QUT offers a diverse range of student topics for Honours, Masters and PhD study. Search to find a topic that interests you or propose your own research topic to a prospective QUT supervisor. You may also ask a prospective supervisor to help you identify or refine a research topic.
Found 210 matching student topics
Displaying 133–144 of 210 results
Metal polymer batteries and supercapacitors for renewable energy storage
Australia boasts rich wind and solar energy resources. To avoid fluctuations placing severe burden on the power grids, a reliable and efficient battery storage is required.The present technology based on lithium-ion batteries suffers from high manufacturing costs, poor safety and short life-span. Metal-polymer batteries are expected to overcome the storage and the charging speed of the traditional batteries in the near future, opening new avenues for renewable energy resources …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Centre for Clean Energy Technologies and Practices
Advanced materials for perovskite solar cells
Solar cells using metal halides perovskite materials to absorb light is one of the most important scientific discoveries. These cells have the potential to provide cost-effective solar electricity in the future. In the last decades, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) demonstrated unprecedented progress towards this goal. This technology holds the world record for energy conversion efficiency and is comparable to commercial crystalline silicon, but at a much lower cost.Currently their instability and use of toxic lead are key issues that restrict …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Centre for Clean Energy Technologies and Practices
Big data analysis to aid ecological research
We're looking for multiple students to help us answer the question: 'How can we utilise information technology to aid ecological research?'Sensor networks bring ecologists and pattern recognition researchers together to make some applications possible. These applications include assessing risks from potential bird collisions, unobtrusive observations (where the presence of humans changes some animal behaviours) and studying spatial and temporal variation in biological processes.With a significant amount of data being collected from these applications, processing and mining this data is challenging. …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
Human data interaction with big data visual analytics
Our research is seeking to answer the question: 'How can we support human interaction with big data?'We want to integrate the outstanding capabilities of humans in terms of visual information exploration with the enormous processing power of computers. These elements have the capacity to form a powerful knowledge discovery environment. This research will use datasets from the Queensland Government and the QUT Ecoacoustic research group over multiple years. Other big datasets, such as Amazon’s product review dataset, could also be …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
Optimising sampling design for model discrimination of coral reef recovery
Natural disturbances including severe storms and bleaching events have devastating impacts on the Great Barrier Reef's health. Unfortunately, the increasing pressures associated with climate change are causing these disturbances to occur more frequently, for a longer duration and with more intensity.It's essential to understand the recovery dynamics between major disturbances so we can manage the health of the Great Barrier Reef under increased environmental pressures. Many studies modelling reef recovery assume a specific form for the growth dynamics. However, the …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Creation of fibrous tissue at moving interfaces
Extracellular matrix (ECM) secreted by cells is composed of a meshwork of fibres infiltrated with proteins and/or minerals. This fibre meshwork often matures after its creation by rearranging its structure according to local mechanical clues, or by the infiltration of new molecules.In this project, the fibre meshwork will be represented by a continuous anisotropic field. You will derive evolution equations to describe fibre creation at moving cell membranes and the subsequent maturation of the meshwork.Applications of this model include the:investigation …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Emergence of curvature-dependent growth in mathematical models of tissue invasion
The growth of biological tissues in 3D-printed scaffold pores occurs under strong geometric controls depending on the shape and size of the pores. How this control emerges from the interaction between spatial constraints and biological processes such as cell migration and cell proliferation remains largely unknown. Existing phenomenological models of tissue growth hypothesise growth laws which directly involve curvature without considering cellular mechanisms.Recently, a reaction–diffusion mathematical model of tissue growth in porous scaffolds was proposed to investigate cell-level behaviour using …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Moving boundary problems in mathematical biology
Invasion of biological cells or ecological populations involves moving fronts that invade into previously unoccupied regions of space. Such moving fronts are driven by a combination of motility, such as random diffusion, and proliferation, such as logistic growth. Understanding how best to model such invasive fronts is important as moving fronts of cells are associated with wound healing and cancer progression and moving fronts in ecology are associated with the spreading of weeds and invasive species.Previously both continuum and discrete …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
How many species were saved by national parks?
National parks are the cornerstone of modern conservation efforts. They now cover more than 10% of the Earth’s land surface and are found on every continent and sea.We can prove that these national parks stop human destruction of habitat. We can prove that they benefit the lives and livelihoods of people who visit and surround them. However, we can't yet prove that they have stopped the extinction of a single species. This isn't because we don’t believe that they've helped. …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
First passage time for diffusion
Mathematical models describing diffusive transport of mass and energy are essential to our understanding of many problems in engineering, physics, biology and chemistry.Classical analysis of mathematical models that describe diffusive transport focus on diffusion in simple geometries, such as lines, discs and spheres composed of homogeneous materials. In contrast, specific applications of diffusive transport theory in more complicated geometries are often explored computationally. This can include geometries with heterogeneous materials.While computational approaches are necessary in certain circumstances, analytical insight is …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Equation learning for partial differential equation models of stochastic random walk models
Random walk models are often used to represent the motion of biological cells. These models are convenient because they allow us to capture randomness and variability. However, these approaches can be computationally demanding for large populations.One way to overcome the computational limitation of using random walk models is to take a continuum limit description, which can efficiently provide insight into the underlying transport phenomena.While many continuum limit descriptions for homogeneous random walk models are available, continuum limit descriptions for heterogeneous …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Developing optimal management approaches to sustain the Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is under significant threat from climate change.There are many options for management approaches to help sustain the reef, and many more are being developed. However, optimally planning these management actions is a difficult mathematical problem as they need to deploy over a large scale. This results in long timeframes for developing and executing these actions.This project will involve adapting the Modern Portfolio Theory to develop optimal management approaches to sustain the Great Barrier Reef.Modern Portfolio Theory …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
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