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 502 matching student topics
Displaying 469–480 of 502 results
Predicting good sleep using computer science: Can we use machine learning to find out 'what's the best bed?'
In the Westernised world a person typically spends one third of their life in bed, with more time spent sleeping in a bed than in any other single activity. Sleep amount and quality of sleep have a direct impact on mood, behaviour, motor skills and overall quality of life. Yet, despite how important restful sleep is for the body to maintain good health, there is a comparatively small amount of studies evaluating key multi-factorial determinants of restful sleep in non-pathological, …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Genome to phenome: exploiting multi-omics and deep learning strategies to decipher importance of isoforms in health and behaviour
The molecular process that leads to multiple mRNA transcripts being produced from the same segment of DNA (aka gene) is known as alternative splicing (AS). This is a common form of regulation in higher eukaryotes, enabling the production of novel protein isoforms, which in turn are known to have a big impact on phenotype. Understanding the regulatory factors involved in AS, including epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation, will offer key insights into important biological phenomena (health disease, behaviour, production). …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Biology and Environmental Science
Cobot contact tasks through multi-sensory deep learning
Contact tasks like grinding, polishing and assembly require a robot to physically interact with both rigid and flexible objects. Current methods relying on force control have difficulty achieving consistent finishing results and lack robustness in dealing with non-linear dynamics inherent in how the material is handled. This project will take a new approach that detects and diagnoses the dynamical process through deep learning fusion of multi-sensory data, including force/tactile, visual, thermal, sound, and acoustic emission; and generate corrective process parameters …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Identification and functional characterisation of genetic modifiers of iron overload
Iron is an element essential for virtually all life forms; aberrant iron metabolism is linked to many diseases. These include cancers, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, iron overload and iron deficiency disorders, iron-loading anaemias, and the anaemia associated with chronic disease. Central to proper iron regulation is the appropriate expression and activity of the liver-expressed regulatory peptide, hepcidin, and the iron exporter, ferroportin (FPN). Modulating the expression and activity of hepcidin and FPN, and their interaction is …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Human-in-the-loop techniques to debug machine learning models
Machine learning models are being deployed in critical domains such as healthcare, education and fintech. The current approach to deploying machine learning models is based on considering a data-centric approach where the models are evaluated using performance measures on a test set. However, the high performance of the model on test data is not indicative of its reliability,An important aspect of reliability is in the understanding of what exactly a machine learning model encodes, and to verify if it learns …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Information Systems
Determining the theapeutic efficiency of epigenetic drugs in ovarian cancer
Because cancer and many diseases arise from a combination of genetic propensity and the response of cells to external factors mediated through changes to the expression of key genes, it is important to understand epigenetic regulation. The epigenome is crucial to the changes of gene expression and there is now strong evidence that epigenetic alterations are key drivers of cancer progression. However, very few drugs targeting epigenetic modifiers have been successful, in part due to the lack of effective means …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Engineering Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell for the treatment of cancer
Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells are genetically modified immune cells that can recognise and kill cancer cells. They do so through the CAR, which recognises specific antigens expressed on cancer cells. CAR T cell therapy has emerged as an effective form of cancer immunotherapy in certain types of blood cancers and are now approved for use in patients. However, CAR T cell therapy can only benefit a very small proportion of cancer patients at present because it is very …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Comprehensive strain-level characterisation of microbial communities associated with inflammatory bowel disease
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic, relapsing inflammatory disorder driven by complex interactions between environmental, microbial and immune-mediated factors 1,2. An unfavourable shift in gut microbiome composition, known as dysbiosis, is now considered a key feature of IBD 2-5, however it is unclear how specific microorganisms and their interactions with host cells contribute to disease onset and progression.Previous IBD studies have been largely limited to older sequencing methods with low phylogenetic and functional resolution. Furthermore, these studies have predominantly …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Microbiome Research
The role of childhood social-emotional learning competencies in adolescent health, education, and justice outcomes
This project aims to determine the relationship of childhood social-emotional competencies (particularly those developed by school-based social-emotional learning programs) with adolescent health, education, and justice outcomes. The project uses data from the NSW Child Development Study, a longitudinal study following the development of 91,597 children in NSW from birth.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Psychology and Counselling
X-ray backscatter diffraction and X-ray fluorescence for the rapid structural and chemical characterisation of rock samples
The advisory team devised a synchrotron-based microscopy method for coeval measurements of elemental concentrations and crystal-orientation data combining X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM) with X-ray backscatter diffraction mapping (XBDM).We seek students with a background in physics, crystallography, or mineralogy and coding skills to help with the improvement of the methods.XBDM/XFM has the potential to become a game changer in the microphysical and -chemical characterisation of crystalline solids, with future applications in the critical-minerals industry and material science.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
An insight view on board faultlines: company secretaries' perception of board faultlines, their effect on board performance and strategies to increase board cohesiveness
According to faultline theory, imposing board diversity criteria on corporate board can split the board into subgroups, which negatively impact on board performance by reducing effective communication between directors, instigating frictions and negative group dynamics. The role of the company secretary has been found to be pivotal in managing information blows and brokering meaningful relationships between board members. Company secretaries are therefore in a key position to provide insights into what can potentially cause frictions on boards and offer guidance …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Business and Law
- School
- School of Accountancy
High-speed robotic waste separation
Sorting waste or recyclables is an important but unpleasant job, currently done by specialised machinery and humans for the hard bits. What are the core challenges that could be done by "robots that see". This is a challenging problem in perception, dynamic path planning and control.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Contact us
If you have questions about the best options for you, the application process, your research topic, finding a supervisor or anything else, get in touch with us today.