Grants & Opportunities

Redefining tissue-specific endothelial cells through bioengineered matrices. This project aims to improve our understanding of the biological mechanisms that drive blood vessel formation and function. The endothelial cells that make up each blood vessel are inherently unique across different sites within the human body and this project expects to generate new knowledge regarding their organ specificity. Using advanced bioengineering approaches, this project will map human endothelial cell specificity and develop state-of-the-art modelling technologies to improve knowledge of environmental influence on endothelial cell fate and function. This should provide a new framework to modulate the adaptive capacities of endothelial cells and can potentially enable more predictive and targeted drug efficacy and safety testing.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0903 - Biomedical Engineering. Lead: Prof Laura Bray

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

Illuminating the dark neutrophil glycoproteome. This project aims to shed light on the highly complex and dynamic sugar-coated surfaces of neutrophil white blood cells critical for the cell communication and function of our innate immune system. The project expects to generate molecular-level insights into neutrophil biology by detailing the structure, formation, regulation, interactions and functions of these cell-surface sugars across the varied neutrophil life stages using systems glycobiology approaches. The project will map the extensive sugar remodelling on and in the neutrophil and reveal new sugar-mediated mechanisms governing key immune processes. This project will benefit the community by expanding our knowledge of fundamental processes underpinning our innate immune system.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0601 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Lead: Prof Morten Andersen

Regulating and countering structural inequality on digital platforms. This project aims to find legal, ethical, technical, and commercial opportunities to counter inequality online. It uses machine learning and custom data collection tools to create new knowledge about how digital platforms—including search engines, social media, peer economy, and news platforms—can help to tackle misogyny, racism, and other forms of structural discrimination. It uses this knowledge to investigate the extent to which private sector digital platforms can be expected to monitor and regulate the actions of their users, what responsibilities they have to avoid contributing to discrimination, hatred, intolerance and abuse, and how the law should develop to ensure that our digital environment is more equal and fair. . Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 1801 - Law. Lead: Prof Nicolas Suzor

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

Counting a Sixth Mass Extinction. This project aims to investigate how values shape conservation science and policy by utilizing a feminist philosophy of science approach. This project expects to generate new biodiversity assessments by adjusting the cultural lenses through which species are counted and conservation status is assigned. Expected outcomes of this project include the creation of an interactive global biodiversity map, in which data changes when values change, which will reveal biodiversity trends, species, conservation risks and opportunities that currently remain outside conservation attention. This should provide significant benefits to biodiversity, by opening space for diverse values to broaden the scope of conservation science, ethics, and policy.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 2203 - Philosophy. Lead: Dr Arian Wallach

Diving into deep-time: macroevolutionary patterns of aquatic tetrapods. This project aims to compare and contrast the broad-scale evolutionary patterns of the disparate lineages of aquatic tetrapod (e.g. whales, penguins, plesiosaurs). This project expects to generate new knowledge by utilising cutting-edge methods from several fields, e.g. three-dimensional scans, phylogenetic comparative methods and functional morphology. Expected outcomes include multiple high-quality publications and the development of new local and international collaborations. This will provide significant benefits, including revealing aquatic tetrapod evolution on an unprecedented scale and a better understanding of how some of Australia’s most iconic animals respond to global change, helping inform eco-tourism and conservation policies.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 0603 - Evolutionary Biology. Lead: Dr Travis Park

Donkey Politics: How China’s Belt & Road shapes everyday life in Pakistan. This project will develop a socio-cultural understanding of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), through an ethnographic examination of the donkey trade with China. The research will produce fine-grained data on the impacts of the massive export of donkeys on the work, livelihoods, and health-seeking behaviour of marginalised populations in Pakistan. Expected outcomes include enhanced understanding of Chinese mega projects on host countries. It will benefit Australian and international policymakers seeking to develop a grounded understanding of BRI and its broader implications for the Indo-Pacific region, including the risk of zoonotic diseases associated with animal trade.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 1601 - Anthropology. Lead: A/Prof Muhammad Kavesh

Inside Others: Early Christian Protagonists and their Impairments. This project aims to uncover how disability functions in the portraits of key early Christian figures and their receptions over time. Its innovative approach combines disability studies, emotions studies, literary criticism, social history, and reception studies. It expects to generate new knowledge by intervening in disability readings of late antique literature, introducing a new category of impaired protagonists and constructing the first reception history of disability in early Christianity. It intends to enhance Australia’s capacity in interdisciplinary studies of antiquity and contribute to critical reflection on the nature of impairment in light of urgent questions arising from the Disability Royal Commission and Covid-19 measures.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 2204 - Religion and Religious Studies. Lead: A/Prof Kylie Crabbe

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from Australian farm dams. There is an untapped potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from millions of Australian farm dams. This project aims to quantify the nation-wide carbon footprint of farm dams and develop low-cost strategies for “greener” practices. Contributing to Australia’s commitment to tackle climate change, this project aspires to empower farmers to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of their farm dams. It will also inform on the economic viability of alternative management strategies for mitigating farm dam emissions and provide recommendations for financial incentives. This project should enhance the capacity of Australia to meet its carbon reduction targets and mitigate anthropogenic climate change.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 0502 - Environmental Science and Management. Lead: Dr Martino Edoardo Malerba

Efficient privacy-preserving proofs for secure e-government and e-voting. Electronic systems are becoming increasingly widespread and crucial to social and economic wellbeing. This project aims to ensure that e-government, e-health, e-commerce and e-voting are secure and trustworthy by inventing new ways to verify these systems without infringing privacy. This project expects to use innovative techniques from cryptography to support development of trustworthy systems. Expected outcomes of this project include better support for organisations to build trustworthy systems that will maximise benefit to Australian business and society. This should provide significant commercial, reputational, and societal benefits by avoiding disruptions to the organisations and their clients if and when they are attacked. . Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 0803 - Computer Software. Lead: Dr Thomas Haines

Life without Birth: The Ethics, Politics, and Law of Artificial Wombs. This project aims to assess the morality of ectogenesis, the process of gestating a foetus in an artificial womb. Recent technological advances in non-human ectogenesis raise the question of whether it is desirable to pursue research in human ectogenesis. This project expects to generate new knowledge in social philosophy by inquiring into the value of natural gestation, the foundations of parenthood, and the interests of foetuses during gestation. Expected outcomes of this project include an improved understanding of the costs, risks, and benefits of ectogenesis. This should provide significant benefits, such as resources for ethical decision-making in light of technologies aimed at radically reshaping the process of human creation. . Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 2203 - Philosophy. Lead: A/Prof Luara Ferracioli

No place like home? A phenomenology of racialised non-belonging. Racism is a persistent problem in Australian society, yet its existential effects remain inadequately understood. This project aims to develop a new understanding of racism’s deep impact on one’s sense of self, and sense of place. The project seeks to use the emerging framework of critical phenomenology to illuminate different experiences of racialised non-belonging. Expected outcomes include an improved understanding of the ontological significance of feeling not at home in one’s environs, or in one’s own body. This expanded understanding will provide significant benefits by helping to motivate and guide more robust models of anti-racism in public life, leading to a more racially just society.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 2203 - Philosophy. Lead: Dr Helen Ngo

Re-imagining Humanities through Indigenous Creative Arts. This project will develop an Indigenous Creative Arts Framework to reimagine and transform the Humanities across Australian Universities. It will engage Indigenous creative arts academics, scholars, curators, practitioners and communities to conceptualise new innovations in teaching, research, community engagement and ethics. This project will centre critical Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing; contribute new Indigenous research methodologies and restorative practices; and reframe knowledge through creative arts praxis. Such innovative and dynamic advances in research will recognise and grow Indigenous capacity building across the Humanities, as vital to cultural wellbeing for all Australians. . Scheme: Discovery Indigenous. Field: 2002 - Cultural Studies. Lead: A/Prof Ali Baker

Making Australia resilient to airborne infection transmission. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that basic questions regarding how to minimise the risk of airborne infection transmission for any respiratory viruses remain unanswered, despite their frequency and huge social and economic costs. Therefore, this project aims to expand scientific knowledge and develop practical tools to improve the resilience of Australian indoor environments against airborne transmission of respiratory viruses. The outcomes of the project conducted by a multidisciplinary international team of collaborators will include: (i) quantitative knowledge on virus-laden aerosols from human expiration; and (ii) exposure and infection risk models and their application to typical indoor building and transport scenarios.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1117 - Public Health and Health Services. Lead: Prof Lidia Morawska

Engineering safer pastures for livestock. This project aims to develop subterranean clover with elevated condensed tannins in leaves. This important pasture legume is currently a bloat risk for cattle and sheep due to low condensed tannins and high soluble proteins. Bloat is a health issue that costs the Australian and New Zealand livestock industries over $200 million per annum. Condensed tannins can reduce bloat, decrease methane production and improve efficiency of production. A novel approach using CRISPR and other innovative molecular techniques will generate breeding lines high in condensed tannins and deliver knowledge applicable to other pasture legumes. Expected outcomes for livestock producers include improved animal welfare, reduced carbon emissions and enhanced profits.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1001 - Agricultural Biotechnology. Lead: Prof Jacqueline Batley

Sustaining intensive agriculture through droughts and floods. This project aims to develop state-of-the-art conceptual and numerical models of river-soil-groundwater interactions to address complex and persistent questions on water sustainability in the Lower Burdekin Delta, Queensland, where groundwater pumping to irrigate sugarcane has been supplemented by artificial recharge for over 50 years. This project expects to deliver new knowledge of critical aquifer processes to inform the scheme operation, the largest in the country. Expected outcomes include ground-breaking management plans for the aquifer-replenishment scheme. Anticipated benefits involve balancing the needs of agriculture and the protection of pristine environments, including groundwater discharge to the Great Barrier Reef. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0406 - Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience. Lead: Prof Adrian Werner

Constructing a rich curriculum for all: ‘Insights into practice’ . Not all students in Australia have access to the same high quality curriculum. The curriculum is often differentiated in ways designed to make outcomes achievable for marginalised young people. While this is often well meant, it has worked against the interests of these young people by denying them from a young age the same levels of access to curriculum options as their peers. This narrows the range of their future opportunities. This project aims to provide the foundations for strategies that can be implemented by teachers, schools and systems to address this problem. This projects works closely with teachers to determine a framework that can encourage pedagogical approaches that make a rich curriculum accessible to all. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 1302 - Curriculum and Pedagogy. Lead: Prof Martin Mills

Wearable thermoelectric textiles for portable microelectronics. Wearable thermoelectrics enable the power generation from the temperature difference between human body and ambient temperature by using thermoelectric effect. This project aims to design eco-friendly wearable thermoelectric textiles to realize high-efficiency solid-state power generation and meet individual needs with human comfort and health. The target is to achieve a power density in the as-designed thermoelectric textiles by the optimization of materials and device design. The outcome will open up a new platform for the green and sustainable charge for portable microelectronics, which will lead to an innovative technology for energy management, which will place Australia at the forefront of wearable electronics and textile industry.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0912 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Prof Zhi-Gang Chen

Understanding the neural dynamics of integrated perceptual decisions. This project aims to characterise the brain processes involved in perceptual decision-making. While scientists have a good understanding of how people make decisions about the properties of individual sensory inputs, much less is known about how the brain integrates information across multiple sensory sources that differ in their salience and fidelity. The project expects to elucidate the neural mechanisms responsible for these integrative perceptual decisions, using a combination of brain imaging and behavioural measures, computational modelling and real-time neurofeedback. This should provide significant benefits for developing more effective approaches to training individuals in professions that rely on optimal decision-making skills.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 1701 - Psychology. Lead: Prof Jason Mattingley

Passive biofiltration processes for nitrogen removal from polluted waters. Traditional urban wastewater treatment is energy and resource demanding. By combining principles of Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) with advanced pollutant removal processes, we will create necessary knowledge to underpin development of novel sustainable urban water treatment systems. This project aims to understand and utilise Simultaneous Nitrification, Anammox and Denitrification (SNAD) processes within passive plant-soil-based biofilters for cost-effective removal of nitrogen from a range of polluted urban water sources. The project will open a potential for a new technological advancements in urban water management, while simultaneously providing benefits to the environment and community through greening and waterway protection.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0905 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Prof Ana Deletic

Metal Halide Perovskite Spin-Orbit Torque Devices. This project aims to demonstrate a new, highly efficient spin-based electronic device by developing a fundamental understanding into the generation and transport of spin in metal halide perovskite based heterostructures. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this project expects to exploit the beneficial spin properties, low cost and scalable production methods of metal halide perovskites. It is expected that this project will deliver new functionality to these emerging materials to enable their application in highly efficient spintronic devices. These outcomes should provide significant benefits to the Australian advanced manufacturing sector by developing new knowledge, advanced technology and training skilled professionals.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0204 - Condensed Matter Physics. Lead: Prof Jacek Jasieniak

Anomalous Structural Response in Porous Framework Materials. This project targets a key missing link in understanding the host-guest properties of porous framework materials, namely, the dynamic response of host lattices to their external environment and to the inclusion of molecular guests. By combining advanced chemical, physical and structural measurements the project expects to provide the first concerted picture of materials behaviour across an array of scientific and technological settings, with particular focus given to industrially relevant ‘real world’ conditions. This promises to greatly inform the on-going chemical design, formulation and process engineering of these materials, in turn accelerating their development in gas separation, energy storage and device componentry applications.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0306 - Physical Chemistry (Incl. Structural). Lead: Prof Stephen Moggach

A Concurrent Multiscale Model for Improved Prediction of Drying Process. This project aims to develop an innovative multiscale model for food drying, which integrates spatial and temporal nonlinear behaviours at different scales. The proposed unifying theory will capture dynamic micro level features and upscale them to macro level features through a concurrent bridging scheme. As cellular elements critically govern the drying process, the fundamental understanding captured through this theory will lead to more accurate prediction of drying kinetics, deformation and quality changes, and hence the development of efficient drying systems. This project will overcome a longstanding research problem and position Australia at the forefront in world drying research to reap substantial economic benefits for Australia.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0908 - Food Sciences. Lead: Prof Azharul Karim

Tackling the computational bottleneck in precision particle physics. This project aims to deliver a breakthrough technique in theoretical-computational particle physics, with significant potential for high-precision applications. The project targets some of the most advanced and resource-intensive calculations in particle physics, which are widely used but currently limited by extremely high computational resource requirements. This project expects to develop a novel approach that will vastly reduce the computational complexity while at the same time improving their accuracy relative to the current global state of the art. Expected outcomes include the new methodology itself as well as a full-fledged and open-access simulation code based on it, which should be highly efficient.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0202 - Atomic, Molecular, Nuclear, Particle and Plasma Physics. Lead: Prof Peter Skands