In Summary

  • Swinburne has received a funding boost from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council

Swinburne has received a funding boost of $5,365,000 from the Australian Research Council (ARC) to undertake work that will expand Australia's knowledge base and research capability.

The funding, for the ARC Future Fellowships, Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards, Discovery Projects and Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities schemes, has been announced by the Minister for Education and Training, the Hon Simon Birmingham MP.

“The announced ARC grants represent an important validation of the quality and impact of our research,” says Swinburne .

“This investment in Swinburne’s capabilities, together with the recently announced ARC Centres of Excellence, provides significant support for the ambitious research growth strategy that we have embarked on.”

Future Fellowship

Dr Ali Nazari, from the Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure, has been awarded a $652,000 Future Fellowship for his project that aims to use contour crafting for three-dimensional printing of functionally graded geopolymer concrete.

Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards

Two Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards, totalling $720,000, have been awarded to Dr Nishar Hameed – Department of Mechanical Engineering and Product Design and Dr Sascha Hoinka – Centre for Qantum and Optical Science.

Discovery Projects

Swinburne researchers were also awarded more than $3.5 million for ten Discovery Projects:

  • Professor Lap Dao, for his project to create multi-colour, ultrashort, highly coherent, bright pulses of soft X-rays based on high-harmonic generation in a table-top multiple-section gas cell.
  • Professor Alister Graham, for his project to hunt for the descendants of an allegedly near extinct species of galaxy, through the analysis of near-infrared satellite images of massive galaxies.
  • Associate Professor Hui Hu, for his project to understand many-body localised systems, a state of matter that never thermalises.
  • Dr Glenn Kacprzak, for his project to determine the physics behind outflows and inflows at the peak epoch of star formation in the Universe's history.
  • Professor Chengfei Liu, for his project to design algorithms to capture Big Data.
  • Associate Professor Conrad Perry, for his project to construct a model of reading that makes quantitative predictions about reading behaviour and dyslexia.
  • Professor Jay Sanjayan, for his project to investigate why geopolymer concretes crack less than Portland cement concretes.
  • Professor Jay Sanjayan, for his project to investigate geopolymer binders for cement.
  • Professor Timos Sellis, for his project to develop multi-stage retrieval systems which leverage structured and unstructured data processing to search spatial, temporal and textual data collections.
  • Associate Professor Christopher Vale, for his project to study universal phenomena predicted to occur in ultracold Fermi gases confined to move in two dimensions.

Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities grant

Professor Jay Sanjayan was also awarded a Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities grant, worth $458,000, for a project that will test material properties, fabrication technologies and structural design concepts; and build and test freeform concrete structures.

NHMRC Early Career Fellowship

In addition, Dr Amie Hayley from the Centre for Human Psychopharmacology has been awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council Early Career Fellowship worth $318,768 to investigate the effect of methamphetamine and alcohol on driving behaviour and performance.