Student topics

Many of Australia's threatened species can only avoid extinction if we keep them on islands or behind fences, where foxes and cats can't kill them all. We call these places "safe havens".Some species can only exist in some safe havens. Maybe they need particular habitats, or particular temperatures, and these can't be found everywhere.Some pairs of species can't live together. Maybe one is a predator of another. Maybe they fight too much.So, we need to find a way to put …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for the Environment

Piezoelectricity, which translates to “pressure electricity”, is the phenomenon in which certain materials convert mechanical energy to electrical energy, and vice versa. Such materials are common-place and are used in a variety of applications including sensor, actuator, and energy harvesting technologies. The capabilities of such piezoelectric materials have not yet been fully realised. We plan to use computational structural optimisation to design new piezoelectric materials and components that may contribute to novel sensing technologies for robotics applications. Essentially, robots need …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

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

Many organisations have shown an increasing interest in deploying IOT systems. However, most of them and their stakeholders are new to these systems, and it is difficult for them to trust the technology. What are the technological, managerial and societal aspects that contribute to trust in IOT systems? What can we do to improve the level of trust and increase adoption of the technology?

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Information Systems

Drought is the biggest barrier to sequestering soil organic carbon (SOC) in soils over the long-term. While options are limited during dry periods, how we manage our pastures prior to drought can influence the resilience of SOC to losses and enhance recovery.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Biology and Environmental Science

Research centre(s)

Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy

Soils are now in the ‘front line’ of global environmental change. Soils are the largest global pool of actively cycling organic C and N. Maintaining and increasing soil organic matter (SOM) is a prominent strategy for mitigating atmospheric CO2 and adapting agriculture to climate change.At the same time the global biodiversity crisis has led to increased scrutiny on supply chains to scrutinise farms ecological footprint. Planting or retaining trees in the landscape has the opportunity to achieve both outcomes, however …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Biology and Environmental Science

Research centre(s)

Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy

The aim of this research is to develop a framework for multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), that balances information sharing, exploration, localization, mapping, and other planning objectives thus allowing a team of UAVs to navigate in complex environments in time critical situations. This project expects to generate new knowledge in UAV navigation using an innovative approach by combining Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms with Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDP) and Deep Reinforcement learning. This should provide significant benefits, …

Study level

PhD

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

Soot formation occurs via a complex network of chemical reactions leading from simple gases to macromolecular aggregates. Despite being central to our understanding of extreme environments ranging from engines, to bushfires and interstellar clouds, the critical steps and intermediates in these reactions are poorly described.This project will deploy advanced mass spectrometry and laser-based methods to generate, isolate and interrogate gas phase free radical intermediates and elucidate their role in molecular weight growth processes.Through these chemical insights, advanced computational models will …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science

Meta-heuristics are powerful search algorithms for solving intractable optimization problems. There are many population based approaches, like genetic algorithms, evolutionary algorithms, particle swarm, etc. but most of these have a static population size.Viruses arise and attack populations periodically. They typically appear when populations become abundant. Viruses infect population members, and often reduce the number of individuals. Viruses create spaces for more individuals and balance competition.The concept of viruses may be mimicked and could be a useful optimization paradigm.

Study level

Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering

Network flow is impeded by the arcs present in the network and their associated length/weighting. Arcs can be added or removed to debottleneck the network. But which ones? At what cost?

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Legume-supported value chains, from production to consumption, provide benefits to people and nature that include improved ecosystem functions and resource use efficiency, as well as farmed animal and human health provisions. Environmental co-benefits of legumes include reduced nitrate leaching, increased food sources for pollinators, a greater structural diversity of farmland, and improved soil fertility. Despite the potential of legumes to improve the sustainability of cropping systems and enhance human health, the production and consumption of legumes in Australia is low.Multiple …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Biology and Environmental Science

Research centre(s)

Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy

Effective models of place-based funding remain conceptually unresolved.  Place-based, collective impact initiatives are increasingly recognised for creating long-term systems change, yet the role of philanthropy in supporting, advocating for and catalysing change is underexplored.I am interested in supervising research into conceptual models of philanthropic funding for place-based initiatives, to explain and clarify the elements and characteristics of successful, long-term relationships between philanthropic funders and place-based, community-led initiatives in regional and urban Australian communities.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Accountancy

Research centre(s)

Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies