Twelve early-career researchers at UNSW Sydney have received grants from the Australian Research Council to kickstart their innovative projects.
Discovering how gravity affects life in space, developing new mathematical tools to study order and randomness and improving solar panel technology are among the projects UNSW academics will pursue with $5.99 million in new funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC).
The ARC awarded $102.7 million for 200 new projects nationally under the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) round. The scheme supports emerging researchers to fill key knowledge gaps and deliver solutions that improve quality of life and drive sustainable progress for Australians.
Six of the UNSW grant recipients are from the Science faculty, three from Engineering and three from Medicine & Health.
"From investigating new insights into how the immune system works to advancing renewable energy technology in Australia, I'm excited to see how UNSW's next generation of research leaders will address some of the world's most pressing challenges," UNSW Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research & Enterprise, Professor Bronwyn Fox, said.
"These projects highlight the impressive range and impact of research at UNSW, and I warmly congratulate our early-career researchers on receiving this funding to turn their ideas into real-world solutions that benefit society."
ARC Chief Executive Officer Professor Ute Roessner said the newly funded projects will ensure Australia remains at the forefront of global research and innovation.
"The ARC is proud to be empowering the next generation of research leaders to thrive in supportive environments, collaborate globally, and deliver outcomes that matter," she said.
The successful projects from UNSW are:
Mapping the exact locations of proteins on immune cell surfaces
- Awardee: Dr Arindam Ghosh, UNSW Medicine & Health
- Grant total: $515,079
- This project proposes to develop powerful new imaging technology to see the tiny proteins on the surface of immune cells in incredible detail. It will help scientists learn more about how immune cells send signals and respond to threats, paving the way for new insights into how our immune system works.
How living surfaces move and behave
- Awardee: Dr Sami Al-Izzi, UNSW Medicine & Health
- Grant total: $506,852
- This project looks at how thin biological layers like cell membranes and tissues change shape and move. Dr Al-Izzi will create new mathematical tools and models to better understand how these living surfaces behave. This will help connect theoretical math with real biological observations, giving scientists a clearer picture of how living tissues and cells work and change over time.
How cells respond and stretch
- Awardee: Dr Zijing Zhou, UNSW Medicine & Health and Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute
- Grant total: $528,691
- This project will investigate how cells sense and respond to physical forces like stretching or pressure. Dr Zhou will study a special type of molecule that can move both ions and fats across a cell's outer layer when the cell feels mechanical stress. It's hoped the new tools developed in this project will also help researchers study important processes in the heart, immune system and plants.
Improving see-through chalcopyrite top cells for tandem solar panels
- Awardee: Dr Mingrui He, UNSW Engineering
- Grant total: $522,678
- This project aims to improve solar panels by developing an innovative, transparent solar cell made from a material called chalcopyrite. The goal is to develop affordable, durable solar cells that can convert more than 19% of sunlight into energy, helping advance renewable energy technology in Australia.
Modelling how particles and fluids react and move over space and time
- Awardee: Dr Zhouzun Xie, UNSW Engineering
- Grant total: $515,449
- This project will study how tiny solid particles move and react with fluids like gases or liquids - something that happens in industrial processes. The project will also develop a new model framework to help improve and design industrial processes, especially those important for Australia's economy and its goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions.
Tightness and stability of caprock fractures in geological carbon storage
- Awardee: Dr Yinlin Ji, UNSW Engineering
- Grant total: $507,478
- This project will explore what happens to underground rocks when carbon dioxide is stored deep in the Earth. In particular, it looks at the caprock which is the layer of rock that seals the storage site and prevents carbon dioxide from leaking out. The results will help scientists understand the risks of leakage and shaking, develop better methods to assess the safety of storage sites and design safer carbon dioxide injection methods.
From investigating new insights into how the immune system works to advancing renewable energy technology in Australia, I'm excited to see how UNSW's next generation of research leaders will address some of the world's most pressing challenges.
Using bioengineering tools to learn how cells adapt to microgravity
- Awardee: Dr Giulia Silvani, UNSW Science
- Grant total: $529,878
- As humans travel further into space, it's important to understand how living cells behave without gravity. Dr Silvani's project will study how the lack of gravity affects how cells move, rebuild tissues and form protective barriers. The findings could change what we know about how physical forces like gravity influence life, giving us new insights into how living things adapt in space and other extreme environments.
Understanding patterns hidden within randomness
- Awardee: Dr Daniel Altman, UNSW Science
- Grant total: $416,079
- Dr Altman will explore a new field of mathematics called higher-order Fourier analysis, which helps researchers find hidden patterns in apparently random data. The project aims to develop new mathematical tools to understand how order and randomness interact. The results could help solve long-standing problems in areas such as number theory, while strengthening Australia's role in cutting-edge mathematical research.
Better statistical models for complex longitudinal data
- Awardee: Dr Ziyang Lyu, UNSW Science
- Grant total: $480,678
- This project aims to improve the way scientists analyse data that is collected over time such as tracking people's health or economic trends. The researcher will create new statistical methods that can handle diverse, unbalanced or complicated data more accurately. It's hoped the improvements will help scientists and policymakers make better predictions and decisions in areas like ecology and economics, where having precise data is critical.
Exploring how people search for risky things
- Awardee: Dr Yanjun Liu, UNSW Science
- Grant total: $488,049
- This project will look at how people search for important or risky things in everyday situations, like checking for cars before crossing the street or finding signs of cancer in medical scans. By combining cognitive modelling and real-life experiments, the results will reveal how decision-making and visual attention affect how people search in risky situations and help create ways to make these searches faster and more accurate in real life.
Understanding and managing certainty
- Awardee: Dr Aba Szollosi, UNSW Science
- Grant total: $450,849
- This project will try to study how people understand and manage uncertainties in their everyday lives, such as daily temperature changes or the bigger effects of climate change. Using modern psychology methods and computer models, the goal is to discover how these thought processes work and how people's decision-making can be improved when they face uncertainty.
New tools in effective field theory for Physics beyond the standard model
- Awardee: Dr Julie Pagès, UNSW Science
- Grant total: $529,878
- This project aims to create new mathematical and computer tools to help physicists study the universe beyond what current theories can explain. It will improve how scientists handle the complex equations in particle physics and make their predictions more accurate. The project will also build an automated system to test new ideas about how particles behave using real experimental data. It's hoped the results will give physicists better ways to connect theory with experiments and explore new frontiers in physics.
