UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Accessible Instrumental Music Education for People with Disability. This project aims to address low participation rates of people with disability in instrumental music education by developing replicable pedagogies and resources that can be implemented by music teachers and therapists. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of inclusive music education using innovative, interdisciplinary methods focussing on a strengths-based approach. Expected outcomes of this project include improved inclusive music teaching pedagogies and training to support students with disability. This should provide significant benefits such as increased access to music education and participation for people with disability, more inclusive school and community music settings and improved teacher training. Field of research: 3603 - Music The social, cognitive, and physical benefits of playing a musical instrument are well-documented. Despite this, many people with disability struggle to access music education for a variety of reasons, including a lack of appropriate teacher training and available adaptive technologies. Drawing on findings and methodologies developed in previous pilot-studies, this project will create world-first, transferrable teaching techniques to support people with disability to learn musical instruments in school and community settings. These findings will be translated into guidelines and professional development material for music teachers and therapists to allow wide-spread dissemination of techniques and pedagogies to up-skill music educators to better support music students with disability. In creating easily transferrable teaching techniques and pedagogies, this project will improve access to music education around the nation and make Australia a world-leader in inclusive instrumental music.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

New mathematics for infectious diseases: preparing for the next pandemic. This fellowship aims to transform Australia's infectious disease research capability, advancing a systems- and modelling-based approach. Major open questions – requiring breakthroughs in mathematics, computation and statistics – will be pursued. How can within-host infection dynamics be linked with epidemiological transmission data to gain new insight into the drivers of infection? How is that knowledge used to design surveillance systems to best support pandemic response? Solving these multi-faceted problems requires the generation and integration of knowledge in mathematics, biology, epidemiology and public health. Anticipated benefits include enhanced strategic planning and response capability for major societal events such as pandemics. Field of research: 4901 - Applied Mathematics Infectious diseases pose a major and continuing threat to Australia's health and economic prosperity. In 2015-16 vaccine-preventable diseases cost the hospital sector over $600 million; COVID-19 caused the largest socioeconomic shock since WWII. Successful control is crucial. Infectious disease dynamics – combining mathematical modelling, computation, and statistics – is an emergent capability for expanding scientific knowledge of infectious disease transmission, impact and control. By enabling a richer understanding of how infectious diseases infect us, how they spread and how we might control them, the discipline of infectious disease dynamics has underpinned much of the public health advice on COVID-19. This fellowship aims to transform infectious disease dynamics from a proven, yet emergent, contributor into a foundational pillar in which a systems- and modelling-based approach is central to knowledge generation and impact. This requires both theoretical advances and system-wide engagement across disciplines from biology to public health. The anticipated outcome is multifaceted: an enhanced capability in the theoretical foundations of infectious disease dynamics, and an acceleration in infectious diseases biological and public health knowledge discovery. Working with a range of scientific and government partners will see these developments provide Australia with the modelling techniques, expertise and personnel to respond to future public health emergencies.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Predicting how Australia’s pests will respond to climate change. Climate change is altering the distribution and abundance of species, including pests that threaten our food security and wildlife. We need reliable predictions of these changes if we are to adapt. This project will forge new collaborations between ecological and physical scientists to understand and predict how Australia's major mammal and insect pests will respond to climate change. It will transform our present knowledge of pest species' environmental limits from statistical correlation to biophysical mechanism. The new knowledge, and training of young interdisciplinary scientists, will equip the agricultural sector with better predictions of pest outbreaks and give conservation biologists new strategies for managing feral predators. Field of research: 3103 - Ecology Climate change is generating new environmental extremes affecting our biodiversity, including changes to how pest species threaten food supplies and wildlife. Our present ability to predict such devastation and take targeted action to protect environmental assets and biosecurity is unreliable, since it is based on correlation rather than causation, leading to uncertainty and inaccuracy in future climates contexts. This project brings together a world-class interdisciplinary team of ecologists and environmental physicists to develop new predictions grounded in biophysical mechanisms of how species interact with each other and their environment, and likely responses to climate change. Economic benefits from more reliable predictions of pest outbreaks will save hundreds of millions of dollars each year through reduced crop loss and landscape damage. Environmental benefits include more targeted conservation planning to protect threatened species. Social benefits include strengthened public confidence from stronger scientific influence of plans such as the Federal Government’s National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy. Legacy will be achieved through integration with forecasting tools and policy development, and by training the next generation of STEM researchers in interdisciplinary methods to support improved climate impact services into the future. The highly translatable framework for predicting pest responses to climate change will ensure benefits beyond Australia.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Transforming international law for corporate climate accountability. Since 2021, major companies’ pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have doubled, but policymakers and firms alike see globally consistent rules as urgently needed to stop greenwashing and support accountability. This program aims to transform international law’s role in raising the ambition and ensuring delivery of companies’ climate promises. By designing implementation tools with policymakers and business, and training future climate leaders in this innovative approach, the program seeks to accelerate policy and law reform for rapidly cutting corporate emissions to net zero. This will position Australia as a leader in global efforts to secure a safe climate future, vital for protecting our vulnerable environment, economy and region. Field of research: 4803 - International and Comparative Law Corporate greenhouse emissions are a key driver of climate change and costly weather disasters. Australian companies contribute substantially to this carbon footprint: our top 10 coal and gas producers generate more emissions than Canada while the big 4 banks loaned $13.1B in 2021-2 to the fossil fuel industry. Over the same period, net zero pledges of major companies (including many in the ASX200) increased over two-fold but studies indicate these targets and their implementation are of poor quality. Policymakers and business leaders diagnose the problem similarly: a lack of clear, consistent global rules governing company action to address climate change is impeding efforts to hold non-performing companies accountable and inhibiting the proactive change needed to keep global warming within safe limits. By bringing together separate research areas, across different jurisdictions, this program aims to generate new knowledge on how international law can incentivise ambitious action and improve companies’ climate accountability. Working with policymakers and peak industry groups to co-design and apply international law tools will provide clear direction about the actions companies must take to align with global net zero goals. This program will place Australia at the forefront of action to accelerate effective corporate climate responses, supporting government efforts to step up international mitigation of climate harms, which acutely impact our environment, economy and region.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Understanding the immune response to mycoplasma vaccines. This project aims to address barriers to greater use of a novel vaccine against a common bacterial pathogen of poultry. The project expects to develop solutions to the challenges of efficaciously delivering the vaccine to day old chicks and of confirming protection in vaccinated flocks. The expected outcomes will include development of methods to vaccinate layer and meat chickens in the hatchery and assays to rapidly determine effective vaccination in the field. This should provide significant benefits by enhancing animal health, welfare and production, and public health, through greatly improved control of this pathogen and reduced use of antibiotics for control of the disease and production loss it currently causes in poultry flocks. Field of research: 3009 - Veterinary Sciences Mycoplasmas are bacteria that cause diseases that have considerable adverse impacts in agricultural animals, affecting animal health, welfare and productivity across Australia. Vaccines developed by the University of Melbourne and commercialised by Bioproperties Pty. Ltd. have been very successful in controlling mycoplasmas in chickens used for breeding, which can be vaccinated at an older age, but they cannot currently be used to protect egg- and meat-producing chickens, which need to be vaccinated at one day of age, in the hatchery. This project will develop methods to enable a new vaccine developed by the University of Melbourne and Bioproperties to be used to vaccinate chicks in the hatchery, and for assessing whether they have been effectively vaccinated, greatly improving control of an important pathogen in the poultry industry. This will provide a direct benefit to Australian poultry farmers, reducing their costs and improving their productivity, and to animal welfare, by improving the health of Australian chickens. It will also generate a greatly enhanced export market for an Australian veterinary biological product, particularly across Asia. In addition, the replacement of the use of antibiotics to control this pathogen with vaccination will have a global impact on reducing selection for antibiotic resistance in poultry, with concomitant impacts on public health, in Australia and globally.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Long-duration monitoring with teams of autonomous agents. This project aims to deliver fundamental knowledge by developing algorithms to support long duration surveillance missions using multiagent autonomous platforms. There are the significant challenges in monitoring Australia's remote coastline, and this project expects to provide capabilities that will assist in delivering more effective and efficient solutions than presently available. The project will also have significant spillover benefits into domains such as emergency response, precision agriculture and aquaculture where information gathered by autonomous systems can lead to better decision making. Furthermore, the proposal encompasses a strong research training aspect, with graduates exposed to leading edge industry and academia. Field of research: 4007 - Control Engineering, Mechatronics and Robotics Monitoring Australia's borders is extremely challenging given the length and remoteness of much of our coastline. Traditional surveillance using crewed flights is costly, inefficient, and sporadic. Although systems of unmanned vehicles have many advantages, to date they have not had the range required in Australia. New systems, however, are being developed that provide vehicles with the capability to recharge without returning to a base. These systems require advanced algorithms to control teams of unmanned vehicles and their recharging to undertake sustained surveillance missions. This project will address these significant theoretical advances. It will deliver novel algorithms with guaranteed performance to assist in understanding how to best monitor large areas using unmanned systems. To demonstrate both capability and to assist in their translation, research outcomes will be implemented in prototypes for unmanned systems developed by the partner organisations. Partner organisations will share both the algorithms and unmanned systems to Defence and more broadly, civilian fields such as precision agriculture, aquaculture, and emergency response. Thus, the project will have economic, social, and environmental benefits in areas of national importance.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Next-Generation Gas Turbines: Predicting Cooling with In-Service Realism. This project aims to transform our understanding of how roughness (manufacturing and operational) affects the complex cooling flows in gas turbines, to help meet the challenge of ever-growing air transport and power demands in an affordable and sustainable way. We will exploit the latest simulation advances to study realistic roughness effects on cooling flows at engine-relevant conditions and use unique machine-learning approaches to create new models. These knowledge breakthroughs and more accurate models will allow industry leader GE Aerospace to design next-generation turbines, capable of using clean fuels, to efficiently and reliably power the Australian aviation or energy sectors and benefit the Australian economy and environment. Field of research: 4012 - Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Engineering In Australia’s transition to net zero, we must reduce emissions from air transport and our electricity grid. Despite increasing research into electric engines for aircraft, gas turbines will be the only viable option for flights for Australians over the next decades. Gas turbines can also deliver grid stability when our renewable energy sources are intermittent. Fueled by hydrogen, new generation gas turbines will produce clean and affordable energy. However, hydrogen gas turbines will subject their components to even hotter temperatures and current industry design-tools are not reliable under the conditions we anticipate for their operation. Better accuracy of predictions is needed to ensure their safe and efficient operation. This project will develop new knowledge and better models to predict how cooling technologies are affected by rough surfaces resulting from operational wear and additive (or 3D) manufacturing. The innovative results of this research collaboration will have a clear pathway for adoption as the research partner, General Electric Aerospace, manufactures clean power generation solutions as well as the jet engines used in most Australian airliners. This research will contribute to Australia’s transition to renewable energy. By providing clean and affordable electricity and air transport, it will promote trade, tourism, and socioeconomic prosperity providing environmental, economic, commercial, and social benefits to Australia.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Using cognitive and affective science to dissect in-play gambling decisions. This project aims to investigate decision making in the context of 'in-play' gambling, a novel and widespread class of online gambling products. Using innovative methods rooted in computational cognitive science, this project will shed light on the cognitive and affective processes that underlie choice behaviour in in-play gambling, and will reveal how users' decision making is altered by the presence of in-play features within online gambling platforms. The expected project outcome is a quantitative psychological framework that describes how in-play gambling decisions are made. Project benefits include a behavioural evidence base that will inform future regulation in the gambling sector, thereby paving the way for community harm reduction. Field of research: 5204 - Cognitive and Computational Psychology The rise of app-based and online gambling platforms has fundamentally changed the ways that Australians engage with betting products. Online gambling platforms offer users a raft of new and under-regulated ‘in-play’ betting features that are not available at traditional brick-and-mortar bookmakers, such as rapidly placing bets during live events and ‘cashing out’ of bets before events have ended. Though popular with users, in-play betting has the potential to increase gambling-related harm by reinforcing constant engagement with gambling apps and encouraging more impulsive and risky betting behaviour. To effectively regulate in-play betting, however, policy-makers need to understand exactly how users engage with in-play betting products, and how these products contribute to gambling-related harm. This project will address this empirical gap by using the methods and tools of computational cognitive psychology to gather data on how people make in-play gambling decisions in a controlled and low-risk setting. This research will benefit Australians by building a knowledge base that informs future regulation and policy in the gambling sector, as well as by shedding light on the psychological processes that underlie risky decision making more broadly. Project outcomes will be translated to policymakers and regulators in the form of policy briefs and position statements, and will be used to build awareness and understanding of contemporary gambling products in the general public.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Intergenerational Stories of Statelessness: An Oral History Project. Statelessness – the status of having no citizenship – is a distinctive political condition that can have long-term, intergenerational effects; but these are currently understudied and largely unknown. This fellowship will investigate and assess the repercussions within the Australian population for descendants of formerly stateless people. Using oral history methodologies and archival research, the project aims to foreground these stories from marginalised and minority communities, thereby offering new knowledge about what citizenship and belonging can mean. Key benefits include empowerment of these communities by providing new opportunities to be heard, and rich information about what citizenship means to diverse groups of Australians. Field of research: 4303 - Historical Studies Many stateless people (i.e. people with the unique and significant status of being without citizenship) migrated to Australia in the 20th and 21st centuries, and their descendants and family members now live here. These descendants, their histories and their narratives, have barely been recognised as part of the national story of diverse communities who make up the population of this country. Nor have they or their stories been adequately documented or researched. My fellowship would rectify this significant research gap, thus positioning Australia at the forefront of the study of the long histories of statelessness. The project will reach beyond academia to the general public and to policy makers by producing a publicly-accessible archive of oral histories as well as new understandings of the complexities of life in Australia for diverse groups of people from migrant families. Highlighting personal, familial and collective stories, this project will provide social and cultural benefits through improved knowledge of migration, settlement processes, and patterns of community creation within the settler-colony of Australia. It will result in a book, articles for academic and general audiences, briefing documents for policy makers, and training materials for schools and universities. This novel work will be enabled by collaborating in part with the National Library of Australia and National Archives of Australia.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Understanding climate change beyond net-zero. We have a broad understanding of how the climate will evolve under continued greenhouse gas emissions, but we know surprisingly little about how the climate will behave if we achieve our policy goals and reach net-zero or net-negative emissions. This project aims to fill a major knowledge gap through using new earth system model simulations to investigate the evolution of regional climates, variability in the climate system and the likelihood of damaging extreme events under different net-zero and net-negative emissions scenarios. The goals of this work are to help prepare Australia for the climate changes we can expect from decarbonisation and to illustrate the climate impacts of humanity's choices in our path to a low-carbon future. Field of research: 3702 - Climate Change Science The international community, including Australia, is aiming to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions later this century. To date, climate science has been focussed on the implications of continued global warming, but net-zero or net-negative emissions would lead to global cooling. We currently have limited understanding of how the climate may evolve at the regional or local level under net-zero or net-negative emissions. This project will add crucial detail by examining how Australia's climate and our extreme events will change in a post net-zero future. This new knowledge will help us understand the consequences of taking different emissions pathways to achieve the policy goal of net-zero emissions and halting further global warming. This information will be beneficial to government and private industry in helping to understand the range of climates that Australia may face under net-zero and net-negative emissions pathways. The projections produced from this project will be of particular use to weather- and climate-sensitive businesses in understanding risks associated with different climate futures. Collaboration with CSIRO and federal and state agencies will ensure that the projections are utilised and that post-net-zero climate changes are understood by decision-makers.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Empowering Spatial Data Accessibility with Next-Generation Database Systems. Spatial data - data with location information - is being generated at an unprecedented rate as sensors become more ubiquitous. It is critical for location-based services, transportation, urban planning, and emergency management. However, using this data is constrained by outdated methods currently used, which are difficult to adapt with the emerging querying needs of non-expert users. By investigating querying methods that self-optimise for emerging query types, this project aims to develop next-generation spatial database systems with enhanced query capability and accessibility. Project outcomes will prepare Australia for emerging applications such as mixed reality and establish our leadership in the global geospatial analytics market. Field of research: 4605 - Data Management and Data Science The Information Technology sector contributed $167 billion to the Australian economy in 2021. Databases are critical to this sector. New technologies, such as Internet of Things and 5G networks, generate enormous amounts of spatial data, with location information, creating new opportunities for location-based services. New services include finding a scenic route from Sydney to Melbourne with fast-charging facilities for electric vehicles, for example. Yet, such complex queries are currently beyond the capabilities of existing database technologies that have been built for a predefined set of criteria and have a specialised user interface. This project will address the urgent need for spatial database systems with significantly enhanced querying capabilities and easy-to-access interfaces. It will develop a next-generation spatial database system powered by novel algorithms that can automatically analyse and process emerging complex queries. Findings will be conveyed to government and organisations through workshops and the media. An Australian next-generation spatial database system has commercial, economic, environmental, and social benefits. It will provide easy access to spatial data for better decision-making in daily living and novel location-based services. It could optimise decision-making nationally for urban design and evacuation planning, for example, by using spatial data for advanced analyses of plans, and hence protect properties, livelihoods, and lives.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Understanding and Defeating Leakage Attacks Against Encrypted Databases. This project aims to conduct a systematic investigation on leakage exploitation and corresponding mitigations for encrypted databases. Encrypted databases allow users to make confidential queries over encrypted data. Despite fruitful progress on improved efficiency and functionality, they face obstacles in leakage exploitation during deployment. This project expects to formally understand those obstacles and lay a foundation for designing mitigations. Expected outcomes will push forward the widespread adoption of encrypted databases in the real world, and will bring significant benefits for Australia, such as promoting data analytics in a privacy-preserving fashion and delivering new initiatives for cybersecurity-centric IT infrastructures. Field of research: 4604 - Cybersecurity and Privacy Encrypted databases are considered as a primary line of defence against ever-growing data breaches. They allow users to make confidential queries over encrypted data, reducing information disclosure to controlled leakage. Despite fruitful progress on enriched query types and improved efficiency, encrypted databases have not achieved widespread adoption. The legitimately admitted leakage can be exploited to recover queries and eventually devastate the system’s privacy guarantee. This project will identify obstacles of deploying encrypted databases in practice, and propose mitigations with rigorous security guarantees accordingly. The proposed technologies are capable of mitigating the threats of cybercriminals and providing encrypted and searchable data database solutions for enterprises, governments to secure end-users data. It enables Australia to strengthen cybersecurity sectors and further promote disruptive technologies such as cloud computing and data management services in a secure and privacy-preserving fashion. Apart from economic benefits, the outcome will enhance Australian cybersecurity capability, deliver new initiatives for cybersecurity-centric IT infrastructures, ease the privacy concern of the common society, and lay the cornerstone of building a privacy-preserving data-sharing economy in Australia. The research outcomes will be promoted to broad sectors such as CSIRO's Data61, OCSC, and BigTech like MongoDB for real-world deployment of encrypted databases.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Advancing research to support improved life expectancy in Australia. The project aims to advance knowledge about life expectancy in Australia by strengthening the policy utility of mortality statistics. This aim is significant because of concerns about the accuracy of mortality statistics to identify threats to continued life expectancy growth. The project will develop innovative methods using linked data to quantify under-reporting of cause-specific mortality and to measure mortality from co-morbidities and leading risk factors. Intended outcomes are improved evidence of levels, trends and inequalities of co-morbidities and leading risk factors of mortality. This is expected to provide essential evidence to inform programs to accelerate improvements and reduce inequalities in Australia's life expectancy. Field of research: 4403 - Demography Continued improvements in Australia's life expectancy are threatened by faltering premature chronic disease mortality decline and high obesity prevalence. However, there are concerns about the quality and policy utility of available mortality statistics in Australia to inform health programs to address these adverse trends. This project aims to improve the accuracy of the measurement of mortality in Australia by using innovative methods to analyse large linked datasets. The project's outcomes will provide improved evidence of levels, trends and socioeconomic inequalities of mortality from co-morbidities and leading risk factors in Australia. The project will address the Government's Science and Research Priority in health and benefit Australia by ensuring that the opportunities afforded by government investment in linked administrative datasets are fully exploited to advance knowledge and evidence of contemporary population health trends. The results will provide detailed mortality statistics that will be invaluable for health planners to develop health interventions and allocate resources. The project's collaboration with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) will provide the opportunity for results to be utilised in the Australian Burden of Disease Study. Stakeholder workshops will be conducted to present findings for AIHW’s extensive networks of policy makers who use burden of disease data as evidence to inform decision-making.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Deep-time history of culturally significant lands and waters in Timor-Leste. This project aims to provide a new framework for understanding and managing lands and waters of exceptional biological and cultural value. The project expects to generate the first long-term records of ecological change in Timor-Leste's unique forest and tropical savanna ecosystems, providing novel insights into ancient cultural landscapes threatened by climate change. Expected outcomes include enhanced collaboration between Australia and Timor-Leste and comprehensive data and educational resources relevant to managing climate impacts on livelihoods. This should provide significant benefits to scientific dialogue in the Asia-Pacific region and help support economic opportunities that respect indigenous environmental knowledge. Field of research: 3709 - Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience Climate change threatens local environments and agricultural practices that affect the livelihoods of millions of people in Australia and our surrounding regions. Identifying how environments have responded to change over time can inform the management of healthy ecosystems and food security. This project will bring together traditional knowledge and scientific practices to help local communities and governments in Timor-Leste understand how climate change has affected tropical ecosystems, water resources and agricultural production over thousands of years. It will show how people created productive and resilient landscapes in changing conditions. By working hand-in-hand with local communities, scientists and educators, the project will strengthen traditional knowledge to develop culturally appropriate ways of managing our region’s unique natural resources into the future. Doing so will benefit Australia by making our region more resilient to climate change and strengthening our neighbouring relationships through mutual recognition of our area’s rich cultural heritage.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Mid-infrared quantum dots for room temperature photodetectors and emitters. This project aims to develop new technologies for mid-wave infrared (MWIR) cameras based on quantum dots (QDs). These will include MWIR photodetectors based on QD-sensitised photodetectors and MWIR emitters based on QD electroluminescence devices. This project expects to generate new knowledge in MWIR QDs and in devices that sense and emit infrared light. Expected outcomes of the project include MWIR cameras that are smaller, lighter, lower in power consumption and cheaper than existing technologies. This project is expected to provide significant benefits, such as dramatic reductions in the cost of infrared cameras and sensors. The high cost of infrared cameras currently limits their use in Australia largely to defence. Field of research: 4018 - Nanotechnology This project aims to develop new technologies for infrared cameras based on quantum dots, which are particles with diameters 10000 times smaller than a human hair. It will develop new types of quantum dots, and incorporate them into devices that sense and emit infrared light. Existing technologies for infrared cameras are based on toxic materials, require cooling for good performance, and result in cameras that are large, heavy, power-hungry and of high cost. Quantum dots could enable infrared cameras that are smaller, lighter, lower in power consumption and cheaper. The proposed research will provide commercial benefit to Australians by dramatic reductions in the cost of infrared cameras and sensors. The high cost of infrared cameras currently limits their use in Australia to defence and selected government agencies. Reductions in cost would make infrared cameras available to others. Rural firefighters could benefit from being able to see through smoke. Search and rescue operations could benefit from being able see over long distances through fog. Farmers could benefit from images of crop fields that quantitatively reveal otherwise-hidden properties such as water uptake and plant health. The research will produce new patents, which we will seek to license to Australian industry, enabling commercial translation. We will publicise our work by seeking coverage in the popular press.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Using cognitive models to understand memorability of real world images. This proposal aims to understand and make predictions about which real world images -- specifically living things, objects, and human faces -- that people will remember remember via an integration of cognitive models of memory and machine learning techniques. Computer vision models and similarity scaling techniques will be used to produce psychological representations of the images. These representations will then be integrated with cognitive models of memory, which predict that images are more likely to be recognized if they are similar to each of the representations in memory. Large scale memory and similarity rating datasets will be used to develop and test the model. Field of research: 5204 - Cognitive and Computational Psychology The relationship between what we see and how we remember is important in everyday life. Existing research has found that some images are consistently well remembered while others are rarely remembered. The purpose of this proposal is to develop a model that can be used to understand why some images of objects, living things, and human faces are more memorable than others, which can be used to make predictions about what images people will remember or forget. We will use computer vision techniques to develop a cognitive model that predicts that images are more likely to be remembered if they are more similar to other learned images or if they possess more distinctive features. The model will improve our understanding of what makes an image memorable but it can also be used to predict which images will be best remembered and the extent to which an image's memorability depends on images that accompany it. This research could benefit advertisers attempting to construct memorable images, educators interested in producing memorable materials, or eyewitness memory practitioners who evaluate whether witnesses remember seeing a particular culprit. Research will be published in open access format and both data and model code will be publicly shared.

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Mathematical and computational methods for precision medicine in Acute... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Supporting Choice for Cervical Screening: Implementing HPV... Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2024 · 2024-01

If a spin could torque: quantum force sensing with levitated nanodiamonds. This project aims to detect the tiny twisting forces imparted by a single quantum spin on a host diamond nanocrystal levitating in vacuum. Our team will build both a hypersensitive detector of quantum rotations and the complex theoretical models for quantum spin systems coupled to the mechanical motion of nanometre-sized diamonds. The expected experimental capabilities and knowledge generated by this project will enable world-first measurements of quantum effects with unparalleled sensitivity and powerful new quantum sensing paradigms. The project should enable significant benefits, such as incisive tests of the limits of quantum theory and new Australian technology operating at the interface of the quantum and classical worlds. Field of research: 5108 - Quantum Physics This project aims to make the first measurement of an effect never before seen: a tiny twist imparted on a classical body by a single quantum object. Outcomes include the development of technology with unprecedented sensitivity to tiny rotations, and new knowledge of the fundamental limitations of quantum theory. The project will directly benefit Australia by delivering quantum-powered technology with disruptive economic and commercial potential for precision sensing of forces and rotations. Many crucial applications in aerospace, resource prospecting and defence stand to benefit from our innovations. The project will leverage existing technology translation pathways to maximise the likelihood of benefits, whereby new technologies harnessing fundamental quantum properties are moving from the research lab into industry. To enhance the already considerable public interest in quantum research we will continue to make our research accessible through social media (e.g. Twitter) and by writing for a non-scientific audience in publications such as The Conversation.

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Laboratory detection and clinical significance of the cefazolin inoculum... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Prospective Randomised Controlled Trial of Adult Patients with Perianal... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Laboratory detection and clinical significance of the cefazolin inoculum... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Advancing Effective Prevention and Management of the Cardiovascular... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Infection prevention and surveillance in Australian cancer and... Category: Medical Research

GrantConnect (Australian Government grants) · FY 2024 · 2024-01

Infection prevention and surveillance in Australian cancer and... Category: Medical Research