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 8 matching student topics
Displaying 1–8 of 8 results
Mathematical modelling of spatial plant patterns in a sub-Antarctic island
Various spatial patterns naturally emerge in ecology. These include stripes, spots, hexagons, and donuts, to name just a few. However, it can be puzzling to figure out how these patterns form.Systems of partial differential equation models can be used to simulate these patterns, and thereby provide ecologists with testable hypotheses for how these patterns formed.
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Centre for the Environment
Epigenetic regulation of non-coding RNAs in hypoxic tumours
In solid tumours, hypoxia occurs as a result of limitation on oxygen diffusion in avascular primary tumours or their metastases. Persistent hypoxia, significantly reduces the efficacy of radiation and chemotherapy and lead to poor outcomes. This is mainly due to increase in pro-survival genes that suppress apoptosis, enhance tumour angiogenesis, the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, invasiveness and metastasis. Much of tumour hypoxia research has been centred on examining the transcriptional targets of hypoxia inducible factors (HIFs).HypothesisEpigenetic changes mediate the effect of hypoxia …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Macromolecular barcoding for tracing plastic materials for the circular economy: a game changer for recycling
The reduction and management of plastic waste is perhaps the most critical challenge facing modern economies and plastic pollution cannot be resolved by generic approaches to research or to problem-solving. The Soft Matter Materials Team aims to resolve the anonymity and ubiquity of plastics by pioneering a simple optical readout system that can identify the uniquely coded information in macromolecules that have been embedded in plastics.In this project, optically readable macromolecular barcodes based on a system of excimer fluorescence switch-on …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Exploring green infrastructure optimisation for climate change adaptation and mitigation
Green infrastructure refers to public and private green spaces in cities that provide water cycle benefits. These green spaces range in the range from single trees on city streets to urban parks, and waterway walkways. Some are natural, such as the remains of native plants, while others are more geometric, for example green roofs and green walls. Green infrastructure can increase the sustainability and vitality of cities through benefits such as greening and cooling, water quality, and managing hotter weather. …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Architecture and Built Environment
Exploding shallow marine volcanoes: investigating the petrology of the 2019 pumice raft-producing eruption from Volcano 0403-091, Tonga
More than 21,000 km of submarine volcanoes front subduction zones, many of which lie in shallow water close to inhabited areas. Eruptions at these volcanoes can be explosive and may have significant impacts on nearby communities, or generate pumice rafts that prolong impact at remote locations. For the first time, samples of a shallow marine explosive eruption have been collected from the buoyant pumice raft and from the seafloor at the vent of Volcano 0403-091, Tonga.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Centre for the Environment
Information retrieval and coding methods for large scale bioinformatics
Advances in sequencing technologies over the past two decades have led to an explosion in the availability of genomic sequence data and an increasingly urgent need for scalable clustering and search facilities. One approach is to encode sequences as binary vectors in a high-dimensional space, simplifying the comparison and allowing it to be computed very rapidly using bit-level operations.Coupled with these ideas is the need to provide clustering methods and efficient indexing and lookup in response to search queries. One …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
High-performance scoring of CRISPR targets
The CRISPR-Cas9 technology allows the modification of virtually any gene in any organism of interest. It's generated a lot of interest, both in the research community and the general population.One of the crucial components of CRISPR experiments is the design of the "guide RNAs" that will control where modifications occur. It's vital that the modification is made at the desired location and not elsewhere.We developed a method utilising high-performance computing to efficiently assess the "off-target risk" of each guide RNA …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Lunar seismology: Using lunar seismology data for site characterisation at Schrodinger crater
QUT is involved in the science team for a recently Australian Space Agency-funded mission to Schrodinger crater, to deploy a Fleet Space seismometer. QUT is developing workflows to translate the seismic data into detailed subsurface models for site characterisation, off-world construction, and in-situ resource mapping of materials such as ice.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
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