THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Anaerobic short-chain gaseous alkane oxidation coupled to nitrate... Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Decarbonising Australia’s foodservice industry with sustainable foods. The food system generates 34% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Promoting sustainable foods can halve these emissions. Together with the world’s largest foodservice provider, Australia’s leading alternative protein manufacturer and a key advocacy body for alternative proteins, this project aims to understand how consumers make food choices in different contexts (e.g., mining sites, office canteens), co-design theory-informed behaviour change interventions, and test their impact on immediate and subsequent food choices in field experiments. Expected outcomes include experimentally proven interventions, a dashboard showing the economic and environmental benefits of these interventions, and an education package for foodservice providers. Field of research: 3504 - Commercial Services The standard Australian diet emits 1.5 times more greenhouse gases than permissible in a net zero future. Replacing some meat with plant-based foods could reduce these emissions by up to 50%. With over 80,000 businesses, the foodservice industry is essential to promoting sustainable foods but often hesitates due to concerns about profitability and customer satisfaction. Together with the world’s largest foodservice provider (Compass Group), Australia’s leading alternative protein manufacturer (v2food) and a key Australian advocacy body for alternative proteins (Food Frontier), this project aims to co-design innovative behaviour change interventions that are easy and cost-effective to implement and do not limit availability of meat options. Testing these interventions in various Compass Group sites (e.g., mining sites and office canteens) will provide context-specific evidence for which interventions increase immediate and subsequent consumption of sustainable foods. A dashboard will showcase the economic and environmental benefits of the interventions, helping foodservice providers identify effective strategies for their operations. Education packages will build capacity among foodservice providers to immediately adopt the interventions. Uptake of the interventions by Compass Group and other food outlets could help Australia transitioning to a net zero future and create jobs in agribusiness.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Respect and cultural difference in maternity care experiences. Hospital birth plays a vital role in maternal health, yet there are critical problems with birth trauma (harmful childbirth experiences) especially among culturally diverse women and ethnic minorities. This project aims to create new understandings of how cultural beliefs and norms influence expectations and practices of health care, including how different women perceive respectful maternity care and how medical professionals respond to cultural preferences. It centres on Fiji, a multicultural society. Expected outcomes include new knowledge of what respectful care means in practice, and advice to help improve maternal health care. This should benefit Fijian and Australian organisations working on health care and gender equality. Field of research: 4401 - Anthropology Globally and in Australia, rates of birth trauma are worse for culturally diverse women and ethnic minorities. The World Health Organization’s agenda of ‘respectful maternity care’ aims to protect women’s rights and dignity, but implementation is struggling because women and health workers from different cultural backgrounds may have other ideas of what respectful care means. Health care providers also lack practical examples of how to respond to cultural difference. Taking Fiji as its focus, this project aims to investigate how maternity care is experienced differently, and what respectful or abusive care means to women and health workers in a complex, multicultural society. This project expects to advance Australia’s existing international partnership with Fiji, identify new approaches to responding to cultural difference within maternity care, and share this knowledge with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and other Australian and Fijian organisations to improve birth experiences and quality of care for women in the future. This project aims to understand existing cultural meanings and experiences, and any impacts on maternal care are future benefits beyond the scope of the current project.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Innovating Vanilla for advanced climate smart production systems. Australian Vanilla Plantations is passionate to develop vanilla plants with superior growth, production, end-product protocols and methodologies for the Australian vanilla industry. However, industry remains hamstrung by one major key challenge: Lack of secure supply of high quality, disease-free propagation material to support dome roll-out and expansion. This fellowship will develop vanilla cultivars by discovering key candidate genes of value to the vanilla industry, i.e. shorter internodes, disease resistance, higher yields, longer flowering periods, it will also develop novel in vitro breeding and improved technologies for vanilla and deliver elite plants to indoor vanilla farms using the Queensland-invented propagation technology. Field of research: 3008 - Horticultural Production Horticulture is Australia’s fastest growing agricultural sector, fuelled by strong demand and premium quality product reputation. Emerging horticultural crops such as vanilla offer huge opportunity for growth capitalising on this demand and Australia’s competitive advantages of land, water, smart-technologies, and mechanisation. Vanilla has exceptional prices with demand growth still at 4% per year. Australian vanilla production mostly relies on Vanilla planifolia, which has limited genetic diversity and suffers from biological bottlenecks creating high production costs. This severely restricts industry expansion and opportunity to tap into demand. This Fellowship will develop Australia’s first tools for accelerated breeding for superior vanilla cultivars. It will target traits to improve disease resistance, yield, and quality (e.g., vanillin content) to open new opportunities for Australian vanilla growers and potentially boosting industry to $10M gross production value by 2028. By targeting the vanilla industry at emergent stage, the impact is maximised: superior plants customised to Australia's future climates, markets and smart production systems. With strong commercial feasibility, this project should create regional jobs and business opportunities with reduced land, water and on-field chemicals. This will play a pivotal role in establishing Australia as a global leader in the vanilla market, combining cutting-edge technology with sustainability and economic growth.

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

How immune cells use metabolism to respond to different threats Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Reliable scene perception in complex and uncertain environments. This project aims to enhance safety and efficiency in complex industrial environments by transforming the capacity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to handle scene perception. The potential transformations, which include more advanced model generalisation, purpose-distilled datasets, and proven performance estimation, should let AI systems adapt to new environments with minimal labelled data and fewer computational resources. Expected outcomes include two impactful systems for road infrastructure management and compliance monitoring in steelmaking – both reflecting innovation for Industry 4.0. Additionally, the project is expected to drive significant advancements in operational precision, safety and automation across multiple sectors. Field of research: 4605 - Data Management and Data Science This project aims to advance AI technology to improve scene perception in complex industrial environments, addressing a critical gap in AI’s current ability to operate reliably and adaptively. Existing systems struggle to handle new or changing conditions, which limits their usefulness in real-world applications. This research focuses on developing more adaptable and resource-efficient AI models that not only perform well with limited labelled data, but can also be used reliably in diverse and unpredictable settings. This research will benefit the Australian economy by reducing the cost of infrastructure management, such as road maintenance, and streamlining heavy industry, such as steel manufacturing, while also improving safety and efficiency. Socially, it will contribute to safer roadways and more secure industrial environments. Environmentally, the proactive maintenance enabled by our technology will reduce waste and resource consumption. Commercially, this research will position Australia as a leader in Industry 4.0, driving innovation and enhancing global competitiveness. To promote take-up beyond academia, we will engage directly with industry to demonstrate the effectiveness of our technology in practical settings, sharing outcomes through industry forums and government agencies. This approach will help to translate our research into actionable solutions, maximising its impact across key sectors in Australia.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Next generation magnetic resonance imaging through vision. Images acquired via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) currently do not make any allowances for the way that humans read and understand regions of interest like segmenting important objects from the background. This project aims to unify artificial intelligence (AI) models for segmentation with MRI measurements and reconstruction directly in the frequency domain, helping us explain how such models work and create a new method of MRI image acquisition more akin to human vision that only acquires the areas an operator needs. The outcomes of the project have the potential to explain AI models, speed-up MRI scans and lower costs, thereby improving access to MRI services in the future and further advancing urgently needed AI research in Australia. Field of research: 4603 - Computer Vision and Multimedia Computation Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is essential in healthcare for non-invasively seeing inside the human body, but its cost is so prohibitive that it is seldom used unless there is no other option. Artificial intelligence (AI) models have been used to help improve MRI to lower some of the cost, but their black box nature makes it difficult to understand and verify that they won’t do us harm. This project aims to research theoretical advancements to better integrate AI models tightly into how MRIs are formed directly where they are acquired to improve MRI scanning speed. This integration will also reveal what information AI models use in these tasks and enable us to better understand how they work. A reduction in scan time will make MRI cheaper and therefore allow the technology to be more readily utilised in the future, including further studies into aging and other chronic conditions. The resulting breakthroughs in AI could also enable new, more efficient models with explainable properties urgently needed to strengthen Australia’s local digital economy.

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Improving frailty knowledge and empowering behaviour change via a... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Improving frailty knowledge and empowering behaviour change via a... Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Eco-friendly lead-free perovskites for flexible indoor photovoltaics. Electronic devices, from smart electronics to the Internet-of-Things (IoT) network of sensors, dominate modern life. This project aims to develop eco-friendly tin-based perovskite solar cells, offering sustainable and battery-free solutions for modern devices. Working with the key industry partner, this project expects to validate mass production of flexible indoor solar cells and their integration with wireless electronics. Success of this project expects to stimulate economic growth through new solar cell products, positioning Australia as a leader in flexible electronics and renewable energies. This should deliver environmental benefits by alleviating battery-associated pollution and enabling sustainable, green electricity generation. Field of research: 4016 - Materials Engineering Electronic devices have become an integral part of modern life, fundamentally changing the way we live, work and communicate. These modern devices, from smartphones and wearable electronics to the extensive Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks with billions of sensor nodes, are all powered by batteries. In Australia, approximately 350 million batteries are consumed annually, generating over 150,000 tonnes of electronic waste. This poses significant burden on the environment, as the toxic chemicals used in batteries contaminate soil and water. By capturing indoor light and converting it to green electricity, indoor solar cells based on low-cost perovskite materials offer battery-free power sources for wireless electronics. However, the inclusion of toxic lead in conventional indoor solar cells has raised public concerns over environment and human health, impeding their widespread adoption. This project aims to develop tin-based indoor solar cells by substituting hazardous lead with non-toxic tin, enabling comparably efficient but eco-friendly power sources. Working with a local solar panel manufacturer, the mass production of tin-based solar cells will enhance Australia’s manufacturing capability and boost its international competitiveness in flexible electronics and renewable energy technologies. This project will also deliver economic and environmental benefits by offering a low-cost and sustainable solution for renewable energy generation and decarbonisation.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Deciphering invertebrate venoms devastating Australia's pets and livestock. Paralysis ticks and processionary caterpillars are two species of venomous invertebrate that wreak havoc on Australian pets and livestock. Tick paralysis affects ~10,000 animals yearly, causing hundreds of animal deaths. Ingestion of processionary caterpillars causes gravid mares to abort their foetuses. The neurotoxin responsible for tick paralysis has been identified, but it is unknown how it works, and it is unknown if caterpillar venom toxins contribute to equine foetal loss. This project aims to determine when tick neurotoxins are biosynthesised, and where and how they act; and what biological activities processionary caterpillar venom has, which toxins cause these bioactivities, and if venom contributes to equine foetal loss. Field of research: 3404 - Medicinal and Biomolecular Chemistry This project aims to better understand venom toxins produced by two species of arthropod that cause serious harm to our pets and livestock, the Australian paralysis tick and the Australian processionary caterpillar. Paralysis ticks affect ~10,000 animals yearly, causing hundreds of animal deaths. In 2013 in the Hunter Valley, it was discovered that a significant proportion of pregnant mares aborted foetuses due to contact with venomous processionary caterpillars. However, the molecular mechanism by which tick neurotoxins work is unknown, and it is unknown what bioactivity processionary caterpillar venom has or if the venom contributes to equine foetal loss. This project will fill these knowledge gaps and will pave the way for new or improved therapeutics (e.g. vaccines, antivenoms, or veterinary medicines). Economic and commercial benefits may result by avoidance of veterinary costs (up to $10K for mechanical ventilation of an individual dog) and loss of horse pregnancies in the equine industry, and through commercial production of veterinary therapeutics. This project has strong potential to promote links between academia and industry, and presents great opportunities for science communication to the general public, which will be delivered through TV, radio, print and online media, and school presentations. This project will contribute to the National Interest by providing knowledge with the potential to protect our pets and livestock, an integral part of Australian life.

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Deciphering the gene regulatory code of ageing to set the stage for... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Manipulating disturbance synchrony to regulate microbial systems Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Novel mechanisms of adhesion assembly and crosstalk in arteries and veins. Arteries and veins are lined by cells with different adhesive properties to facilitate vessel specific barrier physiology. What controls adhesion differences is still poorly understood. This research will apply unique zebrafish models, 3D human micro-vessels, and omics approaches to help solve this knowledge gap in two complementary Programs: [P1] Identify how a novel Adrenomedullin-Pim kinase pathway regulates adhesion only in veins [P2] Visualise dynamics of adhesive forces in vivo and identify how these forces contribute to barrier function This work will enhance our understanding of blood vessel integrity in different vessel types and expand the scope of Australian research by informing efforts to vascularise engineered tissues. Field of research: 3101 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology The global quest to be able to bioengineer tissues is held back by the current inability to vascularise these ‘organs in a dish’. To address this challenge, we require a deeper understanding of how to generate blood vessels that do not leak. Added complexity to this challenge comes from the fact that we need both arteries and veins that enable delivery and exchange of oxygen and nutrients. However, there are still many questions about how these distinct blood vessels are made during normal organ development. We therefore need to solve this knowledge gap and understand how to generate functional blood vessels. Application of this knowledge will help grow bioengineered tissues that are suited to replace damaged organs and tissues, thereby reducing the economical burden associated with the need for organ transplants. Furthermore, advancing the field of tissue engineering would drive employment and commercial opportunities in biotechnology, medical device development, and research, spurring economic growth. This project will use innovative model systems (zebrafish, human engineered vessels) to discover key chemical and physical cues that control differential growth and function of arteries and veins. Chemical compounds that modify these cues already exist and thus new knowledge from this research will provide critical information on the application of such compounds to help create divergent blood vessel types in bioengineered organs and advance the field of tissue engineering.

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Harnessing Small Extracellular Vesicles for Precision Periodontics Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Elevating mangrove recovery: the role of accretion under sea level rise. Climate change is accelerating sea level rise and the severity of storms, increasing coastal flooding and erosion. Mangroves can mitigate these by increasing land elevation through sediment accretion however, sea level rise threatens to drown them if they cannot recover after storm events. Through the innovative use of drone surveys and hydrodynamic models, this project aims to generate new knowledge on how mangroves increase elevation and recover after storms. Expected outcomes include predictive models of elevation change based on mangrove forest structures and the potential for recovery under future sea level rise scenarios. This work should provide valuable insights to support decision-making in coastal conservation and management. Field of research: 4101 - Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation This project investigates mangrove recovery after storm events and their role in increasing land elevation through sediment accretion, addressing a critical research gap in Australia’s coastal ecosystem resilience amid sea-level rise. It aims to enhance understanding of how mangroves can protect coastal communities from flooding and erosion. Economically, the research supports the emerging Blue Carbon market, which quantifies carbon stored in coastal ecosystems like mangroves, providing financial incentives for restoration. This project could help identify new revenue streams for landowners, coastal developers, and restoration projects via carbon credits, while potentially reducing post-storm recovery costs and lowering insurance premiums by enhancing coastal resilience. Socially and environmentally, it strengthens coastal resilience, preserving ecosystems and livelihoods. Commercially, the project will provide actionable data for Industry Partners, including coastal developers, government agencies, and restoration organizations, guiding decision-making on coastal protection, restoration, and sustainable development. The research will be promoted beyond academia through presentations at Government and Industry events ensuring practical applications and wider adoption of findings.

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Harnessing Small Extracellular Vesicles for Precision Periodontics Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Transforming understanding of cognitive ageing: Bridging the lab-life gap. With Australia’s population rapidly ageing, keeping people happy and independent for longer is now a national priority. Good cognitive function lies at the heart of successful ageing, but we currently lack a clear understanding of the factors that influence how successfully, or not, older adults complete the complex activities that support and enhance their everyday lives. This project aims to use groundbreaking methods to deliver this understanding, and then develop resources that strengthen older adults' real-life function. In doing so, this Laureate expects to empower older people to stay socially connected, active in the workforce, and to live in their own homes well into their golden years, with social and economic benefits for us all. Field of research: 5201 - Applied and Developmental Psychology With Australia’s population rapidly ageing, promoting the wellbeing and independence of older Australians is now a national priority. Cognition refers to the mental processes that allow people to learn, make decisions, connect socially to others, and contribute to society. Good cognitive function therefore lies at the heart of successful ageing. This Laureate will use groundbreaking methods to assess the cognitive function of older adults in real world scenarios in a manner previously considered intractable. This work is critical to understanding the cognitive difficulties that plague the lives of older adults – and how they can be overcome. The data will be leveraged to deliver new resources that empower older people to remain socially connected, active in the workforce, and live safely in their own homes well into their golden years. By working directly with professionals across diverse fields of ageing, this Laureate will also create an enduring legacy by informing public policies that address the needs of older Australians for years to come. This project will therefore prepare us for our ageing world. It will ensure our ageing population does not place an unsustainable economic burden on younger generations, and by transforming how we think about ageing, have far-reaching social benefits for us all. By establishing The Global Research in Ageing, Cognition and Ergonomics (GRACE) Alliance, it will also build Australia’s core capacity and reputation as a research leader.

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Understanding how regulatory T cells control self-reactive B cells in... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Co-designing innovative healthy food retail policies with remote... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Targeting cell adhesion molecules for the treatment of... Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Ensuring renewable energy zone stability for Australian net-zero transition. This project aims to develop an innovative data-driven modelling method for renewable generators. Currently, the stability of modern renewables can only be analysed via time-consuming scenario-based simulations, and there is a lack of effective means to holistically assess system stability. This project expects to generate for the first time clear renewable generator models through measurements and partially known information from generator manufacturers to replace the existing black-box models. Expected outcomes include a new data-driven modelling method of renewables, which will significantly benefit the energy industry by increasing power grid stability, ultimately boosting investment in and uptake of renewable technologies and products. Field of research: 4008 - Electrical Engineering Australia has committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050 by creating geographic renewable energy zones. Reducing unstable oscillations between renewables in these zones is important to ensure safe renewable energy production and development. However, renewable generators are complex and hence very challenging to analyse their stability from a systems point of view, and we currently lack the ability to effectively assess and secure the stability of renewable energy zones. This project aims to address this problem by extracting a small amount of available generator data and transforming it into a usable system stability model. With this expected outcome, energy industries will be able to perform more advanced analysis on system stability rather than the current time-consuming case studies one at a time. This enables more effective and efficient assessment on renewable energy zone stability, decreases unplanned grid outages, and reduces cost on renewable projects, and hence energy price for consumers. The project findings will be disseminated through seminar presentations to the energy industry and social media to the general public. In the future, this project expects to provide Australian communities with economic benefit by lowering stability evaluation time and cost, with social benefit by building confidence in more stable renewable energy integration, and with commercial and environmental benefits by enabling future renewable investment and employment in Australia.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Enabling low-toxicity perovskites for next-generation indoor photovoltaics. This project aims to design high-performance and low-toxicity perovskite semiconductors for efficient indoor light energy harvesting and conversion. By addressing the key challenges of material toxicity and device efficiency, the project is expected to unlock the full potential of low-toxicity perovskites as light absorbers for enabling efficient and practical indoor photovoltaics for various Internet-of-things devices. The advance of this renewable energy technology is expected to improve the sustainability of Australian residential lives, maintain Australia`s global competitiveness in clean energy research and contribute to Australia’s Climate Strategies and Plans by transforming to low-emission and efficient indoor power solutions. Field of research: 4016 - Materials Engineering Australian Government is targeting an emission reduction of 43% by 2023 and net zero by 2050 across the national economy. Innovations in cost-effective and energy-efficient technologies underpin the critical foundation for the achievement of this target. This research focuses on designing advanced semiconducting materials for efficient indoor light-to-electricity conversion, which can provide a promising and reliable power solution for various indoor Internet-of-things devices. By addressing the key challenges in the current state-of-the-art lead-based perovskite semiconductors, this project aims to develop high-performance lead-free perovskites for efficient indoor photovoltaics. The successful implementation of this project will significantly advance the fundamental research by expanding the knowledge base of areas of functional materials and sustainable energy, and will also enable practical uptake of the next-generation indoor photovoltaic technology for low-emission power solutions of various indoor electronics. This is well-aligned with the government`s Science and Research Priority of Energy, Australia’s Climate Strategies and Plans, and the Australian Government’s Powering Australia plan, which is expected to further bring immense economic and environmental benefits to Australia in the long run by supporting the growth of Australian industries in advanced materials and energy sectors.

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Evidence generation for a national melanoma prevention and early... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-01

The rules of engagement between transcription factors and cofactors Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research