Swinburne researchers celebrate success in national funding

Swinburne University of Technology has secured $5.3 million in national competitive research funding in recent 2020 Australian Research Council (ARC) grants schemes, announced by the federal Minister for Education The Honourable Dan Tehan.

“I am delighted to celebrate the success of our research community. This outcome reflects the robustness and strength of our research and these projects will make impactful contributions to fundamental research that will create new knowledge and original insights leading to positive societal change,” says Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise) Professor Bronwyn Fox.

“I congratulate all those who were successful this year for their dedication and hard work in what has been a particularly challenging year.”

ARC Discovery Projects

Swinburne researchers were awarded $4.3 million for 10 Swinburne-led ARC Discovery Projects:

• Professor Xiaodong Huang and Professor Guoxing Lu ($390,000) for a project Dynamic Properties of Mechanical Metamaterials: Optimization and Experiment.
• Professor Guoxing Lu and Dr Kwong Ming Tse ($392,801) for a project A new energy absorption system for brain injury mitigation.
• Professor Christopher Berndt, Professor Paul Munroe and Dr Andrew Ang ($525,000) for a project Design of Non-Equilibrium Architectures: Leveraging High Entropy Materials.
• Professor Tsong Chen, Professor Hai Vu, Dr Huai Liu, Dr Xi Zheng and Associate Professor Zhiquan Zhou ($448,958) for a project Context-aware verification and validation framework for autonomous driving.
• Professor Jinjun Chen ($480,000) for a project Effective privacy protection for smart metering data on cloud.
• Associate Professor Jeffrey Davis, Professor Jared Cole and Dr Jonathan Tollerud ($410,000) for a project Multidimensional Coherent Spectroscopy of Strongly Correlated Materials.
• Professor Peter Kingshott, Professor Mrinal Bhave and Professor Andrew Clayton ($495,000) for a project Multiplexed surface signals to inhibit mixed bacterial biofilm formation.
• Professor Jay Sanjayan, Associate Professor Pat Rajeev and Dr Behzad Nematollahi ($250,000) for a project Investigating the Pumpability and Extrudability of Concrete for 3D Printing.
• Professor Christopher Vale, Dr Sascha Hoinka and Dr Jesper Levinsen ($428,000) for a project Transport and impurity dynamics in a unitary Fermi gas.
• Associate Professor Karen Hughes and Mr Michael Aird ($486,128) for a project Connecting Indigenous Community Photographies: a transnational case study.

This is in addition to Swinburne researchers – Professor Niki Frantzeskaki, Professor Kathleen Hulse, Professor Mia Lindgren, Professor Jay Sanjayan, Dr Tiantian Yuan, Professor Richard Manasseh and Dr Graham Dwyer – who were part of successful grants led by other universities.

ARC Linkage Projects

Professor Arul Arulrajah has received $607,000 for a Swinburne-led Linkage Project titled Biocementation of recycled sand and demolition wastes for pavement’.

This is in addition to Swinburne researcher Professor Karen Malone who was part of a separate proposal led by another university.

ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award

Dr Jade Powell has been awarded $350,898 for a project titled Exploding massive starts and their implications for gravitational waves. Her project aims to perform simulations of core-collapsed supernovae to better understand their explosion and remnant properties and gravitational wave emission.