Early Career Researchers Awarded $9m Funding 27 August

The University of Sydney has received funding for 19 research projects through the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) scheme.

Nineteen early career researchers from across the University of Sydney have been awarded funding under the Australian Research Council’s highly competitive Discovery Early Career Research Award Scheme.

The University of Sydney had the second highest number of DECRAs awarded this year, totalling $8.97 million. Two hundred researchers around Australia were awarded DECRAS, which ARC Acting Chief Executive Office Dr Richard Johnson said “offers exciting opportunities for Australia’s promising early career researchers to develop in supportive environments”.

“As well as boosting Australia’s research and innovation capacity, DECRA projects result in new technologies and ideas, leading to new jobs, economic growth, and ultimately improved quality of life for Australians.”

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Emma Johnston congratulated the recipients.

“This is a fantastic result for our early career researchers and for the University of Sydney more generally,” Professor Johnston said.

“Thank you to the ARC for supporting our hard-working researchers across a wide range of disciplines which span our Faculties. These awards recognise the quality and breadth of our expertise at the University and will set these academics up for long, fruitful careers tackling the biggest challenges facing our world. Early career researchers are such an important part of our research ecosystem and I am extremely proud of their success.”

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Dr Dashiell Moore – Archipelagic connections in Australian and Pacific literature.

Faculty of Engineering

Dr Andres Fielbaum Schnitzler – Next generation of on-demand public transport: strategies and algorithms.

Dr Huan Fu – Robust neural radiance fields for trustworthy 3D generation.

Dr Jiaying Li – Unravelling fate of pathogens in sewers to advance wastewater surveillance.

Associate Professor Na Qiu – Design optimisation of recoverable lattice structures for multiple impacts.

Dr Anil Ravindran – Bio-inspired multi-scale strengthening of lightweight renewable structures.

Dr Si Suo – Study on the impacts of salt precipitation on underground hydrogen storage.

Dr Chentao Yue – Intelligent self-configurable coding and decoding for 6G wireless networks.

Dr Tianqi Zhang – Plasma-driven electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction.

Faculty of Medicine and Health

Dr Rachel North – Exploring molecular mechanisms underpinning nutrient transport in the brain.

Faculty of Science

Dr Matthew Davidson – Taking the next step to understand natural perception.

Dr Patrick Doheny – Kagome frameworks as a platform for the development of quantum materials.

Dr Kenya Fernandes – Uncovering fungus-bee interactions for pollinator and ecosystem health.

Dr Mengyu Li – Sustainable, resilient and affordable net-zero transitions for Australia.

Dr Eli Muller – The brain that steers itself: discovering the rules of neural flexibility.

Dr May Pedersen – Unravelling the stellar interiors of the chemical factories of the Universe.

Dr Mark Wong – Safeguarding ecosystems from impending invasions.

Sydney Southeast Asia Centre

Dr Natali Pearson – Sunken Warships: Heritage Diplomacy in Maritime Southeast Asia.

Business School

Dr Nam Ho-Nguyen – New Theory and Methods for Multi-Stage Optimisation with Contextual Data.

/University Release. View in full here.