Australian National University

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-02

Investigating the plant growth/defence trade-off Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2025 · 2025-02

Investigating the plant growth/defence trade-off Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

Re-emergence of First Nations burning in contemporary grassy woodlands Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

Re-emergence of First Nations burning in contemporary grassy woodlands Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

Re-emergence of First Nations burning in contemporary grassy woodlands Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

Bioengineering technologies for harvesting rare earth elements from... Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

Bioengineering technologies for harvesting rare earth elements from... Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

Bioengineering technologies for harvesting rare earth elements from... Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

Electron Crystallography Methods for Multidisciplinary Applications Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

Electron Crystallography Methods for Multidisciplinary Applications Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

How environmental change drives the origin and decline of biodiversity. This project aims to measure the effects of past environmental change on the emergence of biodiversity in Indo-Australasia. By integrating high-resolution reconstructions of past environments and new simulation models, this project expects to generate new knowledge on the way biodiversity develops in a mega-diverse and climatically dynamic region. Anticipated outcomes include: an open-source historical environmental database, innovative new methods and software tools for the global research community, and a deeper understanding of the responses of organisms to environmental change. Significant benefits include identifying groups of species that have been vulnerable to historical environmental change to help predict future vulnerability. Field of research: 3104 - Evolutionary Biology Australia’s unique biodiversity is threatened by the widespread effects of environmental change. However, the historical vulnerability of species to past environmental change – a factor that could predict future extinction risk – remains largely unknown. The Australian Government’s Science and Research Priorities (2015) highlights the critical importance of improved predictive power of the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity. This project will contribute to reaching this goal by developing cutting-edge methods and leveraging large publicly funded biodiversity datasets for a wide range of animals and plant groups across Australia and its Asia-Pacific neighbours, to provide a comprehensive assessment of the factors shaping species responses to environmental change. By sharing knowledge outcomes and predictive tools with policy makers and conservation managers this project will contribute a new approach to help tackle biodiversity loss in Australia and protect threatened species in the face of ongoing environmental change.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

The Origin of Magnetic Fields in Galaxies. Understanding how stars and galaxies form and evolve requires a thorough knowledge of magnetic fields in galaxies. This project aims to investigate the origin and evolution of galactic magnetic fields by developing self-consistent numerical simulations and utilising state-of-the-art observations from Australia's latest radio telescope, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. Expected outcomes include accurate magnetic field measurements in the Milky Way and nearby Magellanic Clouds and a theoretical understanding of galactic magnetic fields. This will directly benefit cosmological simulations and the next-generation radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array, and provide training in fundamental physics and complex data analysis. Field of research: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences Using data from Australia's newest telescope, the $300 million Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, this project introduces innovative avenues for research with the upcoming Square Kilometre Array, Australia's first mega-science, multi-national, multi-billion dollar infrastructure program (Australian investment of $387 million in the 2021–22 federal budget). Therefore, the project immediately increases the return on Australia's substantial investment. It addresses two major research questions (#3 ‘How do galaxies form and evolve across cosmic time?’ and #4 ‘How do stars and planets form?') of the Decadal Plan for Australian Astronomy, contributing to a significant research gap. The compelling scientific plan with a combination of numerical simulations and observations would train our next generation and also lead to an engaging outreach program for school students and the general public, especially by using simulations to create a virtual reality experience of astrophysical processes. The techniques developed to compare images from computer simulations and telescope observations have the potential to be far more influential and can be broadly used, for example, in material science and medical imaging. Furthermore, the production and analysis of large amounts of data from simulations and observations will push the boundaries of our nation's supercomputing and networking infrastructures, putting us in a better position to benefit from the upcoming big data revolution.

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

Unlocking the molecular controls of haematopoiesis Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Pathways to non-Indigenous Allyship with Indigenous Australian Peoples. This project will identify pathways to reduce prejudice and foster allyship with Indigenous Australians. Leveraging momentum from the Voice referendum, the project will create significant new knowledge of the political and social levers that reduce prejudice and generate support for Indigenous issues. Outcomes include a better understanding of allyship and effective interventions for prejudice reduction. The findings will benefit social and political movements, particularly supporting Indigenous Australian initiatives like the Uluru Statement. Potential policy benefits include, informing governments on garnering public support for broader social policy initiatives like "Close the Gap." Field of research: 5205 - Social and Personality Psychology While most Australians agree that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians remain disadvantaged by past government policies, this consensus has not reduced prejudice towards Indigenous Australians or greater support for Indigenous rights. This project will examine prejudice towards Indigenous Australians and pathways to allyship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, following the failed Voice to Parliament referendum. As the first national-scale investigation into this prejudice, the project will include a longitudinal survey on attitudes towards Indigenous Australians, followed by experimental trials of prejudice reduction and allyship interventions. This project will identify how prejudice manifests in the Australian population as well as the potential pathways that could achieve greater solidarity and allyship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The project will reveal changes in attitudes towards non-Indigenous Australians and strategies to help prevent and reduce prejudice towards them. Presented at a national colloquium for Indigenous leaders, policymakers and practitioners and through other translational activities, our evidence base will support key stakeholders in Australia to develop and implement more effective prejudice reduction policies and interventions that aim to improve support for, and the realisation of, the political aspirations of Indigenous Australians.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Delivering Anindilyakwa data governance. Achieving self-determination for First Nations peoples requires empowering communities in the collection and application of their own data for evidence-based decision-making. This project aims to provide an exemplar model of Indigenous data governance for the Anindilyakwa people in Groote Eylandt. Using innovative research methods and partnership models, the project will develop and evaluate a community-governed information platform and the means to leverage it for sustained, targeted, community-led interventions. Expected outcomes include enhanced Anindilyakwa self-determination, and new best practice knowledge for implementing such platforms elsewhere—providing a potential model for other First Nations communities across Australia. Field of research: 4403 - Demography The recent review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap recommended that First Nations communities need to govern the collection and application of data about them to support self-determined pathways to better social and economic outcomes. Currently, those data are held mostly by governments and are outdated and generalised. This project will demonstrate a way for First Nations communities to compile and govern their own statistical data to provide real-time information they need for local decision-making. The project is a partnership with the Anindilyakwa Land Council representing the 2,000+ Traditional Owners of the Groote archipelago in the Northern Territory. It will adapt world’s best practice in demographic information systems to co-design and apply a data platform that evaluates progress on socio-economic outcomes. The Land Council’s use of this longitudinal, real-time evidence will support them in local decision-making to better understand and influence the underlying causes of social change. As a model of data governance that advances self-determination, the findings from this project have potential to benefit the multitude of other First Nations communities across Australia.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Comprehensive testbed for optical quantum technology. This project aims to furnish Australia with a multi-functional optical quantum measurement facility for developing high-performance and network-ready optical quantum devices. The project expects to identify novel quantum optical materials and expedite the development of hybrid quantum technologies that leverage multiple physical platforms for next-generation performance. The facility will serve as the keystone of a national optical quantum test facility, allowing quantum devices to be deployed on a real-world, dark-fibre network. Expected outcomes include bolstering cross-disciplinary research collaborations, improved training for the quantum workforce, and opening a new direction for Australia's academic and commercial quantum ecosystems. Field of research: 5108 - Quantum Physics Quantum technology is predicted to revolutionise the technology landscape over this century and drive Australia's future economic growth. Quantum computers, for instance, could provide the computing power to solve the world’s most challenging problems, while quantum sensors could offer increased sensitivity to better monitor our changing continent. However, it is now clear that to reap many of the benefits of quantum technology, these devices must be integrated into optical quantum networks to increase their size and performance. Australia has long been a leader in both quantum hardware and quantum networks, making it uniquely positioned to take a pioneering role in the emerging field of optically integrated quantum technology. This facility provides the key infrastructure to support this future growth direction: it reaches the ultra-low temperatures required for most quantum devices to reach high performance and provides flexible access to a range of optical resources, including Australia-first single photon detection facilities in the technologically crucial telecom band. This facility will foster collaborations as researchers from across the quantum community work together to build hybrid devices. It will allow more quantum devices to be deployed on quantum networks, becoming remotely accessible to more Australians, and provide a new avenue along which to grow the commercial quantum ecosystem in Australia.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

A recoil imaging detector module for directional particle physics. This proposal seeks to build a highly advanced detector, called CYGNET, capable of imaging low-energy particle tracks, that will form the basis of a future major underground experiment in Australia’s Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory. CYGNET will settle the remaining technical questions to pave the way for the future large detector, which in turn will open new frontiers in the hunt for dark matter and address long-outstanding issues in neutrino physics. CYGNET's neutron detection ability will support innovations for defence and agriculture by opening measurement possibilities inaccessible to conventional instruments. This work will train a highly-skilled workforce and position Australia as an international leader in particle detection. Field of research: 5107 - Particle and High Energy Physics The discovery of particle dark matter, whose nature is currently unknown, would have a huge impact, similar in scale to discovery of the Higgs boson or gravitational waves. This proposal will build an advanced particle detector (CYGNET), that will form the basis of a future world-leading underground dark matter experiment. The decadal vision is for an international network of large detectors, with a major node in the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory in regional Victoria. CYGNET will be uniquely sensitive to the direction of incoming particles, which creates translational opportunities that can benefit Australia, particularly in the field of neutron detection. There is an established need in defence for fissile material localisation using neutrons, and cosmic-ray neutrons are the only means to measure soil moisture at the hectare scale; directional detection of neutrons with CYGNET will benefit both of these areas. The CIs will make use of their existing networks, especially through the Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, to engage with industrial stakeholders and promote key milestones in the media. Students working on this project will build connections at leading international institutions, receive hands-on training in instrumentation and data science, and develop advanced nuclear and particle physics skills. These skills are valuable to the mining, medical physics, space and defence sectors, especially the nascent nuclear-powered submarine program.

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

Understanding the mechanism of RELB glomerulonephritis to improve kidney... Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Demystifying employee disclosure of retirement plans at work. This project aims to improve and streamline the retirement transition process by investigating employees’ disclosure of retirement plans (DRP) at work. DRP is an important step in retirement transition with considerable benefit for both employees (obtain much needed support and accommodation on pathway to retirement) and employers (enables succession planning); but DRP is a fraught issue for employees who are wary of discrimination and lost opportunities. The project will generate vital knowledge aimed at improving retirement transition practices in the workplace. This knowledge will provide significant benefits to employees as well as employers on how to achieve wellbeing and productivity outcomes for Australia’s ageing workforce. Field of research: 3507 - Strategy, Management and Organisational Behaviour Projection shows 670,000 Australians are expected to retire in the next five years and in current practice, employers and employees are reactive to the gaps arising from retirement. In order to transition to a proactive approach, critical new knowledge is required to determine best practice approaches that involve robust and productive late-career employee-organisation relationships. This project will provide strategies and tools to enhance this transition. The research will determine a stronger grasp of how to effectively prepare and support both employees and employers by identifying major factors that disrupt the retirement process. Creating an online training program that focuses on preparing for retirement will contribute to new knowledge and resources that offer a more detailed initiative, based on the needs of Australian employees and employers. Additionally, the findings will be presented to the Australian Human Rights Commission, Council on the Ageing, public and private sector human resource professionals, and other relevant stakeholders. This project’s findings and recommendations will impact industry and government organisations and deliver immediate social, economic, and commercial benefits.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Next Generation Synthesis. This project aims to unite state-of-the-art domino reaction strategies with sustainably resourced organic feedstocks to improve efficiency and sustainability in organic chemical synthesis. Organic compounds are ubiquitous: we use them as medicines, agrochemicals and countless other materials. The problem is that their manufacture is costly, labour-intensive, time-consuming and generally unsustainable. Efficiency gains in chemical synthesis will lead to less waste, thereby reducing negative environmental impact. Other benefits include enhanced capacity in the next generation of chemical synthesis, which will advance fundamental science and train the next generation of Australian scientists in world leading, next generation approaches. Field of research: 3405 - Organic Chemistry Chemical synthesis describes the controlled assembly of otherwise inaccessible and important molecules. It underpins the chemical industry, one Australia’s largest manufacturing sectors, contributing around $40 billion to GDP. It is a key enabler of food and agriculture, advanced manufacturing, medical technologies and pharmaceuticals, and mining. Chemical synthesis is possible because we know a little about how to bring atoms together to form molecules. The problem is that we don’t know how to do this well. Chemical synthesis of virtually any stable molecule is feasible but is neither practical nor sustainable. This project aims to invent innovative new approaches to make chemical synthesis both practical and sustainable. It aims to develop groundbreaking new fundamental science to make molecules faster and cleaner. It also aims to use plant-derived and sustainably sourced building blocks in place of non-renewable precursors. The academic outputs of this work will lead to new industrial collaborations with potential applications ranging from medicines to advanced materials. Significant outcomes and benefits of this work include enhanced capacity in cutting-edge chemical synthesis, and hence accelerated invention of new pharmaceuticals and other important materials. This project will also benefit Australia by training people in the experimental skills needed by future high technology industries.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Radiation-Driven Turbulence and Star Formation. This project aims to determine how radiation-driven turbulence controls the formation of stars. The expected outcomes are the most accurate radiation-hydrodynamical method to date, and the most detailed simulations of radiation-driven turbulence conducted at the NIF laser. This project will transform our understanding of these fundamental processes, providing crucial input for Australian and international facilities and surveys, and for models of galaxy, star and planet formation. Further key benefits of this project are the training of Australia's future generation of Big Data analysts, and the development of interdisciplinary tools involving Plasma and High-Energy Physics, Chemical Modelling, Statistics, and High Performance Computing. Field of research: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences Advancing our understanding of stars and the radiation they produce is a central research goal. This is because stars produce the light and chemical elements necessary for planets to form and for life to exist. However, we also know that ionising, ultra-violet (UV) radiation is harmful to humans and can cause skin cancer. It is therefore critical to develop simulation techniques that can accurately model the propagation of UV radiation in gaseous media, such as the Earth's atmosphere. The development of such a code is a key goal of this project. Furthermore, the Australian Academy of Science's Decadal Plan for Astronomy stresses the need for infrastructure and research workforce investment to power Australia's leadership in international space research. The Plan identifies areas where Australia can make its greatest 'world-leading contributions', such as the origin of stars. Here we will make the most detailed predictions of star formation, advancing Australian-led research into gas/fluid dynamics, radiation, and chemistry. Through application of this fundamental research to chemical modelling, high-performance computing and plasma physics, the project will support industry to adopt new methods in areas of radiation transport in defence to pollution tracking in our air and oceans. These applications will benefit Australians in areas of national security, health, and environmental conservation, and Australia through global leadership in international astronomical discovery.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Vicinal learning for model calibration and distribution modelling. This project aims to address the overconfidence of current highly accurate large deep neural networks, ie., incorrect predictions frequently have high confidence. This project expects to develop new theoretical models of vicinal model calibration, that can be implemented as efficient fine-tuning, ensuring that confidence reduces away from ground truth data, to a uniform distribution for far away images. Expected outcomes are new model-calibration theory and techniques, for classification and dense prediction, improving out-of-distribution detection while ensuring adversarial robustness. This should provide significant benefits in reducing risk in vision systems, including safety-critical applications, e.g. bushfire detection. Field of research: 4603 - Computer Vision and Multimedia Computation Computer vision based event detection will revolutionize safety-critical problems. For example, detecting potentially catastrophic bushfires in their early stages, and alerting emergency services. If fire services are deployed while a fire is small it can be extinguished. Automated computer vision detection systems can be deployed more pervasively than manual approaches. However, current suitable detection approaches do not accurately estimate their confidence in their decisions. In this project, we will undertake key research to create computer vision approaches that accurately estimate prediction uncertainty. These will be applied to key problems including bushfire detection. Detection errors can cause critical delays to deployment of fire services, either by failing to detect fires early, or giving frequent false alarms. Our research will enable accurate confidence estimation, allowing overall dispatch systems to mitigate false alarms. For example, by closely monitoring early fires that are uncertain, rather than ignoring them, or immediately alerting fire services. We will publicly release our code for detection, and evaluate our approaches through the ANU-Optus Bushfire Centre of Excellence on our network of Australian fire detection cameras. Additionally, we will work directly with our partners in fire services to directly improve fire detection in Australia.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Transformed landscapes: 3000 years of adaptation and resilience in Vanuatu. This project aims to explore the history of dramatic human modification of a Pacific Island landscape over the past 3000 years and draws out the implications of these transformations for future generations in a changing global climate. Since initial settlement, the island of Efate in Vanuatu has been spectacularly altered by a series of socio-agrosystems, recently revealed by LiDAR aerial imagery. This transdisciplinary project will combine field and archival research by archaeologists, historians and linguists to map social and agricultural development across Efate, generating a deep-time perspective that will inform responses to contemporary challenges around population growth and food security in the Pacific. Field of research: 4513 - Pacific Peoples Culture, Language and History Climate change poses a significant threat to Australia and its region. Food security and pressure on resources are going to be critical challenges for many of Australia’s Pacific Island neighbours, with anticipated changes in social, agricultural and economic development. This project focuses on the history of past strategies of adaptation on Efate Island, Vanuatu, where there is an exceptional record of high-density population and innovative changes in land use in response to changing environmental conditions. To better understand the way Efate Islanders have adapted to changing environments over thousands of years, this project introduces cutting edge remote-sensing technologies alongside new archival discoveries and traditional knowledge of land use practices. A team of archaeologists, historians and linguists will work together to show how different strategies for adaptation on Efate might point to an expanded range of possible futures for land use across the region. Understanding these past strategies will add to the toolkit of disaster risk reduction measures and plans for climate change adaptation. This toolkit will also inform policy makers developing strategies to address climate change and its social, agricultural and economic effects in Australia and the region.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Mapping the bio-cultural impact of Papuan migrations into Wallacea. This project aims to explore the movement of Papuan genes, culture, and languages into Wallacea in the past 15,000 years. Multidisciplinary evidence suggests that New Guinea has been a key bio-cultural progenitor for contemporary Wallacean societies, though the underlying historical movements and exchange mechanisms remain poorly understood. By generating and integrating complementary genetic, linguistic, and archaeological records from East Nusa Tenggara and West Papua, this project will illuminate the historical processes and peoples that have shaped modern Wallacean society. Expected outcomes include a comprehensive re-evaluation of New Guinea's role as a bio-cultural hub in one of the most diverse but understudied regions on the planet. Field of research: 3105 - Genetics The Wallacean archipelago is a renowned hotspot for human linguistic and genetic diversity, testimony to a deep history spanning more than 50,000 years. Like their neighbours in Australia and New Guinea, the Indigenous peoples of Wallacea are thought to have remained isolated from outside groups, and each other, for more than 45,000 years until the introduction of new genes and languages by Austronesian seafarers some 3,500 years ago. However, this static view of Wallacean history has been challenged by converging interdisciplinary evidence that documents the transformation of Wallacean societies by the infusion of Papuan genes and culture from around 15,000 years ago, and emphasises the potential of interdisciplinary approaches in reconstructing this poorly understood historical period. In this project, our international team will explore the origins, timings, and impacts of the historical migration of Papuan peoples across Wallacea, by undertaking a coordinated research program to gather new genetic, archaeological, and linguistic records for key regions in eastern Wallacea and West Papua. By disseminating our results through high impact journals and multiple media outlets, our research will raise global awareness of the rich bio-cultural diversity in this under-appreciated part of the world and reaffirm Australia’s leadership in transformative and ethical interdisciplinary research into human history.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Control at What Cost? One-Shot Real-Time Dual Inverse Optimal Control. This project will develop dual inverse optimal control to enable engineered systems to actively impute (learn or infer) and optimise costs associated with control actions in uncertain dynamic environments. Dual inverse optimal control will be developed by introducing novel measures of cost imputability in optimal control, and by introducing real-time schemes that actively select control actions with the dual objectives of simultaneously improving imputability whilst optimising uncertain costs. The outcomes of this project will enable vehicles to actively infer drag and friction costs; robots to actively learn from humans by requesting demonstrations; and appliances that optimise their electricity consumption via imputing market-based costs. Field of research: 4007 - Control Engineering, Mechatronics and Robotics Australia is on the cusp of multiple technology transitions, including the renewable energy transition and the widespread adoption of automation across agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transport and logistics, and aerospace. This project will develop the techniques and algorithms required to enable engineered systems to make optimal decisions in uncertain dynamic economic and physical environments by actively imputing (learning or inferring) and optimising uncertain costs and constraints associated with their decisions and actions. The techniques and algorithms developed in this project will benefit Australia and Australians by unlocking more efficient generation and utilisation of electricity in the national energy market through ensuring that generation is more closely matched to consumption; they will improve levels of efficiency and productivity in agriculture, mining, transport and logistics, and manufacturing through the availability of robots and autonomous systems that learn, improve, and operationalise human expertise at scale; and they will enable robots to actively collaborate with humans and other machines to scale and streamline advanced manufacturing, and health and aged care. The outcomes of this project will be translated into industry by demonstrating the competitive advantages they build for Australian businesses in the national electricity market, large-scale irrigation, and manufacturing, as well as by training the workforce required to implement them.