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 495 matching student topics
Displaying 361–372 of 495 results
Every side job starts with an idea: Exploring motivations for the ‘side hustle’
Almost 1 million Australians have lost their jobs and countless micro and small businesses have folded as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time the pandemic has propelled innovation and new venture creation and given rise the ‘side hustle’, taking on an extra job for money. Side-hustles, supplemental income-generating work performed alongside full-time jobs, are increasingly common (Sessions, Nahrgang, Vaulont, Williams & Bartels, 2021).Technology has in part empowered and enabled people to market their skills and products …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Business and Law
- School
- School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations
Small business resilience in times of economic uncertainty: Examining retailers and regional businesses
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
Exploring how entrepreneurs use social media to influence users' emotions and achieve virality
Social media has become an integral part of our lives – we click, like and share posts with our personal and professional networks each day. The concept of sharing is activated by psychological stimulation, be it emotional or physical (Tellis et al., 2019). But why are certain types of online content more viral than others?Achieving ‘virality’ is not random and isn’t just about creating engaging content. Instead there are mechanics that are planned to achieve this type of ‘social currency’. …
- 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
Understanding capsular polysaccharide diversity is key to next generation therapies for multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii infections
Bacteriophage therapy is an attractive innovative treatment for infections caused by extensively drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, for which there are few effective antibiotic treatments remaining.Capsular polysaccharide (CPS) is a primary receptor for lytic bacteriophage, thus knowledge of the chemical structures of CPS produced by the species underpins the identification of suitable phage for therapeutic cocktails.As many phage depolymerases cleave a specific CPS linkage formed by either a glycosyltransferase or polymerase enzyme, characterisation of these proteins are essential.However, these remain largely …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Immunology and Infection Control
Building metallo-supramolecular cages for sensing and catalytic applications
The concept of creating molecular electronic devices has resulted in the development and rapid advance of the field of supramolecular chemistry.In this project we are particularly interested in how we can use simple building blocks to self-assemble into complex, functional structures both in solution and at the solution:surface interface.These types of structures have shown great promise in applications such as catalysis, sensing, drug delivery and even in the development of molecular machines.AimsThis project aims to:design, synthesise and characterise complex metallo-supramolecular …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Advanced electron microscopy for sustainable nanocatalysis
The systematic and detailed characterisation of heterogeneous catalysts is critical for design of effective and stable catalytic materials, since it allows one to understand the correlation between their structure and physicochemical properties.Especially, it is important to monitor the structural evolution of catalytic materials and their active sites in a controllable environment and under realistic reaction conditions.Thus, we propose to use a powerful combination of aberration-corrected high-resolution TEM and in situ TEM experiments which allow us to gain extensive knowledge about …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Exploring chemotherapy-induced molecular aging and its relationship to exercise
Ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cause of death from cancer in women, with a five-year survival rate of less than 45 per cent. However, there is emerging research that shows the benefits of exercise therapy during recovery following certain cancer treatments, and how exercise can improve and extend the lives of women with ovarian cancer.This project is a collaboration exploring these health and survival outcomes in ovarian and other gynaecological cancers, and in particular how new diagnostic testing …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Why do epithelial cells have antigen processing machinery?
Epithelial Cells (ECs) constitute the border between the host immune system and an environment teeming with inhaled antigens. Work from us and others has highlighted that ECs have the ability to express the antigen processing and presentation machinery, Major Histocompatibility Complex class II (MHC II) that is important in initiating immune responses. MHC II expression and function on mucosal epithelial cells, is not well understood.Whilst MHC II is expressed by ECs, and is altered with inflammation, there is a paucity …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Interaction between pollen proteases and ACE2 receptor of SARS-CoV-2
Pollen allergy is a common seasonal respiratory disease triggered by hypersensitivity to pollen affecting 10-30% of adults and 40% of children, and is a predisposing factor for asthma. Pollens interact with airway epithelium to both stimulate innate immunity and elicit an adaptive immune response.Proteolytic activity is one route that stimulates release of alarmins and pro-inflammatory cytokines from mucosal epithelia. Previous studies have found the expression of Serine/Cysteine (Ser/Cys) proteases in some types of grass pollen grains, but it is not …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Engineering the prostate tumour microenvironment in organ-on-a-chip systems
Prostate cancer remains one of the leading causes of global death. The tumour microenvironment (TME) including blood vessels, immune cells, fibroblasts, and the extracellular matrix (ECM) possesses disease-specific biophysical and biological factors that are difficult to recapitulate using conventional in vitro cell culture models.The absence of these factors, however, causes cells to display abnormal morphologies, polarisation, proliferation, and drug responses, thereby limiting the ability to translate research findings from traditional cell culture into clinical practice.Recent advances in organ-on-a-chip technology enable …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Improving platinum-based chemotherapy by targeting drug metabolism in lung cancer
Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer accounting for 18.4% of all cancer-related deaths. Platinum-based chemotherapy remains a key treatment option for most people living with this disease, either as adjuvant therapy or in combination with immunotherapy. However, resistance to therapy is a significant issue in the treatment of lung cancer. Novel therapeutic strategies combined with predictive biomarkers chemotherapy response are needed to transform the clinical management of NSCLC.Our published work has identified novel biomarkers and druggable proteins from deregulated protein …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health
Application of fluorescence-activated cell sorting and confocal microscopy for the study of the microbial communities responsible for nutrient removal from domestic wastewater
The removal of nutrients like carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater is critical to the prevention of eutrophication in receiving water systems and is carried out by complex microbial communities.Eutrophication can have devastating consequences on aquatic life and natural ecosystems, with toxic algal blooms also posing a risk to human health.Understanding the microbiology of phosphorus (P) removal from wastewater is considered essential to knowledge-based optimisation of enhanced biological P removal (EBPR) systems.Most of the species in these systems are novel …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Microbiome Research
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