Student topics

This project explores buildings, public/civic spaces, and landscapes as water infrastructure. Water is integral to human survival; hence understanding buildings and urban spaces as habitable water infrastructure has the potential to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis and navigate too much water (floods) and too little water (drought) while offering different modes of occupation.With increasing rainfall intensities, floods, rising sea levels, and drought, the pervasive dichotomy between habitable spaces and water infrastructures can no longer hold. The two can't …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Architecture and Built Environment

Nutrients such as ammonium and phosphate species are essential in agriculture. However, release of excessive amounts of nutrients to waterways may result in eutrophication which can lead to toxic algae blooms, killing of fish and destruction of the environment.Compounding this issue is the fact that phosphate rock sources are gradually being exhausted. Hence, finding a means to capture and reuse phosphate species from sources such as wastewater treatment plants is potentially attractive.Consequently, this project involves the development of new phosphate …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering

In partnership with the City of Gold Coast, QUT has set up water monitoring networks in the Gold Coast Hinterland to improve assessment of water and ecological resources. You will have an opportunity to carry out research that leads to improved environmental management.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Biology and Environmental Science

Decreasing water quality is negativtly impacting coral reefs globally and is a threat that can be actively managed.

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for the Environment

Ultimately, the proper development of a plant and its ability to adapt to its environment is the result of how plants’ genes are expressed and interact with each other. Hence, it is of extreme importance to understand the mechanisms used by plants to regulate gene expression.Modification of the expression pattern of a gene is particularly important in modern biology. By changing the expression levels of a gene, it is possible to learn about its function, increase the production of a …

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

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

Underwater ecosystems, including coral reefs and seagrass meadows, play a critical role in maintaining marine biodiversity, providing coastal protection, and supporting fisheries and tourism economies that millions depend upon globally. These habitats are increasingly vulnerable to climate change, pollution, and other anthropogenic impacts, demanding urgent efforts to monitor and restore them. Accurate scene understanding of underwater imagery enables fine-scale ecosystem monitoring across spatial and temporal scales, supporting essential activities such as habitat and biodiversity assessment, validation of aerial and remotely …

Study level

PhD

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Robotics

Weakly nonlinear waves are described by dispersive pdes, such as the famous Korteweg–De Vries (KdV) equation. These models have applications to a variety of phenomena in physics, including the propagation of water waves, but they are also interesting from a mathematical perspective because they can have special properties.While the KdV equation and its variants are well-studied in the literature, a new approach is to attempt to learn about wave propagation by investigating solution behaviour in complex plane. For example, there …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

In the Westernized 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 and biomechanical determinants of restful sleep …

Study level

PhD

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering

Research centre(s)

Centre for Biomedical Technologies

The extraordinary properties of graphene, a single sheet of carbon atoms (e.g. monodimensional structure, high conductivity, low-noise characteristics) are expected to be exploited in the next generation of electronic devices and gas sensors. These applications require a perfect control of the growth of graphene layers, and an optimum integration with the processes and materials used in the semiconductor industry.This project aims at studying the growth of graphene obtained by heating crystalline SiC at high temperature in Ar atrmosphere and ultra …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science

Composite materials are widely researched and widely used in applications such as aircraft, automobiles, ships, structural components and even the space industry.There is a need to create new composite materials which are environmentally friendly and do not use fossil fuel based products. Moreover, the properties of the composites need to be improved while at the same time minimising the costs involved.Consequently our research group is working on composite materials which not only include inexpensive inorganic fillers from the mining sector …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering

Solar cells using metal halides perovskite materials to absorb light is one of the most important scientific discoveries. These cells have the potential to provide cost-effective solar electricity in the future. In the last decades, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) demonstrated unprecedented progress towards this goal. This technology holds the world record for energy conversion efficiency and is comparable to commercial crystalline silicon, but at a much lower cost.Currently their instability and use of hazardous solvents and toxic lead are key …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science