The Australian Research Council (ARC) has announced that University of Sydney researchers have been awarded over $15 million of funding for 34 research projects that will discover new knowledge and deliver solutions that benefit us all.
“I’m delighted to congratulate colleagues on their outstanding success in the Australian Research Council’s 2023 round of Discovery Project grants,” said Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Emma Johnston.
“From investigating solutions to wealth inequality in Australia, to harnessing the power of machine learning for safety in robotics and developing a scalable methodology for reducing the severity of bushfires, these are exciting fundamental research projects that will ultimately help solutions to society’s greatest challenges and advance our research impact on a global scale.”
“Our success is a testament to the outstanding calibre of our research, and I’d like to acknowledge all the members of these teams, including both academic and professional staff, that have contributed to this outcome.”
Successful ARC Discovery Projects
The Discovery Projects scheme provides grant funding to support world-class research excellence across a wide range of fields that will expand the knowledge base and research capacity in Australia.
University of Sydney-led projects awarded funding are listed here. Further details of successful grant recipients and projects are available on the ARC website.
| Investigator(s) | Summary | Funding Awarded |
|---|---|---|
| Professor Grant Steven; Professor Qing Li | Bidirectional Evolutionary Structural Optimization for Transient Problems. | $492,697.00 |
| Professor Gianluca Ranzi; Dr Riccardo Paolini; Assistant Professor Kwok Shah | Adaptive daytime radiative cooling and heating for buildings. | $567,630.00 |
| Professor Susan Park; Dr Ainsley Elbra; Assistant Professor Yixian Sun; Associate Professor Teresa Kramarz; Professor Craig Johnson | Global Governing Gaps and Accountability Traps for Solar Energy and Storage. | $180,580.00 |
| Professor Geordie Williamson | Machine learning, group theory and combinatorics. | $397,000.00 |
| Associate Professor Dmytro Matsypura; Professor Oleg Prokopyev | Bushfire analytics: optimisation of fuel reduction. | $423,200.00 |
| Professor Patrick Cullen; Dr Emma Lovell; Dr Rouhollah Jalili | Plasma driven electrochemical synthesis of urea. | $422,103.00 |
| Professor Assaad Masri; Associate Professor Matthew Cleary; Dr Matthew Dunn; Professor William Roberts | On the Combustion of Green Hydrogen in Future Energy Systems. | $530,000.00 |
| Dr Matthew Griffith; Professor Paul Dastoor; Dr Natalie Holmes; Professor Alan Brichta; Associate Professor Rebecca Lim | Organic Bioelectronics: Solving Key Barriers to Precision Neuromodulation. | $463,985.00 |
| Professor Susan Park | Global Governance, Eco-Justice, and International Grievance Mechanisms. | $203,906.00 |
| Professor Ben Colagiuri; Professor Ann Louise Sharpe; Dr Kirsten Barnes; Professor Andrew Geers | From me to you and beyond: understanding socially-induced nocebo effects. | $510,087.00 |
| Professor Leanne Cutcher | Hybrid Practices in Indigenous Community-Owned Organizations. | $606,303.00 |
| Dr Jungsoo Kim; Professor Richard De Dear; Dr Zhengdong Chen | The impact of work-from-home environments on comfort and productivity. | $431,840.00 |
| Professor Carel de Sterke; Dr Antoine Runge; Dr Andrea Blanco Redondo | Unshackling solitons through ultimate dispersion control. | $332,027.00 |
| Professor Kevin Varvell; Associate Professor Bruce Yabsley; Professor Mark Kruse | Top-quarks as a portal to new physics at the Large Hadron Collider. | $477,000.00 |
| Professor Steven Meikle; Associate Professor Yanan Fan; Professor Andrew Reader | Ultra-sensitive 3D molecular assays using total body PET and deep learning. | $568,000.00 |
| Professor Yuan Chen; Associate Professor Hao Li | Degradation of atomically dispersed M-N-C carbon catalysts in acidic media. | $565,000.00 |
| Associate Professor Densil Cabrera; Dr Shuai Lu; Associate Professor Dagmar Reinhardt; Dr Manuj Yadav | Using acoustic retroreflection in architecture to improve rooms for speech. | $435,000.00 |
| Dr Xianghai An; Emeritus Professor Andrejs Atrens; Dr Jiangtao Qu; Associate Professor Hung-Wei Yen | Making Strong Alloys Ductile and Hydrogen-Tolerant via Tuning Nanogradients. | $530,000.00 |
| Dr Gwendolyn Hyslop; Associate Professor Jade d’Alpoim Guedes; Dr Mark Post; Dr Yankee Modi; Professor Dr Michael Purugganan | Pseudo grains and adaptiveness in the Eastern Himalayas. | $379,876.00 |
| Dr Svetlana Postnova; Professor Ronald Grunstein; Associate Professor Christina Schmidt | Biophysics of the brain’s waste disposal system. | $385,000.00 |
| Professor Lisa Adkins; Professor Martijn Konings; Associate Professor Stephen Whelan; Professor Daniel Woodman | Wealth Inequality in Australia: Sources and Solutions. | $613,000.00 |
| Dr Yu Heng Lau; Professor Spencer Whitney; Assistant Professor Tobias Giessen | Remodelling encapsulin nanocages to help enhance plant carbon fixation | $691,716.00 |
| Professor Ian Manchester; Associate Professor Guodong Shi; Professor Dr Alexandre Megretski; Professor Alexandre Proutiere | Robust Data-Driven Control for Safety-Critical Systems. | $430,000.00 |
| Associate Professor Jeffrey Neilson; Professor William Pritchard; Dr Zoe (Ju-Han) Wang; Dr Rebecca Cross; Professor Neil Coe; Dr Kiah Smith | High-value horticulture and global production networks in coastal Australia. | $561,272.00 |
| Professor Luming Shen; Associate Professor Daniel Dias-da-Costa | Energy dissipation characterisation in dynamic brittle fracture. | $427,820.00 |
| Associate Professor Oded Yacobi; Professor Geordie Williamson; Associate Professor Benjamin Elias | Braid groups via representation theory and machine learning. | $382,000.00 |
| Professor Chris Ling; Professor Maxim Avdeev; Professor Brendan Kennedy | Rare earth-free high-performance magnets. | $449,492.00 |
| Professor Chiara Neto; Professor Xuehua Zhang; Associate Professor Alberto Giacomello | Gas-enriched slippery surfaces. | $432,307.00 |
| Professor Peter Kim; Associate Professor Federico Frascoli; Dr Robyn Araujo; Professor Dr Peter Lee | Unpacking the immune system with applied mathematics. | $423,000.00 |
| Professor Alexander Broom; Dr Katherine Kenny; Associate Professor Nadine Ehlers | The Social Life of Death. | $615,000.00 |
| Professor Daniel Anlezark; Dr Erin Sebo | Finding friendship in early English literature. | $249,088.00 |
| Professor Richard Payne; Dr Emma Watson | Site-specific protein functionalisation at diselenides via photocatalysis. | $537,000.00 |
| Professor Xiaozhou Liao; Associate Professor Zengxi Pan | Metallic materials with combined chemical and structural heterogeneities. | $440,520.00 |
| Dr Omid Kavehei; Dr Arman Ahnood; Professor Kate Fox | A novel platform-technology for long-term subcutaneous neurophysiology. | $372,150.00 |
