MONASH UNIVERSITY

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Towards automated Australian Sign Language translation. This project aims to address the computational modelling of Auslan. The project expects to generate knowledge by creating the largest Auslan dataset, enabling further advancements in this research area. The dataset will also play an essential role in other research fields, e.g., sign linguistics. Expected outcomes include the invention of the first Auslan recogniser and generator capable of distinguishing and synthesising 1000+ signs, representing a substantial advancement towards fully automated Auslan translation. This should provide significant benefits for the Australian Deaf community, such as high-quality digital systems for education and communication, resulting in increased quality of life and inclusion in the Australian society. Field of research: 4608 - Human-Centred Computing The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that many Australians use Australian Sign Language (Auslan) to communicate and need qualified interpreters. This project aims to develop technologies for the recognition and generation of Auslan, making significant progress toward fully automated Auslan translation. The project will address some of the practical challenges outlined in the Australian Government’s National Disability Strategy and Roadmap for Hearing Health. The Australian Deaf community will benefit from high-quality applications for enhanced education and communication, resulting in increased quality of life and inclusion in society. An anticipated use of the research in education of the developed technologies is a smartphone and computer-based applications for sign language skill acquisition and practice. The project will also build the foundations for use of the technologies in more advanced communication instances, including cheap and effective real-time, on-screen spoken language translation during newscasts and emergency broadcasts.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Reliable Integration of Distributed Low-Carbon Energy Resources. This project aims to generate new knowledge that will facilitate the integration of low-carbon distributed energy resources into electricity grids. This project expects to advance the theory, algorithms, and methods in the area of smart grids using innovative approaches of optimisation and data analytics. Expected outcomes of this project include novel algorithms and tools to enable the reliable integration of low-carbon distributed energy resources and unlock their value in electricity grids. This should provide significant benefits, such as affordable electricity for Australian consumers, improvements in the reliability of grids in Australia, and increased and more effective use of sustainable energy for emission reduction. Field of research: 4008 - Electrical Engineering This project aims to generate new knowledge that will improve the reliability of renewable electricity and accelerate the integration of household-produced energy into the electricity grid. By designing and modelling new smart electricity grids, this project will better integrate and utilise Australia’s distributed energy resources, such as rooftop solar panels and electric vehicles. With new models of how Australians use energy, this project will produce better tools and software to manage energy production and use. As the Australian electricity market moves away from fossil fuels, this project will unlock financial rewards to households providing energy directly into the grid from household energy generation and enable Australians to enjoy cheaper and more reliable electricity while ensuring the Australian electricity grids remain secure. By highlighting new energy and financial incentives to Australians, the project will also facilitate faster adoption of distributed renewable energy resources and play an important role in meeting Australia’s long-term carbon emission reduction goals.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Variational Inference for Intractable and Misspecified State Space Models. State space models (SSMs) are popularly used to model economic variables such as inflation and financial volatility. Variational inference is a technique that allows for fast implementation of SSMs, but whose properties are yet to be understood. This project aims to study the properties of variational inference for SSMs used in economics. This research will develop new variational inference techniques to improve inferential and predictive accuracy from SSMs. An expected implication of this project is that it will expand the ability of economic institutions to employ larger SSMs, which will allow for more accurate models for economic variables. This will provide significant social benefits by leading to better informed economic policy. Field of research: 3802 - Econometrics Important economic institutions such as The Reserve Bank of Australia, employ complex economic models (that have thousands of parameters and millions of data points) to produce predictions of key economic variables and subsequently help them inform economic policy. This project will develop faster statistical methods to estimate the parameters of these complex economic models. The project will also investigate the properties of these new methods and assess their accuracy with the goal of producing faster and more precise predictions. The advances from this project will provide new methods to produce faster and more accurate predictions of key economic variables, such as inflation and economic growth. This will provide institutions, such as the Reserve Bank, with a new tool for the design of effective fiscal and monetary policy that will generate benefit for all Australians.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Achieving true representation of Indigenous people in nursing and midwifery. This project aims to address an absence of true representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and knowledges in nursing and midwifery. Significantly it intends to co-create an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurse and midwife theory and principles for practice. An anticipated goal of the research is to better understand how the theory and practice can be implemented in nurse and midwifery education (inclusive of clinical settings) in regional and urban areas. The intended outcome is to provide improved cultural safety in nursing and midwifery, greater cultural safety for health consumers and; stronger recruitment and retention of Indigenous nurses and midwives. Field of research: 4504 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Wellbeing This project seeks to improve representation of Aboriginal and Torre Strait Islander peoples in the professions of nursing and midwifery, where they are currently underrepresented. The project will create an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nursing and midwifery theory and principles for practice which addresses a vital gap in current healthcare provision. The outcomes will contribute to improved cultural safety for patients engaging with healthcare in urban and regional areas. The research will complement and intensify current nurse and midwifery student and workforce retention and recruitment strategies. This will build boost healthcare engagement preventing likelihood and progression of, as well as complications from, illness. Ultimately this will contribute to cost savings for the health system but also impact positively on healthcare workforces' wellbeing.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century. ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century. This Centre aims to determine how Australia’s weather is being reshaped by climate change. Through a fusion of innovative analyses of observations and fundamental science advances, alongside the development of ultra-high resolution climate models, the Centre looks to address climate science’s grand challenge in anticipating the likely weather patterns of a warmer world. The Centre strives to transform climate research by focussing on what matters most to making critical adaptation and mitigation decisions – weather change. The Centre aspires to provide Australia with the knowledge, technology, and human capital for robust evidence-based decision-making in response to future weather changes in our region and to harness weather as a resource. Field of research: 3701 - Atmospheric Sciences The warming of the Earth with climate change will change our day-to-day weather, an important resource on which our lives depend. The availability of water to drink and grow food, as well as the wind and sunshine to power our net-zero economy, will undergo significant changes that we cannot currently predict. This Centre will discover how climate change will affect our future weather resources. In partnership with leading Australian businesses, governments as well as Australia’s Climate Service, the Centre will develop insights and tools to answer critical questions such as where to best place wind and solar farms, where to grow food and collect water, and how to prepare communities for future weather change. In doing so, the Centre will underpin the critical decisions we need to make to safeguard and improve the prosperity and resilience of Australia and its people.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Eliminating violence against women is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. Awareness of the problem has grown exponentially, but solutions to it have not. This Centre aims to transform our understanding of the problem by examining the structural drivers that cause and compound violence against women, and pioneering new, evidence-based approaches to radically improve policy and practice across Australia and the Indo-Pacific. The Centre mobilises survivor-centric and Indigenous methodologies, interdisciplinary collaborations, and Indo-Pacific partnerships to deliver scalable approaches to eliminate violence against women across the legal, security, economic, health, and political systems of Australia and the region. Field of research: 4408 - Political Science Violence against women costs Australia $26 billion every year, with significant social costs to the entire community. Despite the enormity of the issue, the root causes of violence against women are poorly understood. Working closely with practitioners and Indigenous leadership across Australia and the Indo-Pacific, this Centre will generate new knowledge to understand the causes of violence against women. The Centre will be the first to take a comprehensive approach to the issue, investigating violence in homes, workplaces and online for communities across the region. Findings will be developed with industry partners into scalable programs, including community-led prevention programs and app-based interventions for perpetrators and bystanders, to create lasting change and improve the lives of women. Bringing together researchers and practitioner groups, the Centre will empower front-line responders and communities to adopt evidence-based approaches that ensure women’s safety in Australia and the region. The long-term impact is healthier, safer communities, and reduced economic burden.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

High-Precision Mass Spectrometry Imaging Facility. This proposal aims to build an advanced chemical mapping facility through the acquisition of high-resolution ion mobility mass spectrometry instrumentation capable of 2D/3D spatial analysis using laser desorption/ionisation, from centimetre (whole tissues) to micrometer (sub-cellular) scale. This facility will create a concentration of world leading expertise in spatial chemical phenotyping from diverse fields including nanofabrication, chemical engineering, systems-biology, drug discovery, environmental ecology, agricultural biosciences and diagnostic sciences. The facility will enable translational research by applying breakthroughs in chemical synthesis, nanofabrication, bioconjugation, proteomics and metabolomics to spatial systems. Field of research: 3401 - Analytical Chemistry This project will build a new mass spectrometry tool for biochemical analysis. The proposed equipment brings a key advance to spatial analytical techniques with integrated ion mobility. These aspects will allow highly specific identification of novel chemical species in complex mixtures, tissues and environmental devices. This new analytical capability will benefit research in chemical synthesis, nanomaterials, advanced engineering, biosciences and environmental sciences. It will for example be used to understand the biology of climate-change resistant coral and gain important insights into the composition of bioengineered 3D tissue cultures. The new equipment will allow for increased translation of research and the creation of valuable intellectual property. Existing related projects that are being commercialised include a highly sensitive method for illicit drug detection. The location of the equipment in an open-format NCRIS facility (ANFF, Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication) enables ready access for the national research community.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Visualising chromatin changes in 3 dimensions: super to ultra resolution. Packaging of genomic information into the nucleus of a cell necessitates the formation of tightly compacted and highly organized genomic structures within the nucleus, a configuration that is inherently repressive for gene transcription. Hence, mechanisms that alter the spatial organisation of DNA are critical to enable a variety of genome functions, including DNA transcription. This proposal will utilise novel adaptations of super resolution microscopy to visualise in 3 dimensions how changes in chromatin modifications impact genome spatial organisation within the nucleus, and how this then links to cellular differentiation. This will provide a picture of how spatial organisation within the nucleus supports general cell differentiation. Field of research: 3105 - Genetics This project will investigate how cells in the immune system develop. It will identify how the location of genetic material in each cell affects the role it takes on, and which markers influence where the genetic material is located. Because immune cells detect and respond to infection, a deeper understanding of how specific immune cells develop could be harnessed by biotechnology companies to design and engineer specific cell types for use in immunotherapies. These processes are also likely to be used by many body systems and cell types and therefore could be harnessed for broader tissue engineering applications, such as stem cell therapies, wound repair and food production, contributing directly to animal health, advanced manufacturing, and economic productivity in Australia.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

How are sperm mitochondria eliminated after fertilisation . The fact that mitochondria are inherited exclusively through the maternal germ-line is fundamental feature of sexual reproduction in all but a few organisms. This uni-parental inheritance is thought to prevent genetic conflict between different mitochondrial genomes. The mechanisms controlling uniparental inheritance involve eliminating the sperm mitochondria soon after fertilisation. We will investigate 2 possible mechanisms, (1) active destruction and (2) passive dilution. The results will help explain how heteroplasmy is avoided in order to maintain the fitness of organisms including animals and humans. The results will have long term insights into improving breeding in agriculture and in the prevention of mitochondrial genetic disease. Field of research: 3109 - Zoology In mammals, an embryo is formed when an egg is fertilised by a sperm. Most of the genetic material is in a compartment called the nucleus: the egg provides half, and the sperm the other half. Eggs also contain numerous mitochondria, a type of mini organ (organelle) that produces energy within cells. Mitochondria have their own genetic material, but this is inherited only from the mother. It is unclear how mammals eliminate the sperm mitochondria after the egg is fertilised. This project aims to gain a better understanding of how mammals inherit a uniform set of mitochondria from a single parent, which is important for healthy embryos. This knowledge will inform our understanding of how mitochondria are regulated, including in response to stress and other challenges from the environment. The research findings could be used by veterinary reproductive technologists to inform breeding and cloning strategies for improving livestock quality. In addition to benefiting the agriculture sector, the findings could ultimately pave the way to preventing mitochondrial disease by using mitochondrial replacement therapy.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

High activity catalysts for CO2 recycling to valuable chemical products. This proposal targets the development of novel porous solid catalysts, containing highly dispersed metal clusters that provide exceptional activity for the conversion (recycling) of carbon dioxide to fuels and other higher value chemical products. These novel materials will improve the productivity and/or reduce the energy required to facilitate the CO2 conversion, thereby reducing costs for industry, whilst also providing environmental benefit by carbon dioxide utilisation. Field of research: 4004 - Chemical Engineering This project seeks to create new materials (catalysts) that will substantially improve the ability to utilise carbon dioxide emissions by converting them to valuable fuel and chemical products. The high activity catalysts produced will enable reduced capital and operating costs associated with these chemical conversion processes. It will also provide the prospect of new business ventures for the preparation of these novel materials. The ability to recycle carbon dioxide to hydrocarbon products will also help to reduce the nation's dependency on fossil fuel resources and simultaneously help reduce carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere. The ability to produce hydrocarbon fuels using local carbon dioxide resources will assist to improve national security around liquid fuels supply.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

A Transdimensional Approach to Gravitational-Wave Astronomy. This project uses ripples in the fabric of spacetime––gravitational waves––to understand the cosmos and the fundamental nature of reality. We aim to discover new sources of gravitational waves from exploding stars. Using gravitational waves from colliding black holes, we aim to uncover new physics beyond Einstein's theory of general relativity. To achieve these goals we will develop tools from the cutting-edge of data science. Field of research: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences This project is about ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves. Using observations of gravitational waves, we aim to uncover new physics beyond Einstein's theory of gravity. We will achieve this by developing a new technique from data science called transdimensional sampling. This technique has been successfully employed in a variety of fields, from astrophysics to climate change to medical science. As scientific models become more complicated, it is poised to become indispensable. This project will create publicly available transdimensional sampling software, enabling scientists and engineers to analyse data with new, more sophisticated models, particularly those required to generate new knowledge about the cosmos. These powerful data-analysis tools will be made broadly available through pre-existing collaborations with industry, particularly data science companies. Uptake of these new models in the finance and banking sector, for example, could lead to more accurate predictions from complex financial datasets, to underpin improved investment decision making.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Extracting energy from air: mechanism of a bacterial hydrogenase. The atmosphere has recently been shown to be a key source of energy for diverse soil bacteria. Bacteria use complex enzymes, namely Huc-type hydrogenases, to harvest atmospheric hydrogen directly from air to support growth and survival. However, little is known about how Huc functions within and outside cells. By synergising expertise in microbiology, biochemistry, and chemistry, we will resolve the mechanism, assembly, and integration of Huc, including the basis of its remarkably high affinity and oxygen insensitivity compared to previously studied hydrogenases. This project will enable biotechnological applications, as the first study of an enzyme that extracts energy from air, and has broad ecological and biogeochemical implications. Field of research: 3101 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology The soil contains large numbers of bacteria, which carry out important tasks, such as making nutrients for plants. Recently, soil bacteria were found to make energy from the air: they make a molecule that allows them to take hydrogen from the atmosphere and use it for energy. This project will increase our knowledge of how this molecule works, including how it turns hydrogen into energy, how individual copies of the molecule interact with each other and work together, where the molecule is located in a bacterial cell, and which other pathways related to energy production it might interact with. Through a productive collaboration with a biotechnologist, this knowledge will be harnessed to engineer this molecule as a biocatalyst, with the aim of producing energy from hydrogen in the air. This research could ultimately lead to this molecule being used to produce renewable energy to power our homes and to reduce carbon emissions in sectors such as transport and infrastructure. This work will also contribute to Australia’s developing hydrogen industry and therefore has significant economic potential.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Mapping Australians' Media Use and Civic Attitudes. This project would address the need to better understand how patterns of media consumption in Australia are correlated with knowledge about current events, civic attitudes, and political polarisation. It would provide the first empirical study of the relationship in a fast changing media environment between the ways Australians access information about the news, their knowledge of current events, and their expressed civic values. Significant benefits include a greater understanding of how Australians use the media to stay informed and how these practices shape values of crucial concern to democratic participation and deliberation. The findings would be shared through white papers, academic and public-facing publications, and workshops. Field of research: 4701 - Communication and Media Studies The increasing spread of false information online and associated increases in political polarisation are corrosive to Australian civic and political life. Calls to regulate media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube in order to address this problem raise untested questions about the relationship between changing patterns of media use, political extremism and social fragmentation. This project aims to provide the first systematic study that investigates the relationship between Australians’ media use, their knowledge of current events, and civic attitudes and values. Results from the project will help inform the Australian public, government, policy makers, journalists, and regulatory bodies including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The project will help inform policy making and regulation to better serve Australian social and political needs. The project’s findings will be shared publicly through public workshops, online resources, and mainstream media communications.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Beautiful strings. This project aims to carry out several key experimental measurements, in tandem with substantial theoretical work, to improve the understanding and physical modelling of processes involving b quarks, also called beauty quarks, which are of intense current interest for experiments across the globe. Key theoretical innovations include novel treatments of electromagnetic corrections, novel theoretical formulations of the dominant physical paradigm of string fragmentation, and optimisations of key associated algorithms to enable new applications of broad relevance. Experimental measurements will be carried out to validate the new theoretical developments and use them to minimise theoretical uncertainties. Field of research: 5107 - Particle and High Energy Physics In basic science, subtle differences between theory and experiment can herald the discovery of new natural laws, with implications for deep questions asked by adults and children alike: what is the universe made of, and what are the laws that govern it from beginning to end? Complex data sets, like those of modern particle physics, call for sophisticated computer simulations to reliably interpret the results. This project will produce a set of new computational models that will allow to tell the "new" from the "known" more decisively, to address the big questions with greater confidence. The project targets specific areas in which tantalising differences have been observed, which will lead to newspaper headlines if confirmed. Particularly efficient methods will be developed, which reduce computational resource requirements, and which have downstream applications in data science. As these are communicated in multidisciplinary settings, they can benefit other simulation-heavy disciplines such as finance and risk modelling, with efficient models leading to reduced environmental and economic costs.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Defining novel immune checkpoints controlled by stromal cells. This project seeks to use innovative approaches to elucidate the mechanisms that define the earliest steps required to generate immune responses. The proposal builds on discoveries, including novel preliminary data, from a team with world-leading expertise in immunology, virology and stromal cell biology. The expected findings will provide fundamental insights into novel cellular and molecular interactions between stromal tissue components and immune cells that initiate and regulate immune responses. Expected benefits include fundamental advances in knowledge, as well as insights that will ultimately benefit biotechnology and therapeutic applications, and in this way support research priorities linked to advanced manufacturing and health. Field of research: 3204 - Immunology T cells are part of the immune system and are important defenders against threats such as viruses and bacteria. To respond, T cells must be turned on. A key step in this process is when T cells interact with the cells that detect the threats, which are called dendritic cells. We recently found that this interaction is affected by a third cell type, called stromal cells. This project will define how stromal cells affect the responses of T cells. Investigating these early steps of the immune response will improve our understanding of the molecules that are involved, and how some viruses hide from the immune system. Through industry collaborations, this knowledge will be used to develop and improve vaccine design and therapies that rely on T cells being turned on or off. Such therapies can be applied to animals, including livestock, as well as humans. The outcome of this research could therefore ultimately benefit Australia’s primary industries and health sectors.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

The physiological importance of GLP-1R and GIPR dimerisation. Cell surface receptors are vital for relaying information from hormones to the cell to influence cell function, and ultimately physiological responses. Receptors can form oligomers with other receptors, but whether this can influence cellular and physiological responses is not yet defined. This biology-based project aims to bridge this knowledge gap by studying the dimerisation between two related receptors involved in whole body metabolic homeostasis. Our team will deliver new knowledge into the disciplines of pharmacology, cellular biology, metabolism and physiology, and provide interdisciplinary research training to students and junior scientists, and strengthen research collaboration within and outside of Australia. Field of research: 3214 - Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences In mammals, metabolic function is controlled by groups of hormones. Hormones trigger processes that maintain health by binding to structures on cells called “receptors”. There are particular types of receptors involved in regulating metabolism, such as maintaining an appropriate level of glucose. These receptors can directly interact with other receptors of the same type, or of different types. The particular make-up of these groups of receptors can change the physiological outcome triggered by hormone binding. There is a crucial knowledge gap in understanding how this takes place. This project will determine how different receptors arrangements regulate metabolic processes. These insights will be important for understanding receptor and hormone function. The new knowledge generated will be of fundamental importance to pharmacology, cellular biology, metabolism and physiology. The findings generated will inform approaches to deliver new types of drugs for the management of metabolic diseases such as diabetes. This research will be of benefit to Australia’s biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Structure and dynamics of class B1 G protein coupled receptors . Cells within our body require cell surface proteins (receptors) to convert extracellular stimuli into an appropriate biological response. G protein-coupled receptors are the largest group of cell surface receptors. This project focuses on a subset of these receptors that have diverse and important functions in the central nervous system and the periphery, however there are many unanswered questions regarding the structure of these proteins, and how they regulate cellular signalling. The primary outcomes of this project will provide detailed mechanistic insights on how receptors bind their stimuli and how this results in in their activation to mediate fundamental signalling that is important for all living organisms. Field of research: 3101 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology G-coupled protein receptors (GPCRs) are a group of proteins on the surface of human cells and are how cells interact with each other and the outside world. Because they are the frontline of how cells signal, communicate and adapt, they are an extremely attractive candidate for pharmaceutical intervention of a multitude of diseases. However, the detailed mechanism as to how these crucial signalling proteins work is still barely understood; it is this understanding which has the potential to radically transform how future pharmaceutical drugs are developed. This project will leverage absolute cutting-edge technologies to interrogate these proteins at their molecular level. The scientific techniques pioneered in both electron microscopy and mass spectrometry will be broadly applicable to the future Australian pharmaceutical drug development research. Moreover, this project will add valuable methodology to this technology platform in Australia, enabling Australian researchers to further probe the molecular nature of these vital cell signalling proteins.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Unravelling the maternal gut microbiome as a driver of fetal development . This project aims to experimentally determine how changes in the maternal gut microbiota impact the phenotype of the offspring. This innovative project uses an interdisciplinary approach combined with novel models and the latest generation technology for genome sequencing. Expected outcomes include extensive new knowledge of how the gut microbiota communicates with the host during pregnancy and the impact this has on the gastrointestinal, immune, cardiovascular and reproductive systems. Our findings should yield information that may ultimately be translated into products that augment agricultural production, providing significant benefits. Field of research: 3109 - Zoology This project aims to understand how the microbes that inhabit the mother’s gut help digest food. A key nutrient that feeds these microbes is dietary fibre. We seek to understand if fibre intake during pregnancy, acting via gut microbes, improves the overall health and breeding capacity of descendants. This project will inform the design of new fibre diets to improve productivity and efficiency of livestock animals. It will also generate insights into how gut microbes communicate with different parts of our bodies. This is important because there is a rising global demand for efficiently produced meat. The advances from this project will help us identify new ways to meet this demand via changes in maternal diet, which may have a key impact in enabling earlier and longer breeding of livestock. As a result, this project will enable intellectual property with significant commercialisation value for the livestock industry through collaborations with Australian livestock stockfeed manufacturers.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Histone H3.3-dependent transcriptional control and B cell differentiation. This project aims to investigate the fundamental way cells assemble transcriptional machinery to turn on genes and retain transcriptional memory. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the areas of both chromatin biology and immunology, using interdisciplinary approaches. Expected outcomes of this project include an enhanced capacity, through institutional and international collaborations, to determine whether the rapid transcription and function characteristic of immune memory in response to stimuli is due to histone H3 variant and its associated nuclear bodies. This should provide significant benefits, such as understanding epigenetic mechanisms that underlie transcription initiation and maintenance across many species. Field of research: 3105 - Genetics In each cell of an organism, the genetic code is the same. As the organism grows, different types of cells develop, because different parts of the genetic code are turned on and off at specific times and places. This project aims to investigate how cells assemble certain factors that turn on genes and how the cells retain a memory of this. This research will increase our understanding of how genes are controlled, how a cell is directed to develop into a particular cell type, and how an embryo develops. More specifically, it will define this process in a specific type of immune cell called a B cell. The knowledge from this project could be used by bioengineers and industry partners in applications that involve controlling how cells develop, such as growing replacement tissues outside the body. In the long term, it could lead to the design of better vaccines that provide long-lasting B cell antibody responses in animals and humans, providing future benefits to prevent infectious diseases and for Australian industries that rely on animal health for food production.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

The Role of Lck/CD8 Association in Negatively Regulating T cell Activation. This proposal aims to advance our fundamental understanding of how T cell recognition of antigens translates into a T cell activating signal. The proposal will establish whether the major T cell coreceptor also acts as a negative regulator of T cell activation in vivo when antigen recognition is unorthodox. It will also determine whether certain subsets of T cells naturally lack coreceptors in order to facilitate unorthodox antigen recognition. Thus, the proposal will significantly advance our understanding of, and establish new paradigms around, the regulation of T cell activation. Expected long term benefits outside the scope of this proposal include improved immunotherapies and vaccines designed to elicit or suppress T cell responses. Field of research: 3101 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology T cells are an important class of immune cells. They protect animals and humans against diseases caused by pathogens such as bacteria and viruses. They also have a vital role in the body's response to vaccination. Before they can carry out these functions, T cells must first be turned on. This happens when a T cell detects a threat such as a pathogen, but how this happens is not well understood, including how specific molecules inside and outside T cells interact. This project aims to gain a better understanding of how T cells are turned on and how this process is controlled. This knowledge will offer new tools to regulate T cells, which could be used by biotechnology companies to design better strategies for generating optimal immune responses. The outcomes of this project could therefore influence the development of vaccines, immunotherapies and related products targeting, for example, infectious diseases, contributing to both human and animal health.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Resilient design of energy pile foundations toward zero carbon buildings. This project aims to investigate the complex thermo-hydro mechanical interactions affecting the effectiveness of energy pile foundations for improved energy efficiency of new buildings. Using cutting-edge micro to field-scale methods, this project expects to underpin the development of experimentally validated predictions of the geotechnical performance of energy piles. Expected outcomes of this project are the establishment of new approaches to improve the resilient design of energy pile foundations, provision of new recommendations for their design and increased integration for zero carbon buildings. These outcomes will contribute significantly toward strategies to decarbonise energy systems in buildings to meet carbon neutrality goals. Field of research: 4005 - Civil Engineering The project aims to develop fundamental knowledge needed to improve heat transfer predictions in pile foundation systems, which have dual functions of load bearing and heat transferring (i.e., energy piles), used in constructing buildings to improve energy efficiency. By improving our understanding of how heat transfer and water flow occur in soils can improve the energy efficiency of energy piles. We aim to ensure that buildings, responsible for about 40% of the global energy consumption and about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, reduce their carbon footprint using low emissions technologies in their foundation systems (i.e. energy piles). Improving buildings' energy and carbon performances will play a significant role in helping Australia meet its 2030 Paris Agreement emissions reduction target and contribute to the decarbonisation of the building sector by 2050. This project will benefit the Australian construction industry by giving them a superior understanding of energy piles performance and tools to use in design and specifications and enhancing their international competitiveness.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

Self-Interacting Random Walks. This project aims to study the growth properties of a class of self-interacting processes defined on Euclidean lattices. This project expects to determine whether a shape theorem holds for once-reinforced random walks, and establish conditions for their recurrence/transience. It also expects to obtain new and very precise estimates for the local time of simple random walks. Expected outcomes of this project include solving long-standing open problems in the field of reinforced random walks, and the development of novel methods for their study. This should provide significant benefits not only to the field of mathematics, but also to the myriad of applied disciplines where self-interacting processes are utilised. Field of research: 4905 - Statistics Many natural phenomena can be modelled by randomly moving objects that interact with their environment, such as an ant wandering randomly, but laying pheromones as it moves so that it prefers to revisit previously traversed paths. There are well-developed models of random phenomena evolving over time, with applications in science, engineering, medicine, economics, and beyond. However, including interactions with the environment constitutes a significant departure from established models, and raises new challenges. This project will apply new mathematical techniques to address such random processes. A deeper mathematical understanding of them will shed light on a variety of practical questions that fit into similar models, including the formation of bacteria colonies, the management of transport networks, and the efficiency of learning algorithms used in artificial intelligence. Results will be shared with partners in industry and other disciplines, with the potential to lead to practical outcomes, such as pharmaceutical advances and software development.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

How do vortices live in spatio-temporally complex flows? The project aims to understand the fundamental mechanism of vortices occurring in flows involving spatio-temporal complexity, by using the combination of dynamical systems theory and asymptotic analysis. This innovative combined mathematical analysis will be coupled with sophisticated computations to be enabled by the international interdisciplinary collaboration between the Mathematics and Engineering at Australia and Japan. The expected outcomes are breakthroughs in the fundamental understanding of turbulence. This should lead to significant insight into better turbulent modellings used in, for example, wide range of engineering, physiological and geophysical flows. Field of research: 4012 - Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Engineering This project will investigate turbulent flows, which occur when a liquid or gas moves in complex ways, often forming eddies, such as air passing over an aeroplane wing or water moving through a pipe. Such processes are ubiquitous in nature, engineering, fluid transport, aerodynamics, and the atmosphere. Existing turbulence simulations are expensive and often require sacrificing accuracy. This project will overcome these difficulties by using mathematical tools to analyse the precise role of turbulent eddies of various sizes. The outcome of the analysis will be used to develop new computational methods to predict key properties of turbulent flows and control strategies to modify them. The resulting methods should enable the design of efficient medical devices and aircraft, as well as accurate climate change models. The research will be disseminated widely through industrial partners including our long-term collaborator AIRBUS and more recent collaborators at Boeing in Melbourne.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

A theory for the vertical structure of tropical atmospheric circulations. The vertical structure of atmospheric circulations is a key determinant of rainfall patterns and climate, but model projections do not agree on how it will change in a warmer world. This project aims to discover the processes that control the vertical structure of tropical atmospheric circulations. It will combine theory development, analysis of observations, and targeted modelling to generate new knowledge of the mechanisms affecting atmospheric circulations as the climate changes. This will allow for process-based identification of the most reliable climate models, facilitating increased confidence in future projections. More accurate tropical climate projections will benefit decision making for resource management in northern Australia. Field of research: 3701 - Atmospheric Sciences Changes in future rainfall patterns on our warming planet are driven by changes to atmospheric circulations - the characteristics of where and when air rises and descends through the atmosphere. But our understanding of the structure of atmospheric circulations remains poor, and this leads to large uncertainties in future projections of rainfall in regions such as northern Australia. This research will improve our understanding of the mechanisms controlling the vertical structure of tropical atmospheric circulations and use this new understanding to evaluate the ability of state-of-the-art climate models to reproduce these mechanisms. Such evaluation contributes to the reduction in uncertainty in climate projections for northern Australia, ultimately providing guidance for decision making in government and industry in areas such as resource and water management. This research therefore contributes to the Australian Government's Practical Research Challenge of developing improved accuracy and precision in predicting and measuring the impact of environmental changes caused by climate and local factors.

ARC National Competitive Grants · FY 2023 · 2023-01

The viral fusosome: a modular machinery for cargo delivery to target cells. The delivery of proteins, RNA and DNA into cells is a critical process in normal cellular biology, virus infection and biotechnology applications such as gene editing. Enveloped viruses achieve this maneuver with exquisite efficiency and specificity using a complex machinery mediating their fusion with cellular membranes for stealth genome delivery. Remarkably, all characterised viral fusion proteins belong to only 3 classes defined >16 years ago and sharing surprisingly conserved mechanisms. We identified a novel class of fusion proteins with unique architecture in ubiquitous insect viruses. The Project will elucidate the structural and functional hallmarks of this fusion machinery providing a platform for its engineering. Field of research: 3101 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology Cells constantly shuttle molecules across the cell membrane while carrying out their normal activities. When viruses infect cells, they hijack this process to deliver viral genetic material into cells. These delivery strategies used by viruses can be harnessed for applications such as vaccines and gene editing. However, delivering molecules to the right cells in the right amounts is a major challenge. Recently, we discovered a new type of delivery machinery in viruses that infect insects. This project will define how this machinery works and develop tools to manipulate it. Bioengineers will be able to use these findings to create nanoparticles that efficiently deliver molecules directly into specific cells to correct defects or reprogram the cells for beneficial activities. These nanoparticles could therefore be used to better control agricultural pests and improve animal health. This technology could bolster Australia’s biotechnology sector, with these delivery technologies predicted to have a global market of $1 billion by 2028.