Griffith Asia Institute’s 52 Global Interns, 43 supported by New Colombo Plan grants, are currently living, working and travelling in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan and Korea. Prior to commencing a six-week internship, students completed a jam-packed week of in-country orientation activities and events – designed to increase knowledge and understanding, and acquire unique insights into the bilateral relationship between Australia and our closest neighbours. Across destinations, this included industry briefings delivered by Austrade, Australian Chamber of Commerce, and Trade and Investment Queensland.
Jack Shepherd at the Seoul World Cup Stadium. (Photo supplied)
During the placement, students continue to experience the diversity and dynamism of the Asia-Pacific, while at the same time sharing capabilities, building networks and gaining practical exposure to different perspectives and work practices. Student sentiment highlights the benefits of participating in the Global Internship:
“Today marks the beginning of my third week in South Korea as I complete my global internship with Allive Creative. This experience has provided me with greater insights into the globalised dimensions of the sports management industry, whilst facilitating my personal and professional growth” said Jack Shepherd who is studying the Bachelor of Business (Sport Management).
“I have been so fortunate to work inside the Football Fáentasium Office HQ at the Seoul World Cup Stadium and I cannot thank the Griffith Asia Institute enough for helping to secure this great opportunity. I am so excited for the next four weeks of my placement and I look forward to developing my industry capabilities.”
Griffith Asia Institute Global Internships afford students the opportunity to partake in a supervised transformational learning experience within an international work place, in turn developing the skills and attributes so often sought by employers of choice around the world. Further information is available at griffith.edu.au/asia-institute/global-student-opportunities.
Griffith Business School and its corporate partners have launched a scholarship for the new Bachelor of Business Innovation degree to be offered at Logan in 2020.
Valued at $15,000, the Bachelor of Business Innovation Scholarship will support students who are enrolled in the Bachelor of Business Innovation (1616) program.
Dr Popi Sotiriadou
Program Director Dr Popi Sotiriadou said the School and donor partners were committed to supporting at least one, possibly two future business leaders, through their studies at Logan campus.
Funds were raised at the Business School’s recent Annual Gala dinner, where recipients of the Queensland Business Monthly Griffith MBA Scholarships were also announced.
Johanna Marsh, Griffith Business School alumnus and winner of the 2019 QBM Griffith MBA Responsible Leadership Scholarship
“The scholarship will support a student who demonstrates a commitment to learning, but may be experiencing financial hardship, to achieve their full potential,” said Dr Sotiriadou.
“I would urge both interested school leavers and mature age candidates to apply.
“Scholarship applicants will be required to demonstrate they are ambitious and career oriented and the ways the scholarship will help them achieve their ambitions.”
The new Bachelor of Business Innovation degree will be based around entrepreneurship, innovation and community.
Students will study the foundations of business as core courses and learn what they mean for business through a series of applied industry integrated activities that are relevant to the region around Logan.
The degree is designed to ensure students graduate with strong internal and external networks, including extended ties to the community and industry organisations.
It also takes into account specific factors influencing the Logan region including rapid population growth, demographic makeup, and student and workforce needs.
Students will work directly with local organisations and businesses to ensure relevant problem-based authentic learning.
For more information and to apply, head online.
In a world-first, a team of Griffith University researchers has used an artificial intelligence method to better predict RNA secondary structures, with the hope it can be developed into a tool to better understand how RNAs are implicated in various diseases such as cancer.
Professor Yaoqi Zhou, Professor Kuldip Paliwal, PhD student Jaswinder Singh and Dr Jack Hanson from Griffith’s Institute for Glycomics and Signal Processing Laboratory led the research, which has been published inNature: Communications.
Prof Yaoqi Zhou. Credit: Luke Marsden
In all forms of life, ribonucleic acid (RNA) is essential for the coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. RNA and DNA are among the four major macromolecules in lifeforms.
The team employed the use of deep learning – a subset of artificial intelligence used to create complex, numerical functions to approximate specific tasks automatically without explicit human instructions – to build a more accurate model of the relationship between RNA sequence and structure.
This advancement comes after more than a decade of stagnation in the performance of previous methods to predict RNA structures.
Professor Zhou hoped this new method would be useful for designing new RNA molecules with therapeutic potentials.
“Imagine if protein and RNA were two people, with protein standing in front of RNA — our focus is naturally on the protein,” Professor Zhou said.
“Consequently, despite the fact that the number of proteinsareoutnumbered by the number of RNA by more than a factor of 10, we are clueless about what these RNAs are for in our human body.
“That’s why we developed this tool: to provide some structural clues. Getting clues is very important because more and more RNAs are implicated in more diseases including various cancers.
“The most exciting aspect is that we can now better link the sequencing information with the structure. Our sequence is encoded in our genomes, but how they are related to their function through the structure is an unknown. 
“Using this deep learningtechniquewe can better link the sequence to the structure and have better clues as to what their function might be. Once we understand how the sequence encodes the structure and therefore function, we can design the RNA to do it for a particular purpose, such as new drugs or molecular sensors.”
In order to develop the method, the team had to expand on existing data sets for known RNA structures by sourcing approximated computational data, then refine the automated training method with the exact data.
Dr Hanson said only having access to less than 250 non-redundant known RNA structures among about 30 millionunknownwas a challenge that only the use of their deep learning method could address.
“Deep learning was used in this research to model the fundamental relationship betweenanRNA’s nucleotide sequence and the pairing of these nucleotide bases in its functional structure,”hesaid.
“This is a very complex function as, theoretically, a nucleotide can be paired with any other base within the RNA, so it is the job of the deep learning neural network to find out which nucleotides are paired together.
“Making matters even more complex is that these algorithms have to be general and work for the millions of unique RNA sequences.
“Before our work, most of the previous studies had relied on comparative schemes based on RNA biological families or handcrafted scoring algorithms based on statistics. These methods can somewhat model the incredibly intricate function linkinganRNA’s nucleotide sequence to its paired structure, but had reached a stagnant performance ceiling of about 80% accuracy forbasepairpredictions.
“Using deep learning, we were able to overcome all of these shortcomings to provide a blanket solution for all RNA structures while simultaneously breaking the performance ceiling which had existed for more than a decade, attaining abasepairaccuracy of 93%.”
The team said the use of deep learning for the prediction of RNAbasepairswas a feasible tool and a worldfirst, andachieved superior performance in almost every facetcompared to previous attempts.
Founder and Director of the Institute for Glycomics Professor Mark vonItzsteinAO said the finding “opened up avenues for future research into this problem from other computational research groups, while providing a more accurate tool for experimental laboratories working in the fields such as biomedicine, drug discovery, and molecular biology”.
The research ‘RNA secondary structure prediction using an ensemble of two-dimensional deep neural networks and transfer learning’ has been published inNature: Communications.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by Australia Research Council DP180102060 to Y.Z. and K. P. and in part by National Health and Medical Research Council (1121629) of Australia to Y.Z. We also gratefully acknowledge the use of theHigh PerformanceComputing Cluster ‘Gowonda’ to complete this research, and the aid of the research cloud resources provided by the QueenslandCyberInfrastructureFoundation (QCIF). The team gratefullyacknowledges the support of NVIDIA Corporation with the donation of the Titan V GPU used for this research.
The largest study of South-East Siberian rock art since the 1980s reveals the complex web of human social and cultural connections drawn over thousands of years.
Shaman-Gora rock art site, locality # 1. Irina Ponomareva at the panel with a heard of bison.
Irina Ponomareva, a PhD candidate from Griffith University’s Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit, recorded more than 6000 designs in 108 rock art sites in East Siberia — an area of scant research with black and white drawings and few low-quality black-and-white photographs.
Focusing on three chronological rock art groups — Paleolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age, Irina examined several rock art styles and traditions from Baikal, Trans-Baikal, Yakutia and the Lower Amur regions.
“The most important observation made in this research addresses the questions of why rock art is created, why specific styles and traditions emerge and why changes in rock art occur,’’ she said.
“Rock art sites create and maintain a strong connection between people, their past and their land. The emergence or change of rock art styles occurs in a situation of major cultural changes, the reasons and dynamics of which may vary.
“The important factor is that people had to protect their tradition, culture and wellbeing in a situation of threat to their ethno-cultural continuity.”
“Rock art sites create and maintain a strong connection between people, their past and their land.”
“It becomes highly important to mark rocks with symbols of now ‘hot’ identity thus expressing belonging. Those marks remain there for millennia continuing to structure identities of those who claim their belonging to these places afterward.”
During her fieldwork, Irina examined several sites presumably attributed to the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene. 3D recording of the Shaman-Gora site allowed the production of a more accurate tracing showing a herd of extinct bison. A study of petroglyphs of the Lower Amur River gave a more nuanced picture of rock art development from the Final Pleistocene-Early Holocene.
“The chronology of this rock art revealed a continuity in the rock art tradition during the Early-Middle Holocene — implying a continuous ritualistic use of the space where rock art was placed,’’ Irina said.
It’s thought that in the Lower Amur basin rock art sites could have served as places for communication and interaction between communities. Face motifs could have been used as symbolic devices in building communities and establishing and maintaining their symbolic boundaries.
While the Amur rock art represents a case of ethno-cultural continuity across millennia, the Taiga Neolithic rock art tells a story of increased mobility and intensification of contacts. The rock art tradition emerged and then flourished during the Bronze Age and possibly well into the Iron Age.
“Therefore, rock art served as a means of communication about a people and their land not only between locals and newcomers but also between generations conveying the connection of past and present,’’ Irina said.
“Whilerock art sites are still worshipped and play an important role in contemporary religious practices, thetheme of the use and re-use of prehistoric rock art is a barely touched area of enquiry in Siberia. This is something I hope my research will help to change.”
Internationalrock art expert Professor Paul Taçon, Irina’s PhD supervisor, added: “This landmark study is very timely and important given many of the rock art panels suffer from increasing acts of graffiti, other forms of vandalism and new natural threats associated with climate change.
“Soon the panel of extinct bison will be gone forever along with many other designs. Irina’s research not only has given us the best interpretation of South-East Siberian rock art but also has produced a new and thorough digital record before it is lost”.
Griffith University has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Central Bank of Timor-Leste (CBTL). This makes it the fifith agreement with the South Pacific central banks. Existing MoUs are with the central banks of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The agreements are geared towards developing capacity for research and policy formulation at the region’s central banks.
The “research to policy” developing capacity program, facilitated by the South Pacific Centre for Central Banking (SPCCB), endeavours to “entrench rigour and evidence in economic policy making at the South Pacific central banks through research, training and policy outreach”. In witnessing the signing of the MoU, SPCCB’s founding Program Convenor, Dr Parmendra Sharma, commented that “the program is unique for universities and central banks and that a similar program would be very hard to find elsewhere in the world”.
The program covers a wide range of research-related activities, including joint working papers, journal publications, in-house central bank seminars, annual regional conferences, training, research grant application, etc. The program not only has strong support of the central banks but also several stakeholders such as DFAT, RBA, RBNZ, ADB, WB, IFC, IMF and others. Among others, these stakeholders participate at the regional conferences as panellists, moderators, speakers and otherwise.
“The inclusion of CBTL in the program is a significant milestone”, notes Professor Caitlin Byrne, the Director of Griffith Asia Institute, where SPCCB is housed.
“CBTL brings enormous significance for regional banking collaboration, capacity building and policy impact.”
CBTL will join the region’s other central banks in producing and publishing research policy working papers jointly with Griffith from 2020. Griffith’s role involves mentoring, guiding, coaching as well as co-authorship.
Griffith University researchers have implemented and evaluated a pilot program designed to retain women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, Manufacturing and Design (STEM2D) university programs.
“Despite a significant focus by schools, universities, industry and all levels of government, measures to increase female participation in STEM2D, completion of undergraduate courses in engineering and related technologies in Australia is far lower for women than men,’’ said Professor Debra Henly, Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor, Griffith University.
“This is the first comprehensive study evaluating a program to retain women enrolled in STEM2D degrees at an Australian university.”
Through a series of co-design workshops with 47 female undergraduate students Social Marketing @ Griffith researchers identified four key barriers to full participation.
These included issues of gender equality, lack of confidence, dysfunctional communication and lack of role models.
“While gender equality was perceived as an issue, the participants said inclusion of both genders in any STEM2D program was necessary to avoid further standing out,’’ said Social Marketing @ Griffith lead researcher Dr Bo Pang.
“Further, a lack of confidence often led to difficulties in maintaining academic performance while poor communication from the tertiary provider meant there was low awareness of the wide range of support services available.
“Finally, female role models are crucial in inspiring STEM2D undergraduate students.”
The Social Marketing @ Griffith research team tested a range of strategies in Trimester 3, 2018/2019. One strategy included bias literacy workshops and the testing of a series of social advertisements.
The workshops received a high satisfaction rate, while social advertisements received 6000 unique email opens and more than 1000 click-throughs. Confidence was significantly improved and female STEM2D students became more aware of university services designed to support them to finish their degrees.
“This is an excellent result demonstrating steps that universities can implement to increase awareness for university services that are already available to support STEM2D students,’’ Dr Pang said.
“Our study provides a roadmap that can be followed to design and implement campaigns to retain females in STEM2D university programs.’’
The report on pilot outcomes can be found on Griffith’s open access site, Griffith Research Online.
The study will be published in the Journal of Social Marketing in 2020 and was co-funded by the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies as part of their aspirations of increasing the number of women entering and graduating from undergraduate programs with STEM2D degrees. Griffith University is one of 13 universities worldwide, and the first in Australia, to participate in the program.
Griffith alumni have received more than $150,000 in grants in the Queensland Arts Showcase Program to deliver a host of creative and visual arts projects.
Former Queensland Conservatorium artists-in-residence, Topology, featuring alumni John Babbage, Christa Powell and Bernard Hoey, received $30,000 for a series of workshops, creative bootcamps and live performances at Bundaberg’s Milbi Festival.
The Lisa Gasteen National Opera School, based at the Queensland Conservatorium, has received $60,000 to run a four-week intensive coaching program culminating in a semi-staged production of Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor by Otto Niolai. The school is run by acclaimed Queensland Conservatorium opera alumnus and Professor of Practice Lisa Gasteen. It offers developing professional Australian singers the chance to work with the world’s best conductors, teachers and coaches.
QCA alumnus Eric Bridgeman
Queensland College of Art (QCA) alumnus Eric Bridgeman received $49,750 to create new work and build residential structures on Cockatoo Island for the Biennale of Sydney in 2020. Eric will collaborate with family members from Papua New Guinea’s Yuri Alaiku as part of a project based between Australia and the Jiwaka Province of PNG.
Fellow QCA graduate Warraba Weatherall received $20,695 to develop two separate exhibitions, Documents and The Revolution. The acclaimed installation and street artist will use sculpture, film and performance art to explore how archival material influences cultural identities.
This round of Queensland Government funding is worth more than $620,000 but the program has invested more than $12.94 million to support more than 380 arts and cultural projects across the state since September 2015.
For more information about the program, visit www.qld.gov.au/recreation/arts/funding/organisations/arts-showcase
Griffith has been successful in the recent New Colombo Plan mobility round and, along with The University of Queensland, awarded more than $240,000 to run two projects in the Pacific Islands.
Associate Professor Sven Schottmann
Adjunct Associate Professor Sven Schottmann from Griffith’s School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science said the projects will give around 50 students from both institutions the opportunity to develop a better understanding of the region they share.
The projects will introduce students to the cultures, politics and societies of their closest neighbours, supporting closer people-to-people ties through new cross-border friendships and experiences,” he said.
“Each year for the next three years, the Queensland Pacific Islands Summer School will take between 10-14 students to New Caledonia and then to a second regional destination on two weeks long study tours focused around particular themes.
“The 2020 study tour will focus on security, taking an inter-disciplinary perspective to grapple with a complex, multilayered phenomenon.”
Adjunct Associate Professor Schottmann’s partners in the projects will be Associate Professor Nicole George from the University of Queensland’s School of Political Science and International Studies, and Dr Gerhard Hoffstaedter from UQ’s School of Social Science.
The Queensland Pacific Islands Internship Scheme complements and builds upon the short-term mobilities and will enable high-quality students (two each from Griffith and UQ) to apply to undertake semester-length internships with regional intergovernmental agencies or national government agencies or local civil society groups.
Students will be given between three and nine thousand dollars in New Colombo Plan funding to participate in these mobilities, and Griffith students will receive 10 or 20 credit points towards completion of their degree.
“New Colombo Plan funding for these projects opens up international education opportunities to a wider range of students, including many who might not otherwise have considered this,” said Adjunct Associate Professor Schottmann.
Students involved in the 2019 round of the GU-UQ Pacific student mobility partnership.
“We are thrilled to be able to use these monies to foster student interest in the dynamic, and rapidly changing societies of their Pacific neighbours.
“Students who participated in the 2019 mobility round called it transformative and said it changed their view of the region. A couple of them have already gone back to New Caledonia or Fiji for work experiences and internships.”
For the summer school opportunity, Griffith students need to enrol in 3381LHS after applying via an Expression of Interest. The first trip will be held in Trimester 3/2020.
A similar process will apply for the internship scheme.
Researchers at Griffith University will undertake a comprehensive assessment of nerve function of people with diabetes to learn more about the onset of peripheral neuropathy.
Neuropathy is the highest reported complication of diabetes worldwide. The most common form of neuropathy is distal symmetrical neuropathy. It causes significant suffering, including loss of sensation in the feet and eventually in the hands.
Around 1.7 million Australians have diabetes, according to Diabetes Australia, and around half of those people could be expected to develop some type of neuropathy. The number of people with diabetes has experienced a fourfold increase, from 108 million adults worldwide in 1980 to 422 million in 2014.
Although diabetic neuropathies are common, surprisingly little is known about the condition and its onset, which is why Eva Sierra Silvestre is leading the DIANE (Diabetic neuropathies) research project, which will assess the function, structure and mechanics of the nervous system in people with diabetes.
“What we are planning to do is to create a very comprehensive assessment of nerve function in people with diabetes,” she said. “By doing that, we may be able to predict or be able to improve prevention and management later on.”
An issue with this condition and current screening practices is that sometimes the onset can go unnoticed, so the study will aim to find ways to pick up on peripheral neuropathy in its early stages.
“Early detection of diabetic complications is crucial for an effective management of the condition,” Ms Sierra Silvestre, a PhD candidate at the Menzies Health Institute Queensland, said.
In research, nerve function in the feet has been studied more than in hands. Typically, it is thought that hands are affected in a later stage but the research team thinks that these changes may occur earlier than what we think. As such, the DIANE research project will focus on assessing subjects’ hands for any sign of nerve damage.
The researchers are looking for people with diabetes, with and without symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, such as numbness or pain.
Participants will be required to attend three sessions, one each at Griffith University’s Nathan campus, QUT at Kelvin Grove, and QScan at Red Hill.
To learn more about the study, visit the DIANE Diabetic Neuropathies research project website.
Ms Sierra Silvestre’s study is one of two ongoing into peripheral neuropathies at Griffith University. Dr Brooke Coombes is also looking for study participants as she investigates a new approach to managing exercise for people with the condition.
Griffith’s Gender Equality Research Network (GERN) has launched a podcast to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The Gender Card podcast will focus on Griffith’s deep bench of gender equality researchers whose work is at the cutting edge of modern life.
Over six thirty-minute episodes, listeners will hear how gender inequality shapes society in areas that are not often the mainstream focus from the sporting arena, city planning, tourism and household finances.
“We’re bringing serious feminist perspectives on areas of modern life and introducing amazing new researchers you may not have come across,” said Associate Professor Susan Harris Rimmer.
While the podcast playfully draws its title from former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s reluctance to be seen playing the gender card, Associate Professor Sara Davies says society shouldn’t fear gender issues.
“It’s an area of progress, it’s inclusive, it’s representative and it’s exciting,” she said.
“It opens up conversations and this podcast allows people to ask what on earth is gender equality and gender equality research.”
The podcast will be hosted by Walkley Award winning journalist Nance Haxton and all six episodes of the Gender Card are available for streaming at the GERN website.
Griffith’s Gender Equality Research Network is an initiative that encourages and promotes gender quality research and comprises researchers from Griffith Business School and the Arts, Education and Law group.
