Swinburne researchers awarded over $6.6 million in ARC funding

Swinburne University of Technology has been awarded more than $6.6 million in national competitive research funding in recent 2019 Australian Research Council (ARC) grants schemes.

The funding has been announced by the federal Minister for Education, the Honourable Dan Tehan.

“This success reflects our focus on research quality in line with Swinburne’s Research and Innovation Strategy 2020 objectives,” says Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise) Professor Aleksandar Subic.

“By almost doubling the number of successful ARC Discovery research grants compared to 2018 we have achieved another step change in our research performance.”

ARC Discovery Projects success

Swinburne researchers were awarded more than $4.6 million for 11 Swinburne-led Discovery Projects:

• Professor Jane Farmer, Associate Professor Anthony McCosker, and Dr Hilary Davis ($397,793) for a project that will use data from online communities to identify roles they do, and could play, in rural resilience
• Professor Billy Todd ($410,000) for a project that will investigate the molecular level design of friction modifiers for a new generation of industrial lubricants, aiming to dramatically reduce friction between moving mechanical parts
• Professor Yang Xiang, Associate Professor Jun Zhang, and Dr Sheng Weng ($420,000) for a project to boost smartphone security by developing cutting edge technologies and techniques to combat malware in Android smartphone devices
• Professor Josephine Barraket and Dr Emma Lee ($336,532) for a project that aims to clarify the institutional and cross-sectoral conditions needed for successful implementation of emerging social procurement policy reforms
• Associate Professor Jeffrey Cooke ($460,000) for a project that aims to progress a novel collaboration of worldwide facilities operating at all-wavelengths to discover and rapidly follow up the fastest bursts in the Universe
• Dr Adam Deller ($395,000) for a project that aims to capitalise on the dawn of the era of gravitational wave astronomy by studying the radio afterglows that result from gravitational wave merger events in minute detail
• Dr Qiang He and Professor Yun Yang ($360,000) for a project that aims to deliver a framework and a suite of approaches for cost-effective app service management in the edge computing environment facilitated by the 5G mobile network
• Professor Timos Sellis and Associate Professor Kai Qin ($480,000) for a project that aims to build a next-generation intelligent exploration framework over massive geo-located data, varying from points-of-interest to areas-of-interest data, which will complement existing map services and benefit many location-aware services
• Professor Richard Manasseh ($525,000) for a project that aims to predict natural bubble sounds. These audio signals contain data on the bubble size, which controls oxygen absorption, and thus product quality, in minerals, food, pharmaceuticals and water industries
• Dr Sonja Pedell and Emeritus Professor Leon Sterling ($390,000) for a project that aims to increase digital inclusion of Australians, by bringing together design innovation with software engineering to create software that is engaging and widely accepted among consumers
• Professor Chengfei Liu and Dr Rui Zhou ($450,000) for a project that aims to develop effective methods, techniques, and prototype systems to facilitate the smart use of big attributed graph data across Australia.

This is in addition to five Swinburne researchers – Dr Rosalie Hocking, Dr Prem Prakash Jayaraman, Professor Duncan Forbes, Professor Warrick Couch and Associate Professor Glenn Kacprzak  – who were part of successful grants led by other universities.

ARC Linkage Projects success

Professor Jinjun Chen has received $450,000 for a Swinburne-led Linkage Project. His research project will focus on the privacy protection of user data held in the cloud, and aims to establish innovative research solutions for enabling full lifecycle cloud privacy protection. This research project will be undertaken in partnership with BIG NETWORKS PTY LTD.

This success builds on a stellar year for Linkage Project grants, with seven successful projects receiving over $3.3M in ARC Linkage Project funding.

ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award success

Two Swinburne researchers were awarded more than $800,000 for Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Projects.

Dr Derui Ding ($399,235) for a project that aims to develop an analysis and design framework to enhance the reliability of the next-generation advanced manufacturing systems with security vulnerability and communication scheduling. Dr Ding was recently named a Highly Cited Researcher for 2019 by Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science Group.

Dr Blanca del Rosal Rabes ($427,116) for a project that aims to develop a contactless thermometry approach based on near-infrared fluorescence to map brain or nerve temperature in real-time. This research expects to generate new knowledge in the field of neuroscience using tools from optics, nanotechnology and materials science.

ARC Future Fellowship success

Astrophysicist, Dr Ryan Shannon, has been awarded a four-year ARC Future Fellowship worth $784,832 for a project that aims to determine what causes fast radio bursts. Dr Shannon’s project will use the revolutionary capabilities of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Murchison, Western Australia to resolve the origin of these enigmatic emissions.

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