Grants & Opportunities

Robust and Scalable Autonomous Landing for Drones. The aim of this project is to develop a transformative robust and scalable autonomous landing system for drones. This is the critical missing technology needed to unleash exponential growth in a potentially enormous drone delivery industry by enabling a multitude of applications to deliver goods and supplies via drones to a wide range of destinations in Australia and the world in a timely, flexible and accurate manner. Such an autonomous landing solution would revolutionise drone technology, and propel Australia to the forefront of technology innovation. This project would benefit not only large scale delivery by drone in urban and suburban areas of Australia but also long distance delivery via drone to remote areas of Australia.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0805 - Distributed Computing. Lead: Prof Richard Han

Novel biological and genetic disease control tools for the barley industry. This project places Australian barley breeders at the forefront of disease resistance by providing them with novel tools to develop varieties with enhanced protection against fungal diseases. The aims are to produce fungal strains with multiple virulence genes for fast and cost-effective testing of barley lines, untangle the fungal/host gene interaction for resistance breeding and identify new sources of resistance. The outcomes will lead to the commercialisation by Australian breeding companies of barley varieties with durable fungal resistance. This will benefit the Australian economy by providing sustainability and protection for barley breeding thereby significantly reducing crop losses for this important global agricultural commodity.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 3004 - Crop and Pasture Production. Lead: A/Prof Anke Martin

Co-research supporting the development of Aboriginal plant knowledges. Successful commercial development of products manufactured from Australian plant extracts based on shared Aboriginal Knowledges and Western scientific evidence is limited. This research project partnering with an Aboriginal Corporation and a skincare company aims to understand the processes that would be needed for Aboriginal-led product development from a traditionally-used plant. This includes examining how plant materials could be sustainably managed and harvested on Aboriginal homelands, the quantities of plant materials needed for product development and the feasibility of a homelands business. The learnings from this project are expected to inform other First Nations groups seeking to develop their plant knowledges.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4506 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sciences. Lead: Dr Susan Semple

Federated Omniverse Facilities for Smart Digital Futures. A world-first trans-disciplinary, -domain, and -institutional smart 3D omniverse R&D ecosystem AuVerse will be built in NSW, affiliated with Queensland, and accessible to academia and industry. AuVerse will support cloud-based, reality-virtuality-fused, immersive, interactive and secure future-oriented digital design, development, training and society. In the new era of digital innovation and paradigm shift, AuVerse will substantially boost Australia’s pivotal research leadership and business competitiveness in nurturing new-generation, collaborative and transformative digital R&D and talent pipeline. It will enable large-scale strategic business innovation and transformation including smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0.. Scheme: Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities. Field: 4605 - Data Management and Data Science. Lead: Prof Longbing Cao

Advanced protective coatings for thermal energy management devices. This project aims to develop new nanomaterial coatings and advanced plasma coating technology to address the global issue of e-waste caused by short lifespan thermal energy management devices (TEMDs) used in energy (solar, wind, oil), transport (aerospace, automotive, marine) and industrial (manufacturing, mining) sectors. The project expects to overcome issues of erosion and corrosion of TEMDs and toxic coating methods by developing new nanomaterial coatings and innovative plasma coating technology. This should provide significant benefits such as improved sustainability of TEMDs with improved corrosion resistance and durability, as well as new manufacturing products and processes that have far reaching economic benefits for Australia.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4018 - Nanotechnology. Lead: Prof Weiwei Lei

All-Optical Upgrade to the Adelaide Atom Trap Trace Analysis Facility. This LIEF will upgrade the University of Adelaide Atom Trap Trace Analysis facility with a state-of-the-art analysis system that incorporates new all-optical methods. The system will provide ultrasensitive measurement of trace argon and krypton gas for groundwater dating. The project addresses a global demand for measurements by increasing the capacity at the Adelaide facility and enables new applications through analysis of smaller sample volumes. It will benefit the Australian environmental and earth sciences by providing unique datasets, generating new knowledge into the flow and transport mechanisms of groundwater systems. It will address national water security and sustainability goals, and support growth of population and industry. . Scheme: Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities. Field: 3707 - Hydrology. Lead: Prof Andre Luiten

Communication-Cyber-Human System Co-design for Human-Machine Collaboration. This project aims to pioneer fundamental theories and technologies crucial for advancing wireless Human-Machine Collaboration (HMC) within the context of Industry 5.0, an emerging industrial transformation. The project will lay the groundwork for co-designing wireless communications and cyber-human collaborative mechanisms to optimise operational efficiency and prioritise human well-being in wireless HMC. Anticipated outcomes include models, analytical frameworks, and optimisation tools tailored for wireless HMC systems. These innovations hold the potential to significantly reshape Australia’s manufacturing sector, delivering substantial economic and societal advantages by reducing operational costs and enhancing efficiency.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4006 - Communications Engineering. Lead: Prof Yonghui Li

Intergenerational Healing: A Creative First Nations Approach to Wellbeing. This project aims to address the impacts of intergenerational trauma on First Nations communities. It will investigate how community strengths contribute to long-term healing. This will be achieved using Indigenist mixed methods, including conversational storytelling, a culturally designed survey, and creative practice led research. This project expects to generate new knowledge in culturally appropriate approaches to addressing intergenerational trauma. It will use an interdisciplinary approach to generate outcomes including community-led theory, resources, networks, research tools, and an international dataset. This should provide significant benefits, such as improvements in wellbeing and contribution to international policy directions.. Scheme: Discovery Indigenous. Field: 4501 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture, Language and History. Lead: Prof Naomi Sunderland

Synthetic Technologies to Accelerate Peptide and Protein Production . Chemical synthesis of the 3D structures of peptides and proteins is a formidable challenge due to their susceptibility to shape alterations (misfolding), abolishing their biological function. This project aims to develop new methods to produce correctly folded peptides and proteins, accelerating the use of Australia's abundant natural biomolecules as novel therapeutics, agrochemicals, and biotechnological tools. Expected outcomes include the development of new synthesis tools and strategies that efficiently access complex molecules while reducing waste. This project will provide significant health, manufacturing, and economic benefits to the pharmaceutical and agricultural sectors by enabling greener and more effective synthetic methods.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 3404 - Medicinal and Biomolecular Chemistry. Lead: Dr Andrew White

Heat transfer and fluid flow in geomaterials: Physics-inspired AI framework. Processes involving fluid flow or heat transfer are of critical importance in engineering applications (e.g., in dams, geothermal systems, oil & gas production). Though largely overlooked, microstructural features control these processes in geomaterials. This project aims to exploit advances in high-resolution 4D imaging to extract essential microstructural information to: 1) identify new parameters that better capture pore and particle properties, connectivities and pathways, and 2) develop advanced predictive analytics tools. This will improve fundamental understanding of the link between microstructure and fluid and heat flows at the engineering scale, and provide predictive tools to reduce risk and costs to industry.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0905 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Prof Guillermo Narsilio

Decentralised Collaborative Predictive Analytics on Personal Smart Devices. This project tackles the challenging problem of personalised predictive analytics with resource-constrained personal devices and massive-scale data. The knowledge to be generated concerns privacy, fairness, and resource efficiency in the era of Internet of Things. The expected outcomes include a collaborative learning paradigm for building personalised models on personal smart devices in open and fully decentralised settings. Privacy and model fairness are core tenets of the paradigm. Personalised predictive analytics is frontier research that will position Australia at the forefront of AI and give business the tools needed to deploy innovative business systems for market exploitation with a secure, equitable and competitive advantage.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0806 - Information Systems. Lead: Prof Hongzhi Yin

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

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

New Lead-Free Brass Solutions for Drinking Water Applications. The aim of this Linkage Project is to provide viable material solutions to address the health problem of Lead-contamination in drinking water arising from Leaded-brass plumbing products and the impact Lead-removal from brass will have on the brass industry. In order to achieve this, this project engages leading multidisciplinary researchers along with Australian and international industry partners from across the brass industry supply and sales network. This project seeks to identify and harness the key material-product attributes required to develop and implement new, lead-free alloy alternatives that meet health-compliance, production and commercial viability, that offer benefits across the industry network and health benefits to society.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0910 - Manufacturing Engineering. Lead: A/Prof Kevin Laws

Novel governance for marine ecosystems in rapid transition. This project will develop the governance knowledge required to manage rapidly changing marine ecosystems. Australia has the third largest marine estate globally, and its ecosystems support critical economic and sociocultural values. However, human pressures are tipping marine ecosystems into alternate states, inspiring new interventions to sustain industries and communities. New interventions necessitate transitions in governance. Expected outcomes include a comparative understanding of novel marine interventions now underway globally, and practical guidance on how to diagnose and implement responsible marine governance. Significant benefits include enhanced governance and sustainability of Australian and international marine ecosystems.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0502 - Environmental Science and Management. Lead: Prof Tiffany Morrison

Elliptical nozzles: the shape of silence? This project aims to leverage the aeroacoustic properties of elliptical nozzle geometries to significantly reduce installed jet noise. This project expects to generate new knowledge regarding methods to reduce installed jet noise, a serious problem for the aerospace industry. Regulatory constraints inhibit the implementation of efficiency-increasing configurations but still fail to eliminate public health impacts. Expected outcomes include a set of tools for optimizing nozzle designs capable of significantly reducing installed jet noise. This will provide significant benefits, as jet noise is a serious health issue for the Australian public. This project represents an opportunity to reduce its impact while improving fuel efficiency.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0915 - Interdisciplinary Engineering. Lead: A/Prof Daniel Edgington-Mitchell

Developing novel two-dimensional hybrid nanostructures for renewable energy. This project aims to develop novel two-dimensional (2D) hybrid nanostructures with new physical and chemical properties. This innovation intends to address the critical challenges of control functionalisation of 2D hybrid nanostructures: essential to understanding the potential of nanomaterials in key applications of energy generation. Expected outcomes include scalable technology to produce functional 2D nanomaterials and hybrid nanostructures to accelerate research to advanced materials and frontier material manufacturing technologies. This project will provide significant social and economic benefits to Australia in the growth of sectors in advanced materials, energy generation, and advanced manufacturing.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0912 - Materials Engineering. Lead: Prof Weiwei Lei

Ecologically responsible mining to fuel a green energy transition. An energy transition is key to tackling climate change. However, renewable energy is mineral intensive and boosting its supply may create new mining threats to biodiversity. This project aims to facilitate strategic development of ecologically responsible mining. It expects to reveal where new mines will be needed to meet future energy demand, and create innovative tools to predict and mitigate threats to plants and animals. Expected outcomes include an improved ability to inform sustainable climate and energy policies, leading to strategic investment decisions, cleaner mineral supply chains and conservation outcomes that capture valuable environmental and social benefits and create a competitive advantage for Australia’s mining sector.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0502 - Environmental Science and Management. Lead: Prof Eve McDonald-Madden

The future of shipping: achieving autonomous navigation. This project aims to develop autonomous decision systems and onshore control stations to support the design and operation of unmanned cargo ships. Blending observations, numerical models, virtual reality and machine learning, the project will develop algorithms for unsupervised navigation and embed these in an advanced ship simulator platform capable of responding to environmental conditions and optimising sea freight transport capabilities. The expected outcomes will enable the integration of automated controls in ships, including remote-control capabilities. This will support Australia’s transition towards an autonomous shipping industry, delivering greater reliability, efficiency, productivity and safety.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0911 - Maritime Engineering. Lead: Prof Alessandro Toffoli

Remote sensing techniques to infer fine-scale ocean surface currents. This project aims to develop new technology for measuring ocean surface currents at unprecedented fine resolution using aerial imagery and theory that describes how surface waves are refracted by currents. The project will generate new knowledge on ocean surface current processes and variability across a range of scales, and critically, improve our understanding of surface current uncertainty through application of advanced statistical analysis techniques. The outcomes of this project will deliver Australian capability to leverage the enhanced spatial and temporal resolution of next generation Earth observations to directly benefit search and rescue, offshore industry operations, defence, and pollution response in Australian waters.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0405 - Oceanography. Lead: Dr Matthew Rayson

ARC Research Hub for Carbon Utilisation and Recycling. This Research Hub aims to develop technologies to transform carbon dioxide emissions from our energy and manufacturing sectors into valuable products and create pathways to market to drive industry transformation. This hub aims to achieve this by developing novel electro, thermo, and biochemical methods for converting CO2 from sectors that cannot easily avoid emissions and a technological pathway for CO2 recycling. The outcomes of this Hub are likely to be transformative for industry, the economy, and society in moving the fate of CO2 from pollutant to feedstock. The benefits to Australia are intended to be the stimulation of a new industry, a skilled workforce for this emerging industry and a contribution to meeting CO2 reduction targets.. Scheme: Industrial Transformation Research Hubs. Field: 4004 - Chemical Engineering. Lead: Prof Paul Webley

Diamond-based wideband radiofrequency fibre-optic sensor. This project aims to address the growing problem of ultra-wide radiofrequency signal monitoring. Developing a rugged and portable solution for whole-spectrum monitoring is a critical unmet need for Defence and other industries, and an important scientific challenge. Our approach is based on a diamond radio frequency sensor with fibre-optic readout. The project is expected to generate knowledge in the areas of quantum science and photonics by integrating advanced optical fibres with quantum-grade diamond. Expected outcomes of the project include the development of a strategic academic and industry alliance through the establishment of a sovereign capability that will benefit Australia in the areas of cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0204 - Condensed Matter Physics. Lead: Prof Brant Gibson

Scalable and Lightweight On-Device Recommender Systems. This project aims to address the resource-intensive and non-resilient nature of existing cloud-based personalised recommendation services. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the intersection of on-device machine learning and recommender systems. The expected outcomes include a novel auto-deployment platform that can efficiently customise a model for each user device's configuration, supporting on-device recommendation and model updates with tiny computational footprints. The benefits of these outcomes will position Australia at the forefront of AI and give numerous businesses the tools needed to deploy innovative business systems with a secure and cost-effective advantage.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4605 - Data Management and Data Science. Lead: Dr Tong Chen

Measuring and predicting sea spray spume droplets in the field. Sea spray spume droplets modulate heat and moisture fluxes between the ocean and atmosphere. These fluxes are a major source of uncertainty in extreme weather forecasting models due to a lack of reliable field measurement techniques. This project aims to develop a novel measurement technique to measure sea spray and generate new knowledge on the magnitude and nature of sea spray spume production. Expected outcomes include novel tools, a baseline dataset of sea spray field observations and predictive capabilities. Providing critical information to forecast extreme weather and tropical cyclones, this research will improve accuracy of coastal weather hazard prediction providing many social and economic benefits for Australia and other nations.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4015 - Maritime Engineering. Lead: Dr Joey Voermans

Pile foundations in unsaturated soils: a mechanistic framework. This project will develop a mechanistic approach to pile foundation design in variably saturated soils through integrated expertise in the fields of unsaturated soil mechanics, material nonlinearity, numerical modelling, limit analysis and experimental investigation. It will achieve a rigorous understanding of pile behaviour in unsaturated soils subjected to monotonic loading through a comprehensive program of scaled laboratory testing, numerical and theoretical analyses. The models, theories, mechanics and predictive tools arising from this research will have direct and immediate impact on the planning, design, construction and management of many types of infrastructure involving pile foundations in industrial and residential developments.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4005 - Civil Engineering. Lead: Prof Nasser Khalili