Vacation Research Experience Scheme student topics

With the progression of digital technology, organisations are trending towards more hybrid ways of working. Alongside this trend, the proportion of older employees in the Australian labour force is rapidly increasing. As hybrid work becomes more common and the Australian workforce ages, it becomes increasingly important to understand how these dynamics shape how older employees are perceived and treated in the workplace. This VRES project aims to answer the question, “How does hybrid work influence attitudes towards older employees?”. To …

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Economics and Finance

Research centre(s)

Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology
Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology

In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of software development and engineering, understanding the mechanisms that drive technology creation and evolution is crucial. This VRES project aims to empirically test the theories and ideas of technology development proposed by Brian Arthur, focusing on combinational creativity and goal-oriented programming and software development/engineering. Using a comprehensive dataset of GitHub repositories, this study will analyse the historical data on contributions, forks, likes, and other metrics to uncover patterns and insights into how software technologies …

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Economics and Finance

Research centre(s)

Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology
Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology

Biodiversity preservation and restoration are central to conservation science. However, the multitude of methods for valuing biodiversity complicates comparative analyses across studies and policies, weakening conservation arguments. Our goal is to develop a comprehensive mathematical modelling approach to address this issue at a large scale, drawing on concepts from mathematical ecology, economics, and population dynamics. This interdisciplinary project is ideal for those interested in contributing to conservation efforts while gaining experience in applied mathematics.

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Quantify-me solutions of current digital health technologies show increasing advances in self-tracking vital data. However, beyond sensor technology for monitoring vital signs, there is limited advances on how to make sense of this data in relation to our personal wellbeing or health goals. Consequently, there is limited knowledge in relation to the design specifications to help people make sense of all this data in useful manner to support health decision making. This VRES project aims to develop the interface design …

Faculty

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

School

School of Design

Artificial heart valves are used to treat a wide variety of heart diseases. Current artificial heart valve technologies are broken into two categories: mechanical valves, and bioprosthetic valves. Mechanical valves last longer but can cause severe damage to the blood, while bioprosthetic valves are more blood-compatible but have poor longevity. Our lab is developing a new polymer heart valve which is long-lasting and highly blood-compatible. Advanced durability testing is an important step in translating new heart valve technologies. The aim …

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Biomedical Technologies

Geopolymers are inorganic cross-linked polymers useful materials due to their insulating properties, mechanical strength, adsorbent capacity, inherent resistance to temperature and strong acids/bases. Geopolymers can be tailored for specific contaminants by molecularly imprinting the contaminant of choice, leaving an imprint for the target molecule to be adsorbed.By incorporating activated carbon, conductive geopolymers can be created, which allows for electro-oxidation of adsorbed organic compounds into carbon dioxide, completely removing contaminants from the waste stream.Strategies like this one are promising for the …

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science

This Lowitja funded project aims to re-embed the Torres Model of Care into the health system. It aims to define and document the Torres Model of Care through a collective storytelling process that engages Zenadth Kes health practitioners to tell their story of care from their worldview and standpoint. The UMe project brings Indigenous people together not as subjects of research but as sovereign knowledge holders, authoring their own stories and bring their knowledges to construct the necessary evidence base …

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Public Health and Social Work

Bayesian statistics provide a framework for a statistical inference for quantifying the uncertainty of unknowns based on information pre and post data collection.This information is captured in the posterior distribution, which is a probability distribution over the space of unknowns given the observed data.The ability to make inferences based on the posterior essentially amounts to efficiently simulating from the posterior distribution, which can generally not be done perfectly in practice.This task of sampling may be challenging for various reasons:The posterior …

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Strong knowledge and interest in biomaterials and biomaterial/cell interactions, strong hands-on laboratory skills,

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering

Research centre(s)

Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Centre for Biomedical Technologies

This VRES project will consider whether and how race, as a marker of human difference, is currently understood and responded to within social work, both in terms of professional regulation as well as within social work education. This VRES project will involve a review of current policy and legislative requirements that frame professional regulation as well as academic scholarship that considers the function of race and social work in Australia and its implications for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. …

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Public Health and Social Work

The transition to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind necessitates efficient and large-scale energy storage solutions. Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) have emerged as a viable alternative to lithium-ion batteries for grid-scale storage due to the abundance and low cost of sodium. Hard carbon anodes, derived from biomass, offer a sustainable and effective solution for SIBs, providing a pathway to enhance energy storage capabilities and support renewable energy integration.

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering

This project explores accreting supermassive black holes, also known as active galactic nuclei (AGN). By combining data from infrared observations with information from other wavelengths, we aim to improve how we identify AGNs and understand their unique properties.Using infrared colors to locate AGNs and comparing this data with results from spectral energy distribution (SED) analyses, we will refine AGN identification techniques. Researching AGNs is crucial because they play a significant role in galaxy evolution, influencing star formation and the growth …

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics