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 680 matching student topics
Displaying 313–324 of 680 results
Australian Ganoderma species for the production of bioactive metabolites and new functional materials synthesis
Fungi are essential components of all ecosystems in roles including symbiotic partners, decomposers and nutrient cyclers and as a source of food for vertebrates and invertebrates. While vital to soil health and organic matter turnover, fungi have great potential in sustainable design and medicine.Ganoderma strains in particular produce bioactive compounds and display growth characteristics that favour their use in medical and applied biotechnology. Some species produce triterpenoids, such as ganoderic acids, and have been used in traditional Asian medicine for …
- 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
Hydroponic mushroom production
Lions mane strains are capable of producing very small fruiting bodies (mushrooms) in static liquid culture. In this project we will try establish parameters and conditions that favour mushroom synthesis on a liquid surface. If we can understand how and why this species produces mushrooms on a liquid surface – we may be able to target genes that could improve yields and tendency to grow hydroponically.'Hericium erinaceum (Bull.: Fr.) Pers. is an edible fungus of great significance in medicine. It …
- 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
Diffusion and first passage times in random media
Diffusion in homogenous environments is relatively well understood, but the problem becomes more complicated in complex environments - such as wood tissue, cells, filters and catalysts. At QUT there is extensive expertise in using advanced numerical methods to model diffusions and first passage times in complex environments.The ability to combine this expertise with realistic models of random media based on level-sets of Gaussian random field.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical 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
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 international governance in Antarctica through cooperative game theory
Antarctica is governed by a coalition of 29 countries ('consultative parties') who must agree unanimously before a law can be passed. This project will apply theories from social network analysis and cooperative game theory to map relationships between the different parties, and to predict their behaviour on a series of important environmental issues.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for the Environment
Cyber-security aspects of battery storage systems
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are a key energy storage component in various electrical and electronic systems such as mobile phones, electric vehicles and grid storage. A properly designed battery management system (BMS) is crucial to guarantee the safety, reliability, and optimal performance of the battery as well as to interconnect the battery systems with each other and external systems through communication channels. However, security threats of the Li-ion battery systems are often overlooked by BMS developers in the design phase. The …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Clean Energy Technologies and Practices
Board interlocks and firm decisions
Board interlocks research is one of the most vibrant areas in corporate governance research. A board interlock is a tie created by two firms sharing a common director. In other words, a director can hold multiple directorships in more than one firm. Board interlocks reflect complex inter-organisational relationships which play an important role in determining a firm’s strategies and structures.Prior research finds that board interlocks have an impact on reducing environmental uncertainty, gaining access to diverse and unique information, diffusing …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Business and Law
- School
- School of Accountancy
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
Estimating the evolutionary history of plasmids and viruses
In the case of cellular life - bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes - determining the 'tree of life' is a comparatively well-studied problem.This vertical evolutionary history can be estimated using concatenated gene phylogenies, where single copy marker genes are concatenated into a single multiple sequence alignment which is then used in a phylogenetic tree reconstruction algorithm.Viral genomes and plasmid sequences, meanwhile, are more challenging to fit into a phylogenetic framework.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Microbiome Research
Symbiosis in microbial ecosystems
Soil systems are fundamentally important to the health of our planet, but the complexity of soil microbial communities makes them particularly challenging to study. Soil systems are amongst the most diverse microbial ecosystems on Earth in terms of the number of microbial species (and strains) present within individual samples, and in the breadth of functions encoded. Beyond complexity measured by counting distinct community members, interactions between microbial species including symbiosis, parasitism or commensalism are widespread and yet barely studied.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Microbiome Research
Interactive art
This suggested practice-based research project seeks, overall, to ask how interactive art engages audiences, how it is created and, depending on the applicant's interest and expertise, how it might be a collaborative effort between artist and technologist.ituated within the nascent area of interactive art, contributing new understandings and research into the form and design of interactive art works; and new insights into audience experience of interactive art.The project can engage with themes and theories in its exploration of interactive art …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
- Research centre(s)
-
Design Lab
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