Grants & Opportunities

Sustainable Residential Framing Systems using Recycled Plastics and Fibres. The project aims to develop pultruded recycled plastic composite (PRPC)-based residential framing systems that incorporate waste plastics and recycled plastic fibres. The PRPC materials will initially be developed. Structural members that employ PRPC will then be developed using pultrusion technology, followed by the development of residential framing systems. The expected outcomes include sustainable and durable PRPC, structural members and framing systems through experimental validation, numerical and analytical prediction models, design guidance and field investigation. The project promotes sustainable infrastructure by increasing Australia's plastic recycling capacity and easing the current disruption to the residential housing sector.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4005 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Prof Scott Smith

An advanced and sustainable precursor for biofuels and plastics from agave. This project aims to advance Australia’s positioning in the global transition to a net zero economy by leveraging potential from the high-biomass, climate-resistant plant, agave. Using the transformational 3 -methylanisole technology from VIA BioFuels, the project will develop yeasts that are effective and efficient in converting plant juice into sustainable biofuels and green materials. Expected outcomes include optimised and validated technologies and capacity for a valuable Australian-grown agave-for-biomaterials industry. The project should provide significant benefits, such as improved use and productivity of otherwise non-arable land, and renewable feedstocks to suit a range of applications for Australia’s carbon-neutral future. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3106 - Industrial Biotechnology. Lead: Prof Rachel Burton

Additive Manufacturing of Silica-based Extraction Phases for Nutraceuticals. The project's overarching aim is to explore advanced manufacturing of highly defined, porous and chemically functionalised substrates for improved extraction and isolation efficiency of target high-value biomolecules and nutraceuticals within natural-product-based production processes. This new capability will be realised via the application of new in-house developed state-of-the-art 3D printing technology, enabling controlled porosity ceramic hybrid size exclusion and affinity/ion-exchange chromatography extraction phases and membranes. These new sustainable separation technologies will be tested from bench to pilot scale, using direct isolation of metalloproteins from milk and precision fermentation broths as two key industry use cases. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3401 - Analytical Chemistry. Lead: Prof Brett Paull

Promoting belonging and identity for children in kinship care. Children in out-of-home care experience significant instability in living arrangements and relationships. Children in kinship care, however, have better outcomes than their peers in other out-of-home care arrangements. This research aims to identify the interpersonal and/or institutional practices and systemic conditions that support the development of belonging and identity for children in kinship care. This research will generate critical knowledge about best practices, informed by children themselves and their kinship carers. Expected outcomes include improved service delivery enabling kin carers to positively impact the lives of the children in their care. Expected benefits include more responsive policies and frameworks for practice.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4409 - Social Work. Lead: Prof Lynne McPherson

Addressing Water Security Challenges in the Murray-Darling Basin. Known as the driest inhabited continent on Earth, Australia faces ongoing water security issues, particularly within the Murray-Darling Basin. Water challenges can be too much, too little, or too dirty, invoking the need for robust but highly adaptable policy. In partnership with key local and national end-users, this project aims to advance understanding of freshwater security issues via state-of-the-art economic research to develop novel tools that significantly advance water demand/supply planning and implementation by government and stakeholders. This new capability will enhance collaboration between policy-makers who will be better positioned to deliver against contemporary water challenges, and meet water security for all.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3899 - Other Economics. Lead: Prof Sarah Wheeler

Disaster Ready Schools: Strengthening Australia's Education Sector. "Disaster Ready Schools" seeks to address the significant learning disruptions experienced by children and young people due to climate-induced disasters, which have affected over 242 million students globally. This national project aims to deepen our understanding of how these disasters impact Australia’s education system. Collaborating with key partners, including UNICEF Australia and the Queensland Department of Education, the project will co-design a disaster-ready education framework and supportive resources. Critical to the UN SDGs, it will investigate critical questions regarding the nature of these impacts, stakeholder adaptations, and strategies for enhancing resilience, ultimately fostering robust support systems for young people.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3901 - Curriculum and Pedagogy. Lead: Prof Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles

Investigating unconventional spaces for student wellbeing self-management. Student wellbeing at school is an urgent priority, that needs collaborative consideration. This project will investigate with students how and where they already self-manage their wellbeing at school, with a focus on unconventional spaces. The mixed methods study led by an inter-disciplinary research team will enable students, alongside partners from education, architecture, and wellbeing to deeply explore under-represented everyday wellbeing experiences. New concepts, practices and methods will capitalise on the ways that students self-manage their wellbeing for practical, industry-relevant solutions.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3904 - Specialist Studies In Education. Lead: Prof Jenna Gillett-Swan

Submerged Environments Survey and Sampling Suite. The Submerged Environments Survey and Sampling Suite includes two marine geophysical sonar sensors and one marine geotechnical coring platform. Together these marine survey items provide an integrated affordable capacity for Australian universities to expand their research into deeper waters and deeper underwater sediments in both marine and freshwater environments. The R2Sonic Multibeam is optimised for high resolution 3D sonar seabed mapping, paired with an Innomar Compact Subbottom Profiler to map the shape and depth of shallow sediments below the seabed. A floating UWITEC coring platform then allows recovery of deep samples of those sediments to extract evidence of past environments for archaeological and paleoenvironmental research. . Scheme: Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities. Field: 4301 - Archaeology. Lead: Dr John McCarthy

Harnessing animal intelligence to repair Australian mammal communities . This project aims to address Australia’s extinction crisis by testing how predation shapes prey intelligence and using this new information to restore threatened mammal populations. This project aspires to determine which cognitive traits influence the development of antipredator behaviour and hence promote survival alongside predators. By exploring the role of predation in shaping learning and memory, this project will return only the most ‘predator smart’ prey to the wild, testing a model that could facilitate the co-existence of native prey alongside introduced predators. Expected outcomes include a new understanding of how predation shapes the brain and practical cognition-based conservation tools to reduce extinction risk.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4104 - Environmental Management. Lead: Dr Eamonn Wooster

Agentic Learning for Efficient and Generalisable Visual Grounding. This project aims to develop advanced artificial intelligence systems that can understand and interpret complex visual environments more effectively, efficiently, and transparently. Current artificial intelligence models for tasks often struggle to adapt to new scenarios, require vast amounts of labeled data, and lack clarity in how decisions are made. By combining visual perception with human-like reasoning, this research will create systems that actively refine their understanding of scenes, ask questions when uncertain, and explain their decisions in plain language. The outcomes will enable safer autonomous systems and more reliable healthcare diagnostics while reducing reliance on costly data annotation.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4603 - Computer Vision and Multimedia Computation. Lead: Dr Lian Xu

New Tools in Effective Field Theory for Physics beyond the Standard Model. This project aims to develop new theoretical and computational tools for effective field theories, crucial for exploring physics beyond the Standard Model. This project expects to provide methods for managing the complexity of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory arising from its large number of free parameters, while enhancing the precision of its predictions. Expected outcomes include a generalized geometric framework for effective field theories, as well as a fully automated phenomenology pipeline to test new physics models against experimental data. This research will equip both the Australian and international particle physics community with powerful tools to bridge theory and experiment at current and future facilities.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 5107 - Particle and High Energy Physics. Lead: Dr Julie Pagès

Building a Black Justice Journalism. This project argues for a new form of scholarly journalism, grounded in conceptions of Black Justice, as a critical intervention needed to address the ongoing media misreporting of Indigenous affairs. Through an innovative methodological approach combining scholarship, journalistic practice and archival research, the research agenda will seek to understand the role of the media in sustaining and entrenching settler colonialism. It will interrogate the field of journalism ethics, arguing that accepted norms of journalistic practice compound harm and restrict the voices of Black Witnesses. In doing so, it will aim to build an ethics of practice in the form of Black Justice Journalism which will be disseminated to the Indigenous media sector.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4501 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture, Language and History. Lead: Dr Amy McQuire

Understanding Gravitational Interactions in the Hearts of Galaxies. This project explores how stars and black holes evolve and collide in the dense centres of galaxies, producing powerful cosmic events. By modelling their interactions with gas discs and star clusters, the project will generate knowledge about the origins of black hole mergers and nuclear transients using advanced simulations and upcoming data from gravitational waves and electromagnetic observatories. Its significance lies in creating a unified framework—aligned with the Australian astronomy decadal plan—linking stellar evolution, gas dynamics, and these extreme phenomena. Expected outcomes include precise models that improve predictions of mergers and transients, advance astrophysics, and enhance public engagement with space science.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences. Lead: Dr Evgeni Grishin

Multi-User Delay-Doppler Communications. This project aims to develop a fundamentally new way of communicating digital information in broadband mobile networks. There is an ever-growing need for higher data rates and greater mobility, and this project will advance a new two dimensional (delay-Doppler) mathematical signal formulation to address these demands. This will enable broadband communications in high frequency spectrum for fast moving terminals. This project will pioneer innovative techniques in waveform design, multiplexing and resource allocation to dramatically improve performance in rapidly varying channels. These outcomes will shape global wireless standards and drive growth in Australia’s telecommunications and space based internet-of-things industries.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4006 - Communications Engineering. Lead: Dr Swaroop Gopalam

Unlocking the Mysteries of Bacterial Lifestyle Transitions. Bacteria are everywhere, playing a vital role in shaping ecosystems. Many remain dormant in their natural environment until they detect nutrients, triggering a lag phase to reactivate cellular machinery and resume growth. This universal yet poorly understood process has significant implications for industrial biomanufacturing and public health. This proposal aims to advance our understanding of the bacterial lag phase, develop strategies to enhance the efficiency of bacterial cell factories, and explore its role in antibiotic resistance—offering insights to combat the antimicrobial resistance global public health crisis.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 3107 - Microbiology. Lead: Dr Liping Li

Ultra-High Strength and Damage-Tolerant Steels via Laser Powder Bed Fusion . This project aims to design and investigate a new class of alloy steels that address the long-standing challenge of simultaneously achieving ultra-high strength and high damage tolerance by integrating the fundamental principles of laser additive manufacturing (LAM) and physical metallurgy. The project expects to generate new knowledge in alloy design, LAM and composition-microstructure-property relationships. Expected outcomes include uncovering the unique mechanisms that enable the simultaneous achievement of ultrahigh strength and high damage tolerance in alloy steels and a new theoretical framework for their design. This should significantly advance alloy science and engineering, while also fostering growth in Australian manufacturing. . Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4014 - Manufacturing Engineering. Lead: Dr Wengang Zhai

Physics-Informed Digital Twin for Large-scale Metal Additive Manufacturing. This project aims to develop a physics-informed digital twin framework for metal additive manufacturing (AM) to enhance process monitoring, simulation, and control. By integrating multi-sensor fusion, machine learning, and reinforcement learning, the system will enable real-time defect detection, predictive process modelling, and adaptive control. The outcomes include improved accuracy, reduced defects, and enhanced production efficiency, benefiting the aerospace and automotive industries. This research supports Australia’s national priority in advanced manufacturing, strengthens industry collaboration, and trains future experts in intelligent AM technologies, contributing to a more sustainable and globally competitive manufacturing sector.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4014 - Manufacturing Engineering. Lead: Dr LEI YUAN

Unveiling Myeloid Cells as Regulators of Nerve Innervation in Tissue Repair. The mechanisms that regulate peripheral tissue healing are not yet fully understood. My recent research, published in Nature in 2024, discovered that a neuro-immune axis plays a critical role in controlling skin and muscle healing in normal mice after injury. I found that nociceptor sensory nerve endings grow and infiltrate the tissue injury site and release neuropeptides, promoting tissue repair by locally regulating immune cells. These findings underscore the importance of nociceptor activation in skin and muscle healing. In this proposal, I aim to investigate how nociceptors are initially activated and regulated in injured skin and muscle, and how these mechanisms contribute to the regulation of tissue healing.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 3206 - Medical Biotechnology. Lead: Dr Yen-Zhen Lu

The Role of Money in Politics: Growing Concerns but Scarce Evidence. This project aims to investigate how financial power influences political decision-making and policy outcomes. It will examine how economic booms affect political participation and assess the effectiveness of campaign finance reforms in reducing undue influence. This project expects to generate new knowledge in political economy by using innovative data science techniques to study governance and electoral policies. Expected outcomes include new academic research, public datasets, and strengthened research collaborations. This should provide significant benefits, such as informing electoral reforms, improving transparency, and supporting evidence-based policy-making in Australia and beyond.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 3801 - Applied Economics. Lead: Dr Ricardo Dahis

Unlocking cardiac insight: a materials approach to model the left ventricle. This interdisciplinary project aims to unlock cardiac insights using a materials-based approach to modelling the heart’s left ventricle (LV). However, developing an accurate LV model that mimics the LV’s hierarchical structures and functions poses significant challenges. The project expects to achieve such a LV model through a novel 3D scaffold that guides self-organisation, differentiation, and growth of cells in a controlled environment. The expected outcomes include new insights into the development and structure-function relationship of the heart, as well as valuable guidelines for future engineering of the heart in vitro. This should provide significant benefits in reducing animal testing and enhancing human health.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4016 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Dr Linpeng Fan

Earth’s Thermostat: Did landscape evolution cool past Hothouse climates? This project explores how Earth's landscape has been reshaped over millions of years — and how these changes helped cool the planet by pulling CO2 from the atmosphere. By understanding how erosion and weathering naturally remove CO2, we can better assess climate change solutions that aim to speed up this process, like enhanced silicate weathering. Expected outcomes include the first global models linking landscape evolution to the geochemical record, revealing how Earth's natural thermostat works. The findings will guide carbon removal strategies and help pinpoint stable crustal regions rich in critical minerals for the green energy transition. . Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 3709 - Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience. Lead: Dr Samuel Boone

Designing peacemaking programs with First Nations languages and communities. This project aims to examine mediation, negotiation and peacemaking processes in First Nations communities, and the language practices that underpin them. Working under First Nations governance, the project expects to generate new knowledge about how these practices are being sustained, and how are they being adapted to contemporary community- and school-based contexts. The expected outcome is an improved understanding of peacemaking practices in First Nations communities and how they are supported by linguistic practices. The project will provide significant benefits by advancing the design and facilitation of culturally responsive peacemaking processes and improving cross-cultural mediation and negotiation programs.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4501 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture, Language and History. Lead: Dr James Bednall

Higher-order Fourier analysis: discerning structure from randomness. Despite having only arisen in the past 25 years, higher-order Fourier analysis has yielded remarkable breakthroughs in mathematics, including in combinatorics (e.g., around Szemerédi’s theorem), number theory (e.g., the Green-Tao theorem), ergodic theory, and theoretical computer science. Given the youth of the subject, understanding of it is in its infancy. This project aims to develop frameworks for understanding the generalised oscillatory patterns underlying higher-order Fourier analysis. These frameworks will be used to resolve major open problems about pseudorandomness in the above contexts, place Australia at the forefront of knowledge in this nascent area, and foster international collaboration in the many areas to which it applies.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4904 - Pure Mathematics. Lead: Dr Daniel Altman

Spatiotemporally Correlated Population-based Structural Health Monitoring. This project aims to advance infrastructure health monitoring by using sensor data from a structural population, focusing on the collective behavior of similar structures to enhance the accuracy and reliability of condition assessments. The project will generate new knowledge by developing novel transfer learning methods across structures and assessing structural conditions without monitoring systems. Expected outcomes include improved safety and lifespan of structures and establishing a new standard for infrastructure monitoring. This research should provide significant benefits, such as enhanced safety, extended lifespan, and reduced maintenance costs, leading to more efficient resource allocation in infrastructure management.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4005 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Dr Xiaoyou WANG

Reaping Clean Power: Sustainable Energy Integration in Protected Cropping. This project aims to address the heavy dependence on fossil fuels in protected cropping systems by integrating low-carbon energy solutions that are tailored to Australia’s diverse climate zones. It expects to generate new knowledge in environmental and techno-economic assessment of renewable energy for high-tech glasshouses and vertical farms, advancing data-driven methods for reducing emissions and costs. Anticipated outcomes include a comprehensive framework for energy optimisation, improved resource efficiency, and guidelines for industry adoption. This will provide significant benefits, including strengthening food security, enhancing Australia’s leadership in sustainable agricultural practices, and transitioning to a net zero economy.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 3008 - Horticultural Production. Lead: Dr Jing He