Student topics

Cancer is the single biggest clinical problem facing the world and will account for half of all global deaths by 2030. Even though there have been significant advances in immunotherapy, we are still unable to cure most cancers. New therapeutic targets, individualised to patient needs, must be identified and validated in order to improve cancer outcomes.Brain cancer causes more deaths in people under the age of 40 than any other cancer and more deaths in children than any other disease. …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Biomedical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health

As a prime advocate for plain packaging of tobacco products, Professor Matthew Rimmer is engaged in research and public policy work on tobacco control. He is interested in supervising research students working within the field of tobacco control - including in respect of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control; trade and investment disputes over tobacco control; the plain packaging of tobacco products; restrictions on tobacco advertising, sponsorship, and promotions; generational limitations on smoking; spatial restrictions on smoking; and civil …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Law

Research centre(s)

Australian Centre for Health Law Research

Dementia exhibits the presence of Lewy bodies in the cerebral cortex, which are composed of α-synuclein (αSYN) or Amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques, as well as hyperphosphorylated tau (P-tau) tangles in various forms of dementia. The exact pathological mechanisms underlying this disease are not well understood; however, there is evidence suggesting the involvement of inflammatory activity. Microglia, macrophage cells residing in the brain responsible for clearing external pathogens and dead cells, are of particular interest.Our study aims to investigate whether Lewy bodies …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Biomedical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Microbiome Research

Philanthropy is a concept with many definitions, but at its core it is about private assets being given for public use and benefit. Philanthropic foundations are structures or organisations for giving. Legally speaking, foundations are trust funds, established by a deed specifying the trustee and beneficiaries (however broadly defined). The term foundation is commonly used to refer to an organisation that exists for public benefit purposes, is registered as a charity, and has its own funds often in the form …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Accountancy

Philanthropy (defined here as structured giving through organisations such as foundations) is growing strongly and expected to benefit significantly from the intergenerational transfer of wealth in the coming decades. The accountability of philanthropy is a vital discussion, as criticism grows internationally of the lack of transparency, particularly for wealthy philanthropists who use their retained influence over donated and taxpayer-subsided funds to pursue their individual interests and influence public policy. There are current calls for a national blueprint or strategy for …

Study level

Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Accountancy

Research centre(s)

Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies

Machine learning cluster methods are common classification methods, but methods for assessing performance are limited as are methods for explaining how they work.  Exploring methods for both assessing and explaining performance are the subject of this research with application to real-world contexts with the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Outliers are anomalous observations in a data set that are "outside the norm" of what would be expected. Identifying outliers is an important part of exploratory data analysis and data analysis in general. It is often a challenging problem and calls for advanced methods and approaches, including machine learning-based tools. As methods become more and more complex, their explainability becomes more difficult and more important. This research project will look at all aspects of explainability and explore new approaches and …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Extreme weather events can exacerbate slope and dam stability issues. Risk mitigation, stabilisation works, and engineered solutions to slope or dam failure require detailed site and subsurface characterisation – generally undertaken after a failure, but often resulting in unacceptable delays to remediation, impacting communities, transport, and water resources.This project will develop pre-emptive risk mitigation measures for at-risk sites, utilising remote sensing, geophysical, and monitoring approaches.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Existing machine learning-based intelligent systems are autonomous and opaque (often considered “black-box” systems), which has led to the lack of trust in AI adoption and, consequently, the gap between machine and human being.In 2018, the European Parliament adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which introduces a right of explanation for all human individuals to obtain “meaningful explanations of the logic involved” when a decision is made by automated systems. To this end, it is a compliance that an intelligent …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Information Systems

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Videos of sport activities are widely available at large scales. AI and its sub-fields, especially computer vision and machine learning, have a great potential to analyse, understand and extract useful information from these videos.This project aims at using AI and its subfields in computer vision and machine learning to develop techniques for analysing sport videos to extract intelligence for players and coaches.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

The aim of this project is to develop accurate low-cost medical imaging methodology for pseudo-3D mapping of Mammographic Density (MD) within the breast. MD is the degree of radio-opacity (“whiteness”) in an X-ray mammogram. It has implications for breast cancer risk, ease of detection of breast cancer, and monitoring of the efficacy of hormonal breast cancer prevention or anti-cancer treatments.Healthcare ChallengeThere is a growing need for affordable and accurate quantitative assessment of MD without ionising radiation. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Regional Australia is undergoing significant structural, economic, social, and environmental change which is impacting the viability of small businesses (Regional Australia Institute, 2018). Regional small retail businesses, estimated to contribute $21.9bn to local economies (Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, 2019) are particularly susceptible to economic shocks, have lower survival rates, more volatile revenues and are generally less resilient than larger business (Barraket, Eversole, Luke & Barth, 2019).Disruptive external events such as the acceleration of e-retailing, COVID-19 travel restrictions, …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations

Research centre(s)

Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research