In Summary

Swinburne University of Technology has received a funding boost of almost $5 million from the Australian Research Council (ARC) to undertake work that will expand Australia's knowledge base and research capability.

The successful projects were announced by the Federal Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne.

"Swinburne welcomes the announcement which sees the university receive $4.9 million in addition to the $2.5 million in Future Fellowships announced back in August,” Swinburne Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Development), Professor George Collins said.

“This is very pleasing in an extremely competitive research funding environment. Particularly encouraging is the success of our early and mid-career researchers in winning fellowships under the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) and leading Discovery Projects.”

Discovery Project funding totalling $2,443,180 has been awarded to Swinburne projects led by:

Dr Barbara Catinella, Dr Luca Cortese, Professor Romeei Dave and Dr Amelie Saintonge (astronomical and space sciences) 
Professor David Crewther (psychology)
Dr Baohua Jai (optical physics)
Dr Justin Leontini, Professor John Sheridan and Dr David Lo Jacono (interdisciplinary engineering)
Associate Professor Darren Croton, Dr Emma Ryan-Weber and Dr Amr Hassan (astronomical and space sciences)
Professor Jock Given, Professor Martin Cave and Professor Erik Bohlin (communication and media studies)
Professor Yun Yang (artificial intelligence and image processing)

Dr Xiangping Li from the Centre for Micro-Photonics has received a DECRA and will develop 3D opto-magnetic data storage technologies to address the data storage challenges of big data centres.

Other Swinburne DECRA recipients were:

Dr Ramon Lobato (communication and media studies)
Dr George Wang (interdisciplinary engineering)
Dr Yun Li (quantum physics)

Swinburne astronomers were also among recipients of Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grants. These include Professor Matthew Bailes and Dr Willem van Straten, who will lead the construction of an ultra-wide-band receiver and signal processing system for the Parkes 64-metre radio telescope. 

Professor Jeremy Mould and Professor Karl Glazebrook will lead the Kunlun Infrared Sky Survey, the first exploration of the time varying Universe in the infrared.  Its location at Kunlun station in Antarctica will allow the whole sky to be studied for the duration of the Antarctic winter, with primary scientific targets being active galactic nuclei, super-supernovae, the terminal phases of red giants and initial phases of protostars.

Lists of all successful grant applicants are available from the ARC website.

Find out more about Swinburne Research.