Griffith University has been awarded more than $7.5 million for research into everything from frogs to disease in plants and batteries.
The Australian Research Council announced the outcomes from the Discovery Programmes schemes today (November 10), with Griffith receiving 13 ARC Discovery Projects, one Discovery Indigenous, five Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards (DECRA) and one Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grant.
The $1.7 million DECRA awards had an outstanding success rate of 22.7 per cent in a national success rate of 16.3 per cent.
Vice Chancellor Professor Ian O’Connor AC and and Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor Professor Ned Pankhurst congratulated the recipients on their achievements.
The successful projects are:
ARC Discovery Projects
Dr John Atack from the Institute for Glycomics was awarded $482,299 for project “Phase-variable epigenetic regulators in bacterial veterinary pathogens”.
Project team: Dr Patrick Blackall (The University of Queensland)
Dr William Bennett from the Environmental Futures Research Institute was awarded $327,316 for project “Unravelling vanadium biogeochemistry in modern marine sediments”.
Project team: Prof Enzo Lombi (University of South Australia), Prof Donald Canfield (University of Southern Denmark)
Dr Christopher Brown from the Australian Rivers Institute was awarded $334,642 for project “Predicting interactive effects of multiple stressors on marine ecosystems”.
Project team: Prof Isabelle Cote (Simon Fraser University, Canada); Prof Rod Connolly (Griffith University)
Prof Peter Creed from Menzies Health Institute Queensland was awarded $373,903 for project “Juggling priorities: How do tertiary students balance work and study?”.
Project team: Dr Michelle Hood (Griffith University); Prof Michael Machin (University of Southern Queensland); Prof Andrea Bialocerkowski (Griffith University); Prof Paula Brough (Griffith University)
Prof Yongsheng Gao from Institute for Integrated & Intelligent Systems was awarded $403,052 for project “Single model irregular-region retrieval for rapid plant disease detection”.
Prof Renee Jeffery from the Centre for Governance & Public Policy was awarded $242,315 for project “Accountability for past human rights violations in South Asia”.
Project team: Prof Ian Hall (Griffith University)
Prof Hamish McCallum from the Environmental Futures Research Institute was awarded $414,436 for project “A novel modelling approach for understanding wildlife disease dynamics”.
Project team: Dr David Newell (Southern Cross University); Prof Cheryl Briggs (University of California, Santa Barbara); A/Prof A. Marm Kilpatrick (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Prof Jiri Neuzil from the School of Medical Science was awarded $443,389 for project “Movement of mitochondria between cells”.
Project team: Dr Lan-feng Dong (Griffith University); Dr Zdenek Lansky (Institute of Biotechnology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic)
Prof Nam-Trung Nguyen from the Queensland Micro & Nanotechnology Centre was awarded $473,470 for the project “Magnetofluidic sample handling for enhanced point-of-care diagnosis”.
Project team: Prof Weihua Li (University of Wollongong), Dr Muhammad Shiddiky (Griffith University), Dr Dzung Dao (Griffith University)
Prof Sally-Ann Poulsen from the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery was awarded $426,149 for project “Chemical probes for visualising DNA synthesis”.
Project team: Prof Vicky Avery (Griffith University)
Prof Abdul Sattar from the Institute for Integrated & Intelligent Systems was awarded $438,211 for project “Searching for Near-Exact Protein Models”.
Project team Prof Shoba Ranganathan (Macquarie University); A/Prof Jayaram B (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi)
Prof Yaoqi Zhou from the Institute for Glycomics was awarded $337,946 for project “Protein structure prediction by deep long-range learning”.
Project team: Prof Kuldip Paliwal (Griffith University)
Prof Dan Wang from the Environmental Futures Research Institute was awarded $412,975 for project “New Hierarchical Electrode Design for High-Power Lithium Ion Batteries”.
Project team: Dr Bin Luo (The University of Queensland); Prof Dr Yi Cui (Stanford University)
ARC Discovery Indigenous
Dr Kerry Bodle from the Griffith Business School was awarded $320,249 for the project “Empowering Indigenous businesses through improved financial literacy”.
Project team: Prof Lorelle Frazer, Prof Scott Weaven, Prof Mark Brimble (all Griffith University)
ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA)
Dr Lyndel Bates was awarded $365,996 for the project “The road to compliance: Integrating three theories”, which will be hosted by the Griffith Criminology Institute.
Dr Yi Jia was awarded $368,446 for the project “Monoatomic metal doping of carbon-based nanomaterials for hydrogen storage”, which will be hosted by the Queensland Micro & Nanotechnology Centre.
Dr Chantal Lanctot was awarded $365,058 for the project “What happens to toxic metals during frog metamorphosis?” which will be hosted by the Australian Rivers Institute.
Dr Lee Morgenbesser was awarded $331,248 for the project “The Rise of Sophisticated Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia”, which will be hosted by the Centre for Governance & Public Policy.
Dr Adele Pavlidis was awarded $317,185 for the project “Women and the rise of contact sport”, which will be hosted by the Griffith Centre for Social & Cultural Research.
ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF)
Prof David Lambert from the Environmental Futures Research Institute was awarded $384,671 for the project “Genomic library infrastructure for ancient environmental samples”.
Project team: Prof Zhihong Xu (Griffith University), Prof Jonathon Olley (Griffith University), A/Prof Rebecca Ford (Griffith University), A/Prof Adam Brumm (Griffith University), Dr Gilbert Price (The University of Queensland), Prof Leslie Christidis (Southern Cross University), Dr Subashchandran Sankarasubramanian (University of the Sunshine Coast), Prof Jizheng He (The University of Melbourne)
Successful grants administered by other universities:
Prof Jennifer Martin from the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery is a Chief Investigator on a LIEF project through The University of Queensland which was awarded $3,189,000 by the ARC toward a total project cost of $7,885,353.