Flinders University

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

VITT and the adenovirus connection: unravelling the root cause of a... Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Unlocking latent reactivity in chemical synthesis via electrochemistry . This project seeks to establish new methods for the efficient preparation of organic compounds using direct inputs of electricity to unlock fundamental reactivity that is otherwise unattainable under mild conditions. Employing an integrated experimental and computational approach, we will design new chemical reactions in which simple electrochemical triggers transform stable and inexpensive precursors into highly reactive intermediates in a controlled fashion. Ultimately, this research will enable safer and greener manufacturing of high-value molecules, such as pharmaceuticals, that are central to improvements in human health and the quality of life enjoyed by modern society. Field of research: 3405 - Organic Chemistry Environmental sustainability is a major concern in the modern world and developing more sustainable processes represents a continuing challenge for the chemical industry and the global economy. Chemical synthesis underpins the chemical industry, one of Australia’s largest manufacturing sectors that contributes over $38 billion to GDP. This project will establish new reactions for the more efficient and environmentally benign synthesis of organic compounds, promoted simply by direct inputs of electricity. These original and fundamental advances in electrosynthesis will allow for the rapid and selective preparation of important organic molecules that are relevant to the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. Long-term practical outcomes for Australia will include the social and economic benefits that arise from making high-value compounds such as pharmaceuticals more readily available and associated production routes cheaper and more sustainable in the future. Our team will leverage our strong track record in promoting our research outcomes to the public via online and traditional media (e.g. Twitter, The Conversation, New Scientist, ABC radio), in addition to presenting our novel findings directly to industry, and in high-impact journals and at major conferences. The project also offers unique opportunities to train and develop emerging research leaders – the next generation of expert chemists who will advance contemporary methods for sustainable chemical synthesis.

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

Novel Tinnitus Management Combining Brain Stimulation and Hearing Aids... Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Pacific Powers: Imperial Competition and Cooperation in Micronesia. As geopolitical competition and conflict in the Pacific region grows, this project seeks to uncover the complex historical origins of this situation. It will assess why Micronesia has been the site of competing projects of power projection and how the people of the region have responded to radically different imperial powers. Using hitherto untapped archival materials in six different languages, it investigates how and why Micronesia was targeted and then conquered by the Spanish, the Germans, the Japanese and the United States before winning independence. In doing so, it seeks to offer a deeper understanding of our region, explaining why imperial competition in the Pacific has been the historical norm rather than the exception. Field of research: 4303 - Historical Studies Micronesia covers millions of square kilometres in the Pacific region north of Papua New Guinea. It is of immense economic, geostrategic and political importance to Australia. In his speech launching the National Defence Strategy in April 2024, Deputy PM Richard Marles stated “we have put the Pacific at the heart of our strategic policy where it belongs.' Before that, while visiting the Marshall Islands in 2022, Foreign Minister Penny Wong also said Australia had 'ignored the calls of our Pacific family' for too long. The importance of the Pacific was also confirmed in Australia's International Development Policy of 2023. For Australia to engage meaningfully with its Pacific neighbours and be able to promote regional peace, it must understand the region's complicated past. This project aims to deepen our historical understanding by asking why large powers, including Spain, Germany, Japan and the United States, have sought to control Micronesia, how they shaped the region; and what the legacies of this history are for Pasifika peoples. It will do so through an in-depth examination of archival materials by a multilingual team of leading specialists. This project will communicate its findings to different stakeholders in both scholarly outputs, such as books and journal articles, and in public forums such as the media and public lectures in Micronesia itself. It will also train a new cohort of experts who understand the history of international relations in the Pacific region.

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

Defining interactions of complement to uncover pan-therapeutic targets... Category: Medical Research

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

Evidence-based interventions for gaming disorder in adolescents and... Category: Medical Research

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

At the intersection: Sleep disorders, shift work and young driver safety Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Will Australia’s largest mine cause extinction of the Doongmabulla Springs? The Doongmabulla Springs Complex (DSC) in central Queensland supports 160 nationally important wetlands. High groundwater levels in unaltered aquifers sustain these springs. The Carmichael Coal Mine (CCM), 8 km east of the DSC, threatens to lower groundwater levels substantially. This project aims to understand the DSC's response to CCM-induced drawdown and its impact on spring flow and ecosystem health. Outcomes include comprehensive sediment datasets, aquifer-spring-wetland models, and key assessments of legal/policy and management instruments. The project’s critical insights for spring protection, hydrogeological modelling, and adaptive management will guide evidence-based protection measures for threatened springs locally and globally. Field of research: 3707 - Hydrology Located in central Queensland, the Doongmabulla Springs Complex (DSC) supports 160 nationally important wetlands. These are unique habitats hosting multiple endangered species including animals (koala, black-throated finch, Australian painted-snipe), plants, and ecosystems. The Carmichael Coal Mine (CCM), located 8 km east of the DSC, poses a significant threat to the groundwater levels that drive spring discharge. This project will offer crucial new insights into the DSC's response to CCM-induced drawdown and its impact on spring flow and ecosystems, findings that are relevant to thousands of similar spring systems across the Great Artesian Basin (GAB). Our research will deliver significant benefits to Australia. Economically and commercially, it will reduce uncertainty in environmental impacts, lowering investigation costs for future agricultural and mining developments, thereby encouraging investment in the Galilee Basin. Environmentally, the research will aid in protecting the Doongmabulla Springs Complex as a vital wetland habitat, as well as enhancing adaptive management strategies for similar ecosystems. Culturally, it will help preserve the traditional ceremonies of the Wangan and Jagalingou people, strengthening ties between traditional landholders and conservation efforts. Outreach and dissemination of outcomes will extend across the full project lifespan, including suites of stakeholder and agency briefings, policy briefs, open data, and broader public media.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Thinking outside the lunchbox: societal value of school meals in Australia. Australia’s school food system is failing to nourish our children. This project will test a new approach to school-based health promotion; an inclusive, equitable school-lunch program that provides fuel for learning, social environments for connection, and teaches children about food systems. The research will compare school-provided lunch programs to quantify their effectiveness, scalability, sustainability, financial viability and societal value. It will develop a sustainable business model using holistic assessment of child learning and wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and economic outcomes. This will drive systems change to support all Australian families by transforming how schools feed children and teach them about food. Field of research: 4206 - Public Health The current school food system does not support children’s learning, wellbeing, food literacy or sustainable food practices. With over 4million Australian children consuming over 9.6billion lunches at school, this is a missed opportunity. Our project aims to assess a universal cohesive school-meal program in a multi-state trial across Australia—a drastic shift from parental burden to a multi-benefit business opportunity. Our alliance of partners with expertise in food systems, education, communication and evaluation bring a new approach to school-meals. Our approach has potential to benefit Australians economically and commercially (positive social return on investment, job opportunities and partnerships for meal provision), socially (child learning, socio-emotional development, food literacy skills), environmentally (sustainability of school food systems, reduced food waste) and culturally (creating positive food culture across school communities). Working closely with partners will aid implementation feasibility and adoption across states, ensuring longevity and outcomes beyond the initial project.

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

Contesting Conquests: Pre-Modern Attempts to Come to Terms with the Past Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

New horizons for synthetic phages. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria increasingly threaten agriculture, livestock, and human health. Phages, viruses that kill bacteria, can be a solution. This program aims to deliver innovative experimental and computational phage tools and generate new knowledge in phage genomics and biology to analyse, create, manipulate, and control phages. Expected outcomes include discovering novel phage functions, new techniques to synthesise and control phages, and powerful genome-annotation methods. These significant advances in bioinformatics and synthetic biology will create phages that can save lives, treat livestock, protect our crops, and control environmental bacteria, making impactful contributions to the global antimicrobial resistance crisis. Field of research: 3102 - Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Our National Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy highlights the Australian government’s priority to effectively address antibiotic-resistant bacteria threatening food safety, human and animal health, and our natural environment. Phages are viruses that kill bacteria. Commercial phage preparations are used in Australia to prevent food and beer spoilage and protect crops from diseases. Phages I have isolated already help in treating otherwise incurable diseases. However, we need innovative AI-powered computational and experimental tools and synthetic biology to design and create more useful phages. This Laureate Fellowship will deliver new bioinformatics-driven approaches to synthesise phages, unlock their new capabilities by precisely manipulating their genomes, identify new protein functions, and control their interactions in microbial communities. The new synergistic bioinformatics-and-biology toolbox will design safe phages against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, enhancing health security in Australia and beyond. It will reduce economic loss from antibiotic resistance and open commercial opportunities in the global phage market, enabling healthier and more sustainable agricultural and livestock practices by reducing antibiotic use. Its impact will be achieved through my engagements with policymakers and industry partners, media outreach, public outreach through workshops, and capacity-building research collaborations to ensure translation and broad adoption.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Invisible Ramp: A Job-Matching Navigation for Disability Employment. This Fellowship aims to co-design a novel, accessible, and effective job-matching navigation model for individuals with cognitive disability; leveraging a strengths-based approach and conceptual pillars of access, inclusive practice, professionalisation, and socio-economic engagement. Design of the model and a proof-of-concept job-matching digital tool – to find the best suited jobs in diverse workplaces for candidates with cognitive disability – will draw on essential insights from key Australian stakeholders. Significant benefits for Australia are expected in diversity, equity, and inclusion; diagnostics for workplace accessibility improvements; time and cost efficiency; and supporting the employability of people with disability. Field of research: 3505 - Human Resources and Industrial Relations This Fellowship proposes a novel job-matching navigation model to help people with cognitive disability understand their strengths (i.e. skills, interests), preferences (employment types), and support needs. Current job matching – which relies on ineffective theories of pre-job and post-job profiling and evaluation – has led to many unsuccessful employment experiences both for employers and people with cognitive disability or a gap in successful job matching approaches. This Fellowship addresses this gap and adopts a strengths-based approach, using co-design with potential end-users (individuals with cognitive disability, job coaches, and employers) to innovate in service model design and generate a proof-of-concept digital job-matching tool with accessibility features for the end-users. Tool design will be evaluated and optimised for usability and accessibility. Project outcomes will support people with cognitive disability in gaining employment that meets their skills and aspirations. Employers can enhance their understanding of accessibility requirements and broaden their labour market access. Australia's disability employment support sector will benefit by amplifying its work on employing people with disability, enhancing their clients' job satisfaction and financial and personal well-being. Co-design and wide dissemination of findings via national networks, combined with tool commercialisation pathways led by the industry partner, will help maximise long-term impact.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

ARC Training Centre for Advancing Archaeology in the Resources Sector. This Centre aims to transform cultural heritage management in the resources sector by advancing the integration of archaeological expertise with mining activities. The Centre will use cutting-edge technologies and mining-specific frameworks to enhance archaeological outcomes in collaboration with Australia’s largest resources companies, Traditional Owners, and cultural heritage consulting firms. Expected outcomes include a new generation of archaeologists and mining leaders skilled in balancing mining impacts, cultural heritage and social responsibility. This project will help facilitate Australia’s critical minerals strategy, safeguard Indigenous cultural heritage, and advance sustainable, culturally-informed resource management. Field of research: 4301 - Archaeology Australia’s mining industry is the largest contributor to the national economy, however overlaying much of our mineral wealth is an extraordinary 65,000 year record of living Aboriginal culture. This intersection can result in disagreement between mining companies and Indigenous peoples over the threat to their irreplaceable cultural heritage and can cause costly delays to mining project development. This Centre will address these challenges by training a new generation of archaeologists and mining industry leaders who excel at balancing the impacts and benefits of resource extraction with cultural and social responsibility. We will use cutting-edge research to generate more accurate and cost-effective archaeological surveys, develop best-practice cultural heritage management frameworks for the mining industry, create training and professional development courses, and pioneer new ways of communicating the significance of cultural heritage to operational and executive-level decision makers. Outcomes will be shared via a broad array of media, academic publications and through our network of industry, Indigenous and research leaders. This work benefits all Australians, especially Indigenous peoples seeking to safeguard their rich cultural heritage. It will also strengthen Australia’s approach to responsible mining as it enters a new phase of critical and strategic mineral resource extraction.

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

New health economic tools for improving the health and wellbeing of... Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Strategies for engaging vulnerable young men in health and social services. Australian boys and young men are regarded as risk takers and reluctant to seek help; traits perceived to jeopardise their engagement with supportive health and social services. In addition, the professionals within these services are often poorly equipped to engage boys and young men when they do seek help. This Fellowship, collaborating with Movember, government, non-government, peak bodies and Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, will co-design novel evidence-based, equitable, age-appropriate, gender-transformative, and culturally-responsive strategies, tools and frameworks that enable vulnerable and marginalised adolescent boys and young men to access, and engage with, health and social services in Australia more effectively. Field of research: 4206 - Public Health Adolescent boys and young men (ABYM) frequently engage in risky behaviours and are reluctant to seek help. This results in preventable patterns of morbidity and premature mortality, including high rates of suicide among ABYM. This Fellowship aims to co-design evidence-based strategies that support ABYM (aged 15-25 yrs) – particularly vulnerable populations (e.g. Indigenous; rural and remote) - to more effectively engage with health and social services in Australia. It will also help to sustain educational engagement, increase economic participation, and reduce crime and incarceration levels among ABYM. Through an explicit focus on mental well-being, harm minimisation from alcohol and other drugs, and the prevention of gender-based violence, this project will generate more equitable, age-appropriate, gender-transformative, and culturally-responsive strategies and frameworks. Government agencies, NGOs, and health and social services will benefit from new evidence and world-first innovations co-designed by, and for the benefit of, ABYM – helping to support their health and social outcomes at an individual level. In turn, positive impacts on the health, social and economic outcomes of families, communities and broader Australian society are also expected. This will be advanced in collaboration with industry partners through co-development of end-user guides; bolstering university curricula; creation of new evidenced-based programs/services; and targeted policy reforms.

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

Including influence activity in complex conflict modelling Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

The central role of lipids in bacterial pathogenesis Category: Medical Research

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

New catalysts to harness electricity and light for chemical synthesis Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

New catalysts to harness electricity and light for chemical synthesis Category: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research

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

Impact and mechanisms of night-to-night variability in sleep apnoea... Category: Medical Research

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

PhageMesh: using phages to make surgical mesh resist infection. Category: Medical Research

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

Evidence-based interventions for gaming disorder in adolescents and... Category: Medical Research

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Tackling the consumption of sexual violence on screen. The explosion of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) and child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) online is causing significant harm and presenting regulatory quandaries. Australia would be better prepared to tackle this escalating issue equipped with deep understanding of how the intersection of sexual violence and screen media has been conceptualised and regulated in other media (film, television and video games) and translated to online content. This research will advance our ability to prevent IBSA and CSEM consumption by investigating institutional discourses across media regulators (in Australia and overseas) and enhancing the cross-national and cross-sectoral dialogue on how to best address the consumption of sexual violence on screen. Field of research: 3605 - Screen and Digital Media Australian society and regulatory agencies are faced with the rapidly evolving and expanding issue of image-based sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation material. The online circulation of images produced by these forms of technology-facilitated sexual violence are causing significant harms to individuals (including emotional distress, trauma, stigmatisation, and impacts on relationships and employment) and to society (reinforcing gender inequality, sexualisation of children, and erosion of online safety and trust in digital platforms). This research seeks to build innovative and effective approaches to mitigating the harms posed by widespread consumption of sexually violent screen content. Tackling sexual violence is an Australian government priority and this research aligns with the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032 in its call to embed prevention in media and the arts and with the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse 2021–2030 in its attention to online abuse. The rigorous assessment of content regulation approaches undertaken in this project will underpin more effective approaches to policy and prevention to benefit Australians through a reduction in sexual violence and media harms. The communication and translation of research outcomes will be maximised through an international summit and policy report, a multi-stakeholder forum, and community outreach including a national roadshow and a podcast series.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2025 · 2025-01

New catalysts to harness electricity and light for chemical synthesis. New catalysts capable of harnessing electricity and visible light will be synthesised, extensively characterised, and used to develop new chemical reactions. The result will be catalysts that are more efficient and robust, enabling access to valuable molecules. The production of these catalysts will enable a better understanding of the intrinsic electrochemical and photophysical processes involved in electrophotocatalysis. The development of new synthetic methodology using these catalysts will enable a sustainable method to streamline access to large libraries of chemical compounds that are valuable especially to the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, textile industries and more. Field of research: 3402 - Inorganic Chemistry Artificially produced chemicals are a crucial component in many industrial processes, such as pharmaceuticals, agriculture, textiles, and the food industry to name a few, contributing significantly to the Australian economy. However, the synthesis of such chemicals is one of the largest industrial energy consumers and producers of CO2 emissions. This project will investigate novel ways of producing chemicals using renewable energy sources such as electricity and light in the manufacturing process. Currently, there are very few chemical manufacturing processes capable of using electricity and light, and those that do exist, have very low efficiencies. Australians will benefit from environmental improvements that will follow from the outcomes of this project through reduced energy consumption and CO2 production, and from the positive economic impact of the discovery of new, industry relevant artificial chemicals, for example, in the form of new medicines, fertilisers, and textiles. To ensure that the significant potential commercial impact is realised, the outcomes of the research will be shared with relevant industry professional bodies and directly with selected industry partners who are in a position to commercialise the discoveries. Outcomes will be shared publicly through media engagement and outreach programs such as The Conversation.

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

New health economic tools for improving the health and wellbeing of... Category: Medical Research