Grants & Opportunities

Fire-Resistant Carbon Fibre Reinforced Structural Batteries. This project aims to develop flame-retardant electrolytes for carbon-fibre-based structural batteries that can bear loads and store electricity while meeting stringent fire safety standards. By creating 3D co-continuous ionic conductive microstructures in fire-resistant polymers, it addresses the critical flammability issue of existing epoxy-based electrolytes and enhances ionic and mechanical properties. This project will also advance decoupled structural batteries by integrating all-solid-state batteries with laminated composites. Expected outcomes include new insights into the multifunctionality of and innovative designs of structural batteries enabling lightweight drones, mobile robots, electric vehicles and aircraft for longer ranges.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4016 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Prof Chun Wang

Generation-Z engagement with political parties. Young people’s engagement with political parties is declining, creating risks of them also becoming less democratically engaged. This project will create knowledge about youth political attitudes by examining how Gen-Z in Australia, Belgium, India, and Italy view and interact with parties. To do so, it proposes a typology of ‘party engagement’ and uses surveys, focus groups, and interviews with Gen-Z and party officials. In addition to enhancing understanding of young people and party politics, the project will provide the Australian government, political parties, and the Electoral Commission with recommendations to better involve young people in the political process.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4408 - Political Science. Lead: Prof Duncan McDonnell

Exploring Rural Women's Needs for Creative Spaces Through Co-design. Rural women make up a third of the nation’s female population but have more limited access to support services than urban counterparts. To help overcome this they crave women-only spaces for creative and social connection to combat social isolation. Through a series of co-design workshops and interviews with rural women the project will develop models for culturally diverse creative spaces that are unique to living in rural Australia. Based on robust evidence and successfully piloted approaches, expected outcomes from the project will directly address National Research Priorities providing models for rural women’s creative spaces. Benefits from the project include reduced social isolation and stronger individual and community wellbeing.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4405 - Gender Studies. Lead: Prof Lia Bryant

Mangroves reveal history of Australia's forested shorelines. This project aims to reveal the history of shoreline change and resilience of mangrove forests preserved in mangrove forest structure and substrates. In doing so, it seeks to reconcile the carbon benefits sea-level rise can provide with the risks sea-level rise poses to mangrove shorelines. A framework for integration of Earth observations with field and laboratory-based analyses will be proposed, and will complement a modelling approach that can be modified to generate both exploratory and real-world simulations based on future scenarios. This research seeks to centre Indigenous knowledges, provide confidence in forested shoreline resilience, and support investment in restoration, conservation, and blue carbon and nature repair markets.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3709 - Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience. Lead: Prof Kerrylee Rogers

Navigating Deformable Spaces – How to Localise in a Shifting World. This project proposes novel methods that will enable robotic systems to navigate safely and precisely within deformable environments, where current technologies fall short due to assumptions of static world models. These limitations often lead to unintended collisions, poor navigation behaviours, and increased uncertainty in robotic actions. By advancing the ability to model and interact with a deformable world through machine learning, vision-based foundation models, and rule-based explanations, this project will open new avenues for deploying robotic systems in unconventional scenarios, from environmental disaster recovery to advanced healthcare applications such as robotic-assisted arthroscopy.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4603 - Computer Vision and Multimedia Computation. Lead: Prof Will Browne

Causes of deglacial atmospheric CO2 changes: A novel bottom-up approach. This project aims to resolve longstanding puzzles surrounding causes for past atmospheric CO2 variations through a novel bottom-up approach which constrains polar surface ocean conditions using deep-sea carbon cycle tracer reconstructions. Based on extensive new proxy data alongside models, our bottom-up approach will provide new insights into how the ocean operated to modulate atmospheric CO2 under diverse climate conditions during a critical but inadequately understood time interval known as the last deglaciation. This project is expected to markedly enhance mechanistic understanding of the global carbon cycle, with the benefit to improve our future climate predictability in face of rising atmospheric CO2.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3709 - Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience. Lead: Prof Jimin Yu

Multiscale design approach to photocatalytic selective methane oxidation. The project aims to enhance photocatalytic systems for converting methane to methanol, focusing on the discovery of highly-efficient photocatalysts that can facilitate this process. This involves a multiscale design approach, spanning atomic-level catalyst engineering to large-scale reactor development. The goal is to improve the efficiency, selectivity, and stability of selective methane conversion to methanol, addressing key challenges in reducing methane emissions. Fundamental insights into the mechanisms driven by radicals are sought, paving the way for targeted catalyst and reactor designs. This initiative represents a significant step in applying solar-driven catalysis to support the decarbonisation of the energy and chemical sectors.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4016 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Prof Rose Amal

Improving the representation of C4 photosynthesis in vegetation models. The world’s most efficient way of converting CO2 and light into food for humans (e.g. corn, sugar) and livestock (e.g. grasslands) is a process known as C4 photosynthesis. This project aims to better understand how C4 photosynthesis works and improve predictions of C4 plant performance across Australia. This project aims to use a new interdisciplinary approach to: 1) provide novel insights into the mechanisms that underlie C4 photosynthesis; and 2) ensure these mechanisms are captured in the models we use to predict plant productivity. Expected outcomes include more accurate estimates of C4 plant productivity and CO2 uptake, which should provide significant benefits for decisions around climate change policy, land use and food security. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3108 - Plant Biology. Lead: Prof Danielle Way

Localizing sources of failures in metamorphic testing and allied methods. This project aims to build a theoretical foundation to develop novel approaches that improve the efficacy of metamorphic testing, a popular software testing technique, and its related software quality assurance methods. This project expects to generate new knowledge by resolving the fundamental problem of identifying the actual failure-revealing test cases in metamorphic testing. Expected outcomes of this project include new theories for software testing and a family of innovative technologies for software debugging and fault tolerance. This should provide significant commercial and social benefits, such as new commercialised tools that can be used in industry, and improved software quality ensuring a safer and more secure society.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4612 - Software Engineering. Lead: Prof Tsong Chen

Unravelling community assembly rules to understand biodiversity maintenance. Biodiversity is vital to humanity, yet there remains the long-standing problem of what drives and maintains it in ecological communities. Leveraging the team’s recent breakthroughs, this project aims to address this problem by unravelling the assembly rules governing ecological communities using interdisciplinary approaches: field experiments, ecological modelling, and machine learning. This project is expected to generate crucial new mechanistic insights into biodiversity maintenance. Expected outcomes include advancing biodiversity theory and strategies to protect Australia's vulnerable coastal ecosystems. Significant benefits include predictive models linking local biodiversity to regional processes and practical conservation solutions.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3103 - Ecology. Lead: Dr Lynette Loke

Understanding the contributions of neural noise to biases in risky choices. Choices that maximise value under risk are crucial for many sectors, from asset management to border protection. Undetected biases in people’s choices can have catastrophic consequences but are poorly understood. This project aims to link biases in risky choices to the neural noise inherent in human cognition using a novel behavioural measure combined with brain imaging and non-invasive neuromodulation. The project expects to advance knowledge about how the brain regulates risky choices. The expected outcomes of this project will inform training to improve noise-monitoring abilities. This should provide significant benefits to decision making in diverse fields from finance to defence, and boost Australia’s resilience to disruptive events.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5202 - Biological Psychology. Lead: Dr Dragan Rangelov

Sex, Synthesis and Structure: Investigating Diatom Reproduction Pheromones. This project aims to explore the reproductive pheromones of diatoms through chemical synthesis, shedding light on the ecological and biological mechanisms driving their reproduction. Diatoms, a type of aquatic algae, play a pivotal role in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), capturing as much CO2 as the world’s rainforests. Despite their importance, the diatom reproductive life cycle is poorly understood. This research aims to reveal how pheromones influence diatom reproduction, uncovering key mechanisms that could lead to innovative ways to manage their breeding and population growth. These findings could pave the way for new biotechnological solutions, such as enhancing CO2 sequestration and improving aquaculture systems.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3404 - Medicinal and Biomolecular Chemistry. Lead: Prof Lara Malins

Extreme Heat in Cities: Co-Developing Just Adaptation for Urban Tourism. This project tackles the critical need for heat adaptation in cities. As intensifying heatwaves increasingly threaten lives and economic productivity, this study develops a novel measure to assess future tourism-related heat hazards, examines the added strain on city response systems by tourism, and establishes new insights into differentiated vulnerabilities amongst tourists and workers. By integrating a global analysis with three city case studies, this research co-develops innovative responses to reduce heat risk within urban systems. A new set of adaptation principles will help prioritize low-carbon, just responses, implemented through collaborative governance systems across different scales and sectors. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3508 - Tourism. Lead: Prof Susanne Becken

Molecular Dance: Choreographing Stimuli-Responsive Materials with Pressure. This project aims to develop flexible, responsive, and energy-efficient electronics using molecular materials. The project will use pressure to fine-tune interactions between molecules and create new design paradigms for molecular electronics. The expected outcomes include a deeper understanding of how pressure modulates both intra- and intermolecular interactions, and how these modifications translate to bulk properties. This research has the potential to transform how we interact with technology and lead to the development of new technologies in areas such as sensors, electronics, and energy harvesting.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3402 - Inorganic Chemistry. Lead: Prof Stephen Moggach

Foreign conflicts, domestic divides: Advancing a deliberative response . The project will extend the application of deliberative democracy to address de-territorialized conflicts in multicultural societies. It will examine public sphere responses in Australia to two major foreign conflicts—the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars—aiming to test and enhance the deliberative approach. Adapting a mixed-method strategy, the project will analyse communications on foreign conflicts across multiple sites, including digital platforms, and explore the roles of actors from political leaders and journalists to everyday citizens in fostering or hindering deliberation across difference. Expected outcomes include the refinement of deliberative thinking and practices to strengthen democratic resilience in Australia. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4408 - Political Science. Lead: Prof Selen Ercan

City-level structural health monitoring of bridges with drive-by sensing. This project aims to address the challenge of managing ageing bridges in a city-level network by using drive-by sensing. By integrating advanced signal processing and physics-informed optimization techniques, the project will enhance the capability of identifying bridge modal parameters from drive-by measurements. The project will advance knowledge in effectively monitoring a large number of ageing bridges. The expected outcomes include the development and application of a cost-effective city-level bridge health monitoring framework, enabling scalable and efficient condition assessment. The benefits include improving structural safety, reducing maintenance costs, and supporting Australia's priority on building a secure and resilient nation.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4005 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Prof Jun Li

How personal networks build capacity to respond to compound natural hazards. This project will determine the personal network structures underlying responses to compound natural hazard risks, investigate the social mechanisms they facilitate, and translate findings into practical applications for enhancing community capacity. Addressing the knowledge gap is critical for improving disaster preparedness. The project will provide a nuanced understanding of how attributes of personal networks support individuals in building response capacity to compound hazard risks. By identifying effective network structures for responding to compound hazard risks, the project will equip governments and practitioners with tools need to enhance capacity building initiatives, ultimately saving money and building a more resilient nation.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3507 - Strategy, Management and Organisational Behaviour. Lead: Dr Angela Guerrero Gonzalez

Hunting for gamma ray bursts with an Australia-Italy satellite swarm. This project aims to study gamma ray bursts, explosions that make a dying star million times brighter than an entire galaxy, using an innovative constellation of Australia- Italy satellites equipped with miniaturised detectors. The project expects to generate new knowledge in time-domain and high-energy astrophysics, and to advance satellite remote sensing technology. Expected outcomes include a new understanding of the extreme physics at play during the production of rare elements such as gold, and the demonstration that nanosatellite swarms are cost effective compared to traditional large spacecraft. This will bring concrete benefits for Australia's space sector international reputation and its economic growth, and inspire the public.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences. Lead: Prof Michele Trenti

Hybrid Value-Added Electrolyser for Green Hydrogen and Methanol Production. The recent breakthroughs in electrocatalysis have opened an opportunity for value-added green hydrogen production by coupling it with the electrochemical transformation of methane into high-value chemicals. This project aims to establish the basic knowledge to realise selective electrocatalytic oxidation of methane to methanol through a novel integrated multidisciplinary approach. New bio-inspired single-atom catalysts will be developed and incorporated into a tailored membrane electrode assembly for the co-production of green hydrogen and methanol. The significant benefits will be revolutionary green hydrogen and methane conversion technologies that will help to alleviate the urgent climate challenges facing Australia and the world.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4004 - Chemical Engineering. Lead: Prof Chuan Zhao

Attention under threat: Maintaining attention in a noisy, cluttered world. This interdisciplinary project aims to understand how people sustain attention and what causes them to fail, focusing on the challenges of modern environments where rapidly changing information from multiple senses competes for our attention. Developing novel behavioural tasks and cutting-edge neural methods, this project will advance understanding of the interaction between attention and multisensory processing, discovering the factors that affect our ability to sustain attention in dynamic environments. The outcomes will contribute to the global endeavour to understand how the human brain processes incoming information, and provide an evidence-based foundation for designing environments which support, rather than impair, attention.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5204 - Cognitive and Computational Psychology. Lead: Prof Anina Rich

Trustworthy data-driven discovery from complex high-dimensional data. This project pioneers new statistical methods that prioritise stability, resistance, and interpretability for analysing high-dimensional data. By integrating Bayesian and Frequentist principles for statistical model building, new solutions will enhance data analysis reliability in neuroscience, meat science, and climate change. Expected outcomes include innovative statistical tools that provide consistent, interpretable insights, enabling confident decision-making and interdisciplinary collaboration in these fields. This research will empower scientists to derive trustworthy findings from complex data in Australian and global contexts, advancing research and application in health, food science, and climate studies.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4905 - Statistics. Lead: Prof Samuel Muller

Mechanistic analysis of perovskite degradation for stable photovoltaics. This project addresses the largest roadblock in perovskite research—stability—and aims to identify the most promising pathway(s) to enhance the stability. Powerful interpretable, quantitative materials analysis techniques will be developed via physics-based machine learning, leading to the discovery of degradation mechanisms and the extraction of dominant material parameters. With these insights, this project will deliver targeted strategies to enhance perovskite stability, accelerating the revolution of low-cost solar technology and decarbonising Australia's economy. The new material analysis technique is adaptable to other materials and experiments, providing a new paradigm to the research community for developing novel semiconductors.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4009 - Electronics, Sensors and Digital Hardware. Lead: Prof Kylie Catchpole

Saline Water Electrolysis via Catalyst Ion-Selective Interface Engineering. This project aims at low-cost and sustainable production of hydrogen from abundant saline water (e.g. raw seawater) on all types of commercially available electrolysers. By introducing an innovative ion-selective gate concept, fundamental science will be developed for addressing the knowledge gap between well-developed purified water electrolysis and emerging saline surface water electrolysis. Outcomes will include new knowledge of complex reaction mechanism(s), new electrode materials design, and relative device development for saline water electrolysis. This project will significantly benefit renewable energy use and large-scale green hydrogen production, together with reducing pressure on Australia's freshwater scarcity.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4018 - Nanotechnology. Lead: Prof Yao Zheng

Examining Place-Based Investment Models through Civic Wealth Creation Lens. Place-based investment models aim to attract or blend private sector and philanthropic capital, alongside government funding, to enable communities to transition to a more sustainable and inclusive economy. Significant knowledge gaps exist as to the organisational forms, institutional infrastructure, and governance models at a community level that can attract, absorb, distribute and ensure active community participation in place-based investment. Our project examines place-based investment models through the lens of Civic Wealth Creation (CWC) to systematically investigate how such investment is delivered and sustained in communities, and to what effect, to generate longer term civic wealth.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3507 - Strategy, Management and Organisational Behaviour. Lead: Prof Danielle Logue

Adaptive introgression and rapid evolution to climate change. This project aims to use a high-impact Australian system to study how introgression (the movement of genes between species) might increase the ability of biodiversity to keep pace with climate change. Through integrated fieldwork, lab experiments and cutting edge genome sequencing it expects to discover the genomic basis and the fitness consequences of introgression in two ideal Darwinian laboratories to study adaptation – an elevational gradient and a subtropical-temperate transition zone. The project will assess the value of introgression as a management tool, tackling a major unresolved issue in conservation biology, empowering natural resource managers, and positioning Australia at the forefront of conservation science.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3104 - Evolutionary Biology. Lead: Prof Luciano Beheregaray