 years. The project expects to generate new knowledge in the areas of archaeology and human origins by employing groundbreaking 3D computational analysis of stone tools found in sites spanning the period of Homo sapiens expansion. Expected outcomes of this project are to understand the technological underpinning of our forebears' successful expansion out of Africa, their replacement of other hominin species, and the pace and routes of expansion. This should provide significant benefits in understanding human evolution and the resilience of our species in the face of major climate change.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4301 - Archaeology. Lead: Prof Christopher Clarkson

Oceanic Oxygen in Deep Time: Have We Been Looking in the Wrong Places? Dissolved marine oxygen supports animal life and controls the distribution of redox-sensitive critical metals. Yet the evolution of oceanic dissolved oxygen, when complex cells evolved and links to major critical metal deposits are poorly known—largely because existing studies are from rocks formed in the same Baltic-like sea 1.5 billion years ago (as revealed by new plate-tectonic reconstructions). We will address this by studying ancient rocks that formed in different oceans (rocks now in WA & India). Geochemistry, geochronology and biogeochemical modelling are used to build paleogeographic maps of ocean redox to benefit Australia by understanding the conditions that led to the proliferation of complex cells and critical metal deposits.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3703 - Geochemistry. Lead: Prof Alan Collins

Teen-informed strategies to counter sexual image abuse and sextortion. Coming of age has never been so fraught. Many teens use sexts to consensually explore emerging sexual citizenship. Yet this is prohibited, and teens-who-sext may experience gender-linked sexual shaming and victimisation, including by adults. This cultural studies project gathers teens' perspectives upon and remedies for peer-perpetrated and peer-magnified image-based sexual harassment and abuse. Reports of sextortion, sexualised deepfakes and blackmail of teens by adult predators are rising, even as teens worry that reporting such abuse might see them, as victim, accused of creating child exploitation material. Project outcomes align with a Rights of the Child approach and will mitigate risk, reducing harm while supporting vulnerable peers.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4702 - Cultural Studies. Lead: Prof Lelia Green

Making weak power grids work: Models, controls, and interactions. This project aims to improve the understanding and optimise the operation of weak power grids with significant distributed energy resources (DER). Utilizing a mix of detailed and model-free approaches, and extensive data from DER testing, the project will reframe DER representation to better address destabilizing dynamics in active distribution networks and improve overall control and coordination across a rapidly changing power system. Outcomes of the project also include a blueprint for optimizing observability and controllability in weak grids and robust power electronics control contributing to grid stability, greater DER integration while aligning with energy transition targets and enhancing energy security and efficiency.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4008 - Electrical Engineering. Lead: A/Prof Georgios Konstantinou

Advanced catalytic reduction to breakdown fluorinated pollutants. This project aims to address the accumulation of man-made chemical pollutants in our environment by optimising colloidal particles that use light energy to breakdown these persistent fluorinated chemicals. By taking advantage of 2 concurrent degradation pathways and studying toxicity of the degradation products, this project will generate new knowledge in the field of both physical chemistry and toxicology. The anticipated outcomes of this project include the development of a patentable new technology that will transform environmental remediation methods. The outcomes are expected to provide significant benefits to human health, wildlife and the environment through preventing adverse impacts of pollutant exposure.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3406 - Physical Chemistry. Lead: Dr Cameron Shearer

Human-Machine Teaming in a Communications-denied Environment. This project will develop new learning and long-term memory capabilities for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to advance human-machine teaming in challenging and communications-denied environments. It will develop new approaches for AI systems to predict future human behaviour, to improve abilities to rapidly respond to changes in the environment, and to enable stronger decision-making with incomplete and uncertain data. New methods will be developed for complex and adversarial environments to support a range of industry sectors including collaborative and service robotics, manufacturing, and transport. Outcomes will increase Australia’s competitive advantage in AI, augmenting human abilities, and will support sovereign defence capabilities.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4603 - Computer Vision and Multimedia Computation. Lead: Prof Clinton Fookes

Next Generation Synthesis. This project aims to unite state-of-the-art domino reaction strategies with sustainably resourced organic feedstocks to improve efficiency and sustainability in organic chemical synthesis. Organic compounds are ubiquitous: we use them as medicines, agrochemicals and countless other materials. The problem is that their manufacture is costly, labour-intensive, time-consuming and generally unsustainable. Efficiency gains in chemical synthesis will lead to less waste, thereby reducing negative environmental impact. Other benefits include enhanced capacity in the next generation of chemical synthesis, which will advance fundamental science and train the next generation of Australian scientists in world leading, next generation approaches.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3405 - Organic Chemistry. Lead: Prof Michael Sherburn

Understanding social-ecological feedbacks in protected area resilience. The project aims to describe, quantify and understand feedbacks between societies and ecosystems, both in and adjacent to protected areas. Using the Coupled Infrastructure Systems Framework to describe and quantify system structure, it will collect empirical data from 40 protected areas and progress from statistical analysis to empirical simulation models of feedbacks. Models of feedbacks will be used to clarify influences on protected area resilience. The project will improve understanding of how to efficiently monitor social-ecological dynamics and enhance protected area resilience to climate change and other shocks. Insights resulting from the analysis will support protected area governance and management in Australia and South Africa.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4104 - Environmental Management. Lead: Prof Graeme Cumming

Uncovering Mesostructures in Additively Manufactured Aluminum Alloys. Metal additive manufacturing of aluminium alloys has shown a great promise for various applications in many key industries including aerospace, transportation, defence, etc. However, a huge knowledge gap exists in understanding and controlling the widely observed large variation in mechanical properties in the additively manufactured aluminium alloys. Therefore, this project aims to introduce machine learning and in-situ monitoring to develop a new approach to investigate the process-bonding structure-property relationships in additively manufactured aluminium alloys. The outcomes of this project will fill the critical knowledge gap and open new opportunities for wider applications of additive manufacturing of aluminium alloys.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4016 - Materials Engineering. Lead: A/Prof Xiaopeng Li

Evolutionary Framework for Electric Vehicles and Drones Logistics Systems. This project aims to develop an adaptive evolutionary approach for solving electric vehicle and drone-supported, last-mile logistics and distribution planning problems. The project addresses the escalating challenges in current logistics systems by focusing on enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, and minimizing the environmental impact of logistics systems. This novel approach will challenge existing methodologies, offering enhanced decision-making approaches, significant economic and environmental benefits, a robust decision-making tool and strong research training, with a vision for long-term impact on logistics efficiency. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4602 - Artificial Intelligence. Lead: Prof Ruhul Sarker

Transformed landscapes: 3000 years of adaptation and resilience in Vanuatu. This project aims to explore the history of dramatic human modification of a Pacific Island landscape over the past 3000 years and draws out the implications of these transformations for future generations in a changing global climate. Since initial settlement, the island of Efate in Vanuatu has been spectacularly altered by a series of socio-agrosystems, recently revealed by LiDAR aerial imagery. This transdisciplinary project will combine field and archival research by archaeologists, historians and linguists to map social and agricultural development across Efate, generating a deep-time perspective that will inform responses to contemporary challenges around population growth and food security in the Pacific.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4513 - Pacific Peoples Culture, Language and History. Lead: A/Prof Stuart Bedford

An integrated framework to understand emotional learning. Positive and negative emotional responses enrich or harm the quality of our everyday lives. Although the acquisition of emotional responses is well understood, less is known about how they can be modified – amplified or reduced. The proposed research will address this gap, building on our team’s research on both human fear and evaluative conditioning and cutting-edge findings in these areas. The project is innovative in its focus on (a) positive and negative emotional learning; and (b) the processes underlying this learning. The project will provide the foundational knowledge required for the development of an integrated framework of emotional learning and the design of psychological interventions to reduce fear and interpersonal biases.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5202 - Biological Psychology. Lead: Prof Ottmar Lipp

Using a Light-induced Field-Gradient to Promote Homogeneous Catalysis. Synthesizing fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals often relies on homogeneous transition metal-complex catalysts for their selectivity and efficiency. However, they are difficult to separate and reuse. This project offers a solution to not only overcome limitations of traditional catalysts but that can enhance metal-complex catalyst performance by leveraging the optical properties of plasmonic metal nanoparticles. Our approach will advance understanding of light-matter interactions and explore parameters of a versatile photocatalyst design to achieve high-turnover chemical synthesis with minimal catalyst waste. It will provide invaluable training opportunities for graduate students, contributing significantly to our knowledge-based economy.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3406 - Physical Chemistry. Lead: Prof Dr Huai-Yong Zhu

Innovation in durable goods: expansion of electric cars in Australia. Highly desirable transition to environmentally friendly technologies such as electric automobiles requires well-designed governmental support. Short-sighted policies may lead to unintended consequences and do more harm than good. The importance of a secondary market for durable goods makes the policy design a complex dynamic problem. This project will produce mathematical and computational tools to explore potential regulation standards and stimulus programs in a simulated environment to find an optimal approach for expanding electric cars in Australia. Built on the team's groundbreaking research in modelling equilibria in markets for automobiles, this project will enable the search for optimal policy that will benefit Australian society.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3801 - Applied Economics. Lead: Prof Fedor Iskhakov

UNDERSTANDING TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MEDIA USES AND PURPOSES. How we use media technologies and content today are radically changed from when core theories about the role of media in society were established and media content was widely shared at a national level. This project will investigate why Australians choose to use the media available and how they select their media diet to assess the implications of the changed cultural roles media play in our lives and the consequences of a fractured media environment. The program of research will use multiple methods to explore how Australians engage an unprecedented range of content and sources. The project will generate the knowledge needed to address pressing sociocultural issues of our time such as social cohesion, misinformation, and belonging. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4701 - Communication and Media Studies. Lead: Prof Amanda Lotz

Impact of Delayed Sleep Phase on Fear Extinction Circuitry in Adolescence. Sleep onset is progressively delayed from puberty and this sleep phase delay peaks in late adolescence, a developmental stage characterised by marked disturbances in sleep and the emergence of mental health problems. Light exposure is critical for synchronising sleep and the internal ‘body clock’, but developmental changes and night-time light exposure in late adolescence delay sleep timing, leading to impaired sleep and emotion regulation. Despite these associations, the human brain circuitry underlying sleep phase delay, light responses, and fear processes is relatively unknown. This advanced imaging project will provide the first insights into the impact of sleep and circadian (‘body clock’) factors on fear processes in late adolescence.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5202 - Biological Psychology. Lead: Prof Kim Felmingham

Decolonising the History of Childhood(s), 1946-2023. This project aims to partially resolve the problem of Eurocentric bias in histories of childhood by proposing a new construction of childhood through a history of Philippine childhoods. It will allow concepts of childhood from Southeast Asia to be recognised alongside the Western norm, and demonstrate how children from non-European contexts can be empowered by criticizing indigenous constructions. Using archival sources, interviews, and ethnography, it will contribute to understanding the diversity of childhoods in Australia’s multicultural society where multiple views of childhood exist, compelling international scholarship to move beyond the Euro-Atlantic context that has dominated the field, and hindered it from becoming truly global. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4303 - Historical Studies. Lead: Prof Mina Roces

Revolutionising Non-destructive Inspection with Nonlinear Laser Ultrasonics. This project aims to develop a new inspection technology for structures with hard-to-inspect conditions using fully non-contact nonlinear laser ultrasonics. This will overcome the limitations of existing non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques. The project will create a new concept and generate new knowledge on NDE and SHM. The expected outcomes are significant improvements in the capability and applicability of NDE and SHM to cutting-edge technologies, such as real-time monitoring of constructing objects in additive manufacturing, and structures with extreme conditions in the Space, Energy, Oli and Gas industry. This provides significant cost savings in the integrity inspection of structures.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4005 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Prof Ching Tai Ng

Investigating the enigmatic slowly repeating radio transients. The Australian sky has revealed a new celestial mystery: slowly-repeating Galactic radio transients. Our cutting-edge data processing and search algorithms, optimised for the vast fields-of-view and sensitivity of new radio telescopes, are unearthing a new population of these enigmatic objects. We propose to unravel their true nature by swiftly following up new detections with multiwavelength observations, and modelling the sources' evolutionary paths and magnetic field configurations. The expected outcome of this project will rewrite our understanding of the evolution of magnetic compact stellar remnants such as white dwarfs and neutron stars. Success would establish Australia as a leader in this new field of radio astronomy.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences. Lead: A/Prof Natasha Hurley-Walker

Harnessing Eco-Emotions for Social Action on Climate Change. The effects of climate change are escalating and the emotional impact is costing Australia in money and lives. This project aims to understand ‘eco-emotions’ about climate change and harness their power to promote much-needed action. Combining cutting-edge experimental and experience sampling methodology, the project expects to create new knowledge on functional and flexible regulation of eco-emotions in everyday life. Expected outcomes include new theory of emotional complexity in the context of climate change and new methods of studying collection action in situ. Potential benefits include enhanced national capacity in emotion science, increased climate action, and greater well-being among Australians coping with the climate crisis.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5205 - Social and Personality Psychology. Lead: Dr Katharine Greenaway

Unlocking the proteomics of synaptic glycine receptor complexes. This project aims to investigate glycine receptors (GlyRs) that are vital for spinal motor output, pain processing and cortical neuronal migration. This project expects to generate new interdisciplinary knowledge by: i) Using GlyR subtype-specific antibodies and knockout mice in high-fidelity proteomics; ii) Examining the location and functional impacts of GlyR interactors using super-resolution microscopy, shRNA knockdown and artificial synapses. Expected outcomes include the first comprehensive proteomic analysis of synaptic GlyR complexes. This project will also provide significant benefits by characterising a new class of GlyR auxiliary subunits and linking Australian researchers to the international Synaptic Gene Ontologies initiative.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3101 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Lead: Prof Robert Harvey