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 4 matching student topics
Displaying 1–4 of 4 results
Probing the origins of life on Earth
The history of life on Earth is written in the fossil record. In this project, you will investigate stable isotope evidence for extremely early evolving organisms. Through careful petrography and with the use of isotope ratio mass-spectrometers, you will help unravel the history of microbial metabolisms that powered the ecosystems recorded by 3 billion-year-old microbial fossils.
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
What do ancient granitic rocks tell about the formation of Earth's crust
The Earth is a dynamic evolving planet that has continually changed throughout its history. This change is recorded in the different rock types preserved in the continental crust and is paralleled by the evolution of life. Study of Archean granitic terranes (4.0-2.5 billion years ago) provides invaluable information on the early Earth when 50% of the present day volume of continental crust was generated. You will help work out how Earth's earliest crust formed through:potential field workpetrographygeochemical analysis.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Searching for Life on Mars on Earth
NASA's newest Mars rover, Perseverance, has just arrived on the red planet. Tasked with searching for ancient life in the geological record of a ~4 billion-year-old crater lake, the mission science team must use our only available analogue - the Earth - as their guide to exploration.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Understanding the external surface of fungal mycelia
The way in which fungal cultures grow in liquid cultures are can have a major impact on scale up and producing material. Here, we will examine the growth of three fast-growing filamentous fungi and try understand how various growth parameters affect the morphology that will range from loose mycelia to compact pellets.Fungal morphology is affected by inoculum (form, concentration and growth stage), media components (type and concentration of carbon, nitrogen and phosphate, trace minerals, pH, salt content), dissolved gases (dissolved …
- 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
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