With rapid population growth and urbanisation, food waste generation rates also keep rising in Australia and all around the world. Dumping food waste in a landfill can cause significant environmental problems. This project will develop a machine learning model to predict the amount and composition of food waste at the region or industry level. This information will help to develop an evidence-based waste management strategy.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

The use of Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) tubes in structural applications such as columns and beams dates back to decades. USQ was engaged in investigating the behaviour of pultruded FRP beams and this research came into practice when Queensland Transport MainRoads starts using FRP composite girders to rehabilitate the deteriorated timber bridge girders. On the other hand, FRP confinement is predominantly used in columns to improve the properties of concrete such as ductility and strength and it is very well researched and documented. This research aims to investigate the use of FRP tubes especially in slender column applications and the possibility of using them to replace the timber piles in aging timber bridges in Queensland.

Keywords: FRP tubes; columns; timber bridges; rehabilitation; structures; materials engineering
Research categories: Civil Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Materials Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment

My supervisory range is fairly widespread around a number of music history topics from 16th century music to concert music of the present. in particular I have expertise in 20th century Australian music and symphonic music from throughout the century.

Keywords: 20th Century Symphonic Music
Research categories: Historical Studies
Locations: School of Humanities & Communication

The objective of this project is to reconstruct a geometry model (3D) of the head from Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) or other brain images. This work is a part of a wide research program that aims to develop better diagnostic tools for predicting the electroencephalograph (EEG) signal at any point on the scalp as a function of the source locations and blood flow within the cortex. It is envisioned that this will help to achieve a better understanding of the structure and function of the brain.

Keywords: Head Modelling, Electroencephalograph (EEG)
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Automated tractors are the near future and related technologies have been wide researched for the last few years. Machine vision based navigation is an emerging research filed especially for tractors in agriculture farms where unexpected obstacles (humans, animals etc.) are very common. This project mainly focus on using LiDAR, depth camera and other vison based sensing techniques for developing and optimising algorithms for automated navigation of tractors in the field for expected and unexpected obstacles.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

The agri-food chain consumes about one third of the world’s energy production and 80-90% of total global freshwater use. The water energy food nexus is also well documented globally. Optimal water efficiency in irrigation can only be achieved by piping irrigation networks. Operating such systems however involves far higher energy usage. This project will study and compare the different measures to optimise energy productivity and sustainability including the uses of renewable energy in agriculture.

Keywords: Water, Energy, Food
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment

Pressure sensor arrays are used to capture plantar pressure pattern and produce a number of pressure parameters relating to loading phase of gait. Pressure pattern and pressure parameter can be utilised to distinguish individual gait characteristics. Footwear sole pressure can be captured by similar sensor array. The research will require the determination of suitable parameters for the identification of individual in crime investigation.

Keywords: footwear-sole, electronic pressure sensor, crime investigation, image processing
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Criminology,Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Human Movement and Sports Science
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Implementation of digital health tools to improve COPD clinical guideline adherence and direct referrals from emergency department ED to outpatient clinics and primary care using implementation science and mitigate practice gap to improve discharge process and referrals. Electronic proformas have the potential to facilitate direct referrals from the ED utilising integrated electronic medical records (IeMR), leading to reduced hospital admissions, reduced length of hospital stays, holistic care, improved health care and quality of life and improved interdisciplinary guideline adherence.

Keywords:
Research categories: Health Services And Systems,Nursing
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research

Coffee is one of the most important commodity in the international agricultural trade, playing a crucial role in the economy of several Asian, African, and American countries. The total world production was estimated to more than 143 million 60-kg bags of green coffee beans in 2014/2015, of which 80% were exported. The coffee industry is significantly influenced by seasonal climate variations, water shortages, and extreme climatic events, especially drought. Cropping systems and management practices (e.g., high input monocultures, natural agroforestry associations, soil conservation practices, irrigation, etc.) also affect the year-to-year variation of coffee production. Moreover, biotic stresses induced by pest and diseases can alter the productivity over several growing seasons. Indeed, some parasites can adapt more quickly to climate change than the perennial host plants and spread into new habitats, causing noticeable yield losses in years of outbreaks if not controlled. Given the expected increase in global coffee demand and the potential adverse effects of projected climate variability, the success of coffee industry depends heavily on minimising the risks along the supply chain and capitalising on potential opportunities. Advances in seasonal climate forecasts, when integrated with crop production systems, can greatly improve industry preparedness and productivity. Current and expected impacts on Robusta production in vulnerable producing countries need to be assessed and available climate change data and scenarios need to be analysed in order to develop impact scenarios for the coffee sector and support adaptation strategies to changing climate conditions. A prototype integrated modelling approach for Robusta coffee yield forecasting based on a biophysical coffee growth model has been developed by the International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences (ICACS), USQ, with promising preliminary results. This research will investigate further improvement of the prototype integrated modelling approach through the embedding of crop management modules under various climate scenarios. The reliability and robustness of the integrated model across different regions in Vietnam and Indonesia also will be assessed for its operationality in changing climate conditions. Hence, it will provide a foundation and add to the knowledge for improved climate risks management in coffee industry.

Keywords:
Research categories: Crop and Pasture Production
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

We analyse a model of the fluid flow between elastic walls simulating arteries actively interacting with the blood. The lubrication theory for the flow is coupled with the pressure and shear stress from the walls. The resulting nonlinear partial differential equation describes the displacement of the walls as a function of the distance along the flow and time. The equation is solved numerically using the one-dimensional integrated radial basis function network (1D-IRBFN) method. Solutions in the form of self-sustained trains of pulses are explored. Numerical experiments demonstrate the process of formation of the pulses from randomly chosen initial conditions.

Keywords:
Research categories: Applied Mathematics,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre

Previous studies indicate the significant impact of porous material in improving combustion efficiency, reducing heat waste, and containing particles generated during combustion. This study aims to assess some specific applications of porous material using an empirical approach.

Keywords: combustion efficiency, reducing heat waste,
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering

Wind power is a promising renewable energy. Wind industry is the fastest growing renewable resource and is expected to continue to grow over 2030s although the production of real energy will rely on accurate simulation models of wind speed over hourly, daily and monthly periods. Wind prediction models can enable short-term (real-time) and long-term wind energy feasibility studies and future wind power investments. Australia and many parts of the world has excellent wind resources. Although research in onshore and offshore wind farms must be performed, reliable wind prediction models that can inform future sustainability of wind power are still lacking. Wind energy resources in potential wind farm sites require an integrated high-quality monitoring system forecasting the micro-scale model of wind flow incorporating the effects of topography and terrain. However, forecast models that provide reliable information on wind power sustainability, and address stochastic behaviour of wind regimes for more accurate predictions, can assist in economically-viable future investments, to solve wind energy utilization challenges. In this project, students will learn about the design of farms and optimisation of power using high-precision forecasting tools and geophysical, statistical and evolutionary methods. It will consider uncertainty and power-failure risks, effect of wakes with power production, atmospheric stability on performance and loading characteristics throughout a typical daily cycle, power production in extreme event and optimum placement of wind system. Students will apply machine learning (i.e., artificial intelligence) to predict wind speeds at topographical and geographic locations. Machine learning is unique as a fast and efficient data transformative tool, yet the applications in renewable energy remain very limited. The project will suit students in renewable energy, engineering, computing, climate, meteorology, mathematics, statistics, environmental science and atmospheric physics. Students have opportunity to engage constructively with supervisor to publish and further research. This project is suitable for PhD, Research or Coursework Masters Thesis. It provides opportunity to publish in high quality Q1 journals. The research student will be part of the Advanced Data Analytics Research Group under Prof Ravinesh Deo. For more details see https://eportfolio.usq.edu.au/view/view.php?id=116719.

Keywords: Climate Risk; Renewable Energy; Environmental Models; Wind Energy; Machine Learning; Predictive Modelling
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Atmospheric Sciences,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

This project aims to develop an Independent Component Analysis (ICA) method to analyse multi-variable signals, especially agricultural and environmental signals, and brain signals from a specific brain disorder disease (such as epilepsy and dementia etc) from EEG recordings. ICA becomes one of the exciting topics both in the fields of signal processing and artificial intelligence. An interested student will join a strong research group with cross-discipline knowledge. Some financial support is possible for a student with a good academic record and interested in further postgraduate studies.

Keywords: Multi-variable Signals, Independent Component Analysis, Aritficial Intelligence
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

The number of adults aged over 60 years will double in the next half century and unfortunately, even with life-long health, there is a progressive decline in respiratory function with ageing. The respiratory muscles become weaker, airways narrower, chest wall stiffer, and the lungs lose their elasticity. These age-related changes may result in an increased incidence on exercise induce laryngeal obstruction (narrowing of the larynx) and exercise induced bronchoconstriction (asthma during exercise). It is also likely these contributes to the increased breathlessness that is observed in older adults and will limit their exercise tolerance. Lifelong exercise is essential for preserving or delaying the onset of functional disability and chronic diseases. Accordingly, this project will investigate respiratory limitations to exercise in healthy ageing. Ultimately, this project will lead to the development of more effective therapies to improve respiratory function and exercise tolerance in older adults, reducing the incidence of functional disability and chronic diseases. The candidate will join a successful team of multi-disciplinary scientists from several institutions, and will work in state-of-the-art laboratories with exceptional core facilities. For informal discussion regarding the project, please contact: dean.mills@usq.edu.au

Keywords: Ageing; Respiratory; Exercise
Research categories: Cardiovascular Medicine and Haematology,Human Movement and Sports Science
Locations: School of Health and Medical Sciences

This research is to design a wire mesh fence to withstand bushfire conditions and retard bushfire progress, and determine necessary structural requirements based upon detailed design simulations.

Keywords: Bushfire, wildfire, firebrand attack, thermal stress
Research categories: Biomedical Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering

Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any topic in the early childhood educational area of families and children are encouraged to contact us. The student’s proposed project may include: • extensions of Brown’s (2019) work about respectful research with families of young children; or • explorations in researching with and about ‘non-traditional’ families, broadly defined; or • innovative utilisation of Brown & Danaher’s (2019) CHE (Connectedness, Humanness, and Empathy) principles in family research; or • any topic that contributes to the current knowledge base about researching with families and young children and improves the equity of families as partners and not merely participants in research. The project should privilege the voices of children and their families and relate specifically to a topic of currency in the early years (birth to 8 years). Applicants are encouraged to utilise qualitative approaches and are expected to have: (1) a background in the field of education, AND, (2) previous research experience (Honours/Master’s level) References Brown, A. (2019). Respectful research with and about young families – Forging frontiers and methodological considerations. Palgrave Pivot. https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030027155#otherversion=9783030027162 Brown, A. & Danaher, P. A. (2019) CHE Principles: Facilitating authentic and dialogical semi-structured interviews in educational research, International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 42(1), 76-90, doi: 10.1080/1743727X.2017.1379987

Keywords: families, young children, early childhood, research, methodology
Research categories: Other Education,Specialist Studies in Education
Locations: School of education

The broad objective of this project is to engage PhD students in research on the consequences of contemporary economic problems and issues facing individuals, households, firms, businesses, communities and governments. We are interested in both theoretical, empirical and applied research with an emphasis on policy issues within local, regional, national and international contexts. Research proposals are invited across a broad range of applied economic issues concerned with innovation, productivity, competitiveness, growth, and health, agriculture, environmental and energy economics. The scope of research is open to a variety of methodological approaches ranging from case studies to econometric exercises with sound theoretical modelling and empirical evidence in both longitudinal and cross-sectional settings. The research can employ quantitative and/or qualitative methods using both primary and secondary sources of data and information. The thesis can be written in either traditional format or in PhD by publication. The following is a list of indicative, but not exhaustive, broad topic areas on which PhD research proposals are invited: * Climate change and carbon accounting * * Small and medium enterprises * Business economics and innovation * Economics of energy, water, climate and natural resources * Resource pricing and the valuation of environmental goods; * Cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis * Sustainable development * Digital economy, technological change and growth * Health economics and public Policy * Economics of innovation, productivity and growth

Keywords: Applied economics, Economics, Environmental economics, Climate change, Carbon footprint analysis, emission intensity analysis
Research categories: Applied Economics,Communications Technologies,Demography,Ecological Applications,Economic Theory,Environmental Science and Management,Other Economics
Locations: Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development,Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Business

The detection of gases such as methane (for fuels) and ethylene (for fruit ripening) is important in many industrial and commercial contexts. Existing sensors exhibit many problems in practice. This research program is currently developing new sensors based on semiconductor infrared sources including LEDs and lasers. A particular focus is on the signal processing aspects of the sensors, so as to provide useful gas concentration measurements in the presence of background noise, utilizing with low-cost sensors. The group has published internationally in prestigious journals and is seeking high-calibre students with a background in digital signal processing, electronics, fibre optics, lasers, and acoustics.

Keywords: gas sensors, digital signal processing, optics, lasers, fiber optics
Research categories: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,School of Engineering

This project aims to investigate the combination of the anaerobic baffled reactor and the submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactor to treat domestic wastewater. By combining both types of reactors and their advantages it is expected that synergistic effects would result in better performance and concurrent energy production. The project aims to investigate and compare the use of microfiltration membrane and forward osmosis membrane.

Keywords: Anaerobic digestion; wastewater; bioreactor; membrane; energy production; biofuels; biorefinery; green energy; sustainability
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Typical supernatant from anaerobic digestion of waste activated sludge and primary sludge contains 100-200 mg/L COD, 300-400 mg/L ammonia and 80-100 mg/L phosphorus. After dewatering, this supernatant is normally recycled to the head of the wastewater treatment plant which puts an additional load on the waste activated sludge process. An alternative to this is to concentrate the supernatant using forward osmosis membrane which is a natural process requiring no energy input. An increase in concentration of soluble ammonia and phosphorus by a factor of 10 will facilitate without any doubts their recovery via precipitation as struvite or apatite. Recovery of nitrogen and phosphorus as solid fertilizer is a great concern worldwide as these elements are highly valuable in agriculture

Keywords: Forward osmosis; resource recovery (nitrogen and phosphorus); Anaerobic digestion; wastewater; bioreactor; membrane; biorefinery; sustainability
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Research led by Elizabeth Curtis, Michelle Turner and Nicole Green focuses on the 35,000+ children within the Australian school system, who were born <32 weeks gestation (VP – very preterm) and whom are identified medically as ‘non-disabled’. 60-70% of children who are VP require additional educational supports during schooling. While research has demonstrated common characteristics of inattention, anxiety issues and poor social competence, according to Booth et al (2019), children’s conceptions of their own self-regulation skills have been under-researched, despite ongoing empirical research which has demonstrated self-regulation is crucial for school readiness and success through all aspects of later life.

Keywords: early childhood, self-regulation, qualitative methods, children's participation
Research categories: Education Systems
Locations: School of education

To further evaluate the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions – particularly carbon dioxide – and the phases of the business cycle. This study would be quantitative in nature requiring the candidate to be well skilled in advanced econometric techniques – such as cointegration analysis and error correction modelling, as well as the technique of decomposition analysis – and would extend existing published work by the Principal Supervisor (see, for example, Applied Energy, 2015).

Keywords: Greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide, business cycle phases, cointegration analysis, decomposition analysis, error correction modelling.
Research categories: Applied Economics,Econometrics
Locations: School of Business

The customary use of the normal model is seriously questioned when the population distribution is symmetric but have heavier tails than the normal distribution. Also, the normal model fails to incorporate dependent but uncorrelated responses. In such cases the multivariate Student-t distribution provides an appropriate model for the population. Such a model can be viewed as a mixture of normal and inverted gamma distributions. Using this result we have obtained the maximum likelihood estimators of the mean and scale parameters of multivariate Student-t distribution. The model has been used to find appropriate test statistic to test the mean vector. The non-null distribution of the test statistic has been derived. The distribution of the sum of squares and product matrix for the multivariate Student-t model as well as the predictive distribution of future model have been proposed. Similar results for the matrix T and elliptical models are also obtained. This project will extend this work.

Keywords: multivariate Student-t distribution, Elliptical Models, statistic
Research categories: Other Medical and Health Sciences,Statistics
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Concrete is the largest manmade material people use in this world, and also causes heavy environmental footprint due to the use of Portland cement, a energy and recourse intensive product. This project aims to develop low-CO2 concrete by using alkali-activated aluminosilicate materials, including locally available coal combustion ash (fly ash), slag, and heated clays, such as metakaolin. By avoiding using Portland cement, the concrete will significantly reduce environment footprint, in terms of CO2 emissions and energy consumption. This project will combine experimental research and data analysis into life cycle analysis (LCA) to evaluate the real reduction in CO2 emissions and other environmental impacts. A candidate can not only learn fundamental knowledge about chemical activation technique and materials characterization but also the approach of LCA.

Keywords:
Research categories: Civil Engineering,Materials Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,School of Engineering

Succinic acid is a significant, small chemical building block or platform chemical used in the manufacture of polymers, resins, food and pharmaceuticals, among other products. Fossil fuel-derived succinic acid was considered a speciality chemical, but as a result of price competiveness and renewable feedstocks, bio-based succinic acid is now addressing a larger volume commodity market. The global succinic acid market is about 90,000 tpa, of which two thirds is expected to be produced from renewable feedstocks. Demand for bio-succinic acid, driven by applications such as intermediates, solvents, polyurethanes, and plasticizers and coatings, is anticipated to grow strongly. The addressable market for bio-succinic acid could be worth up to US$7.5 billion in new and existing applications, and production capacity has been expanding from 3,000 tpa in 2011 to 50,000 tpa in 2013. This project will investigate the production of succinic acid from local food waste and agri-resources which can reduce national dependence on imported petrochemical energy and plastics, as well as stimulate regional economies.

Keywords: succinic acid, biorefinery, fermentation
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

This project squarely discuss legal reforms that are inspired by overseas experiences in one of these legal systems: China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand. These legal systems are leading the legal development of their surrounding nations . There is a need to ensure that there are clear guidelines/procedures on the method/s that legal transplants are to be implemented.Legal reforms must be assessed in their sociological context and that includes an evaluation of the way norms interact with stakeholders, legal practitioners, and the judiciary. This assessment should not be confused with an evaluation of the success of a legal transplant. As Harding points, the success of a legal transplant can be measured by assessing its implementation and transplants can certainly fail. The thesis will consider law reforms as ‘driver of change’ that , among others sociological and political elements,seek to increase the competitiveness of national economies.

Keywords: Comparative law, legal reforms in Asia, legal transplants
Research categories: Language Studies,Law,Philosophy
Locations: School of Law and Justice

This PhD project aims to conduct research in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) algorithms towards developing a prototype for human-to-machine interfacing and brain-to-brain communication. The candidate will conduct research on developing novel artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) based strategies for wireless communication and biomedical signal classification. The project will involve developing AI/ML algorithms in an experimental test-bed to demonstrate key concepts of the project. This project will identify and address many challenges associated with vicarious transmission of information from people to people without using known human sensory channels or physical interactions. Key focus areas include developing a test-bed for capturing, training and testing brain signals for communication; designing and implementing suitable online/off-line training methods to interpret brain signals to human-readable languages. The project will suit a Master of Research, or a PhD student interested in AI and machine learning. A student with a background in AI, machine learning, electrical engineering, physics, computing or data science is highly sought. The project is highly innovative and will feed into ongoing research within our team. It may have opportunities to collaborate with industry organisations and a strong emphasis on publications. Our research team (Advanced Data Analytics) has a strong track record and industry collaborations in the application of machine learning for telecommunications, health, agriculture, solar radiation, air quality, etc.

Keywords: machine learning; artificial intelligence; telecommunications engineering; data science; brain communications; communication systems
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence,Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Communications Engineering,Communications Technologies,Computer Vision And Multimedia Computation,Electrical Engineering
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Shape memory polymers (SMPs) are a type of polymers that can be programmed and recover under a specific stimulus such as heat, electricity, light, magnetism, pH levels, etc . Researchers all over the world are currently developing SMPs and SMPCs to be used in extra-terrestrial applications such as LEO satellites . Deployable hinges , booms, structures , solar arrays and switches are few among them. So far, no one has not attempted to develop a load bearing application with the SMPs except for the terrestrial uses. This project aims to develop SMP composites for LEO and Deep Space application where significant load bearing capacity is required.

Keywords: Shape Memory Polymers, Light Activation, Durability, Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composite
Research categories: Materials Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,School of Engineering

The theory of procepts was developed by Gray and Tall. The name ‘procept’ has its origin from the dual role as process and concept most mathematical symbols have. For example, a symbol such as 3+2 can be seen both as a process of addition and a concept of sum. The notion of procept is present throughout mathematics. Gray and Tall noted the peculiar case of the concept of Limit where the potentially infinite process of computing a limit may not have a finite algorithm at all. In this case a procept may exist which has both a process (tending to a limit value) and a concept (of limit), yet there is no procedure to compute the desired result. Many concepts of mathematics still need further investigations in the framework of the theory of procepts and they will be in the focus of our consideration.

Keywords: Procept, process, concept, mathematical symbols
Research categories: Curriculum and Pedagogy
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

The number of adults aged over 60 years will double in the next half century and unfortunately, even with life-long health, there is a progressive decline in respiratory function with ageing. The respiratory muscles become weaker, airways narrower, chest wall stiffer, and the lungs lose their elasticity. These changes result in breathlessness and exercise limitation. The respiratory system is classically suggested to be “overbuilt” and exceeds the demands placed upon it. However, this situation may not apply during high-intensity exercise where the demands may exceed its capacity. In many young and trained athletes, the respiratory system is “underbuilt” and can limit exercise performance. Whether the respiratory system limits exercise tolerance in endurance trained older adults is unknown. Accordingly, this project will investigate respiratory limitations to exercise in endurance trained older adults. Ultimately, this project will lead to the development of more effective therapies to improve respiratory function and exercise tolerance in older adults, reducing the incidence of functional disability and chronic diseases. The candidate will join a successful team of multi-disciplinary scientists from several institutions, and will work in state-of-the-art laboratories with exceptional core facilities. For informal discussion regarding the project, please contact: dean.mills@usq.edu.au

Keywords: Ageing; Respiratory; Exercise
Research categories: Human Movement and Sports Science,Medical Physiology,Physiology
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Health and Medical Sciences

Suspensions, which are formed by rigid particles, droplets or gaseous bubbles suspended in a liquid, occur widely in nature and man-made products. Typical examples include foodstuffs, paints, blood, fluidised beds and bubble columns. The project aims to explore new aspects of the rheology of particulate suspensions by means of an advanced mesoscale coarse-grained emulation technique, known as Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD). The resultant DPD computer code and new insights into the fluid mechanics of particulate suspensions allow one to effectively design and control industrial particulate-flow processes.

Keywords: Particle method, suspension, complex fluid, multiphase flow
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,School of Engineering

Current clinical practice utilises Goldmann applanation tonometry (contact-based); measures the force necessary to flatten a corneal area to measure intraocular pressure. The current non-contact “air-puff” tonometer is also based on applanation tonometry, but is subject to inaccurate reading because of its dependence on predetermined cornea thickness and rigidity assumptions. There is no current method to measure aqueous flow. Recent literature (35 reviewed) suggests the concept is theoretically sound but needs further work. The aim is to develop a novel non-contact diagnostic technique for measuring intraocular pressure and aqueous flow using “light” and “sound” radiation. The approach will refine the literature review, undertake a technical and technology feasibility study, and thereafter experimental design including identifying equipment requirements. The expected outcome is a prototyping for proofing the concept and potentially supported by industry partner(s). This project will involve initial scoping, definition, and evaluation of current technologies and practices, identify any constraints and parameters, and finally proposes conceptual design options that may fulfil the design objectives.

Keywords: biomedical engineering, aqueous humour flow, intraocular pressure, glaucoma
Research categories: Biomedical Engineering,Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Engineering Design,Medical And Biological Physics,Ophthalmology and Optometry
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Engineering

The Australian sugar industry leads the world in terms of productivity per hectare, but despite this advantage, it continues to struggle with profitability. Margins are under constant pressure, and it appears that continuing to direct most future efforts to on-farm, logistics and milling productivity improvements will deliver only incremental gains to what is an already efficient production system. Fortunately, the industry also finds itself now approaching a period of opportunity emerging through the increasing global momentum of the bio-based economy. This represents an opportunity to break away from the current dependence on the global sugar price, a commodity whose production is subsidised and/or protected in many countries and whose consumption has plateaued or dropped in many markets. In the current context, the sugarcane industry is extraordinarily well-placed to become a significant contributor in this emerging bio-based economy. New opportunities for diversification and value-adding exist throughout the supply chain, including new options for feedstock production, biomass processing, and both intermediate and end-product manufacture. Following an on-going market and technology watch exercise, hydrogen was identified as a potentially attractive diversification opportunity for the sugar industry. The PhD candidate will carry out experiments on the production of hydrogen from sugarcane bagasse using USQ in-house gasification unit.

Keywords: hydrogen, biofuel, syngas, gasification, bagasse
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Engineering
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Society needs more efficient engines that produce less pollution, which requires the combustion to operate in regimes where flame stability is marginal. Because of the limitations of modern computers to simulate real combustion phenomena, models must be developed. The student will conduct theoretical and numerical investigations to develop and test turbulent combustion models which are better able to predict these marginal flame stability regimes.

Keywords: Turbulent combustion modelling; Simulations
Research categories: Automotive Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences,School of Engineering

This research will develop a methodology for evaluating and developing resilience in physical infrastructure systems and buildings. Resilience in this context refers to the ability of infrastructure systems and buildings to be robust, and retain their basic function and structure following disturbances and shocks. Achieving life cycle infrastructure resilience requires an understanding of the natural environment, sustainability, systems analysis approaches, risk management, minimisation of the impact of natural disasters, disaster resistant design, consideration of stakeholder requirements, use of suitable materials and related areas of expertise. The methodology developed from this research would be used by planners and designers to develop and implement infrastructure systems and/or buildings that would not only be resistant to the impact of disasters such as fire, flood, earthquakes and other natural disasters, but which also could be quickly brought back to a high degree of service.

Keywords: Resilience, sustainability, infrastructure, planning, design, rehabilitation
Research categories: Building,Civil Engineering,Climate Change Impacts And Adaptation,Environmental Engineering,Environmental Management
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment,School of Management and Enterprise

Ocular biometrics and biomarkers are known to be robust and personalized indices of human performance and in the near future may be deployed to improve healthy and safety, or to monitor health and disease. However, multimodal indices that are sensitive and specific across a number of domains are yet to be developed. This project will draw heavily from the fields of vision science, cognition, and computer science to develop and validate robust ocular biomarkers of human performance deficits linked to fatigue, sleepiness, ageing, and state and trait factors. This project suits someone with a strong computational ability (e.g., background in computer science or neuroscience) with a strong interest in biomedical and biomarker device development.

Keywords: vision, biomarker, sleep, cognition, mood, wellbeing, psychology, fatigue, machine vision, eye, engineering
Research categories: Clinical And Health Psychology,Computer Hardware,Computer Software,Electronics,Engineering Design,Ophthalmology and Optometry,Other Psychology,Physiology
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Psychology and Wellbeing

This new line of research aims to explore alternative protein sources and intelligent technologies for their management. A current project concerns technology solutions for supporting microalgae aqua-culture for its nutritional value, positive environmental impact, drought-resistance, high value and high productivity.

Keywords: plant-based, AI, machine learning, vegan
Research categories: Agriculture,Information Systems,Nutrition and Dietetics
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research

Mental health is a vital component of a person's sense of health and wellbeing. Supporting and caring for people experiencing a mental disorder and or symptoms of mental health concerns include a team of health professionals. Part of this team include mental health nurses who aim to deliver 'good' mental health nursing care from a professional, respectful, evidenced based and person/client-centred, goal directed approach. This type of approach is important to support the person's growth, development and recovery (Lakeman, 2012). The National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2022, p. 1) has highlighted that "1 in 5 people aged 16-85 (42.9%) had experienced a mental disorder at some time in their life." An age group of concern are young people aged "16-24 (38.8%) showing they had a 12-month disorder". These statistics indicate an increase in demand for mental health care. In light of the current nursing shortage, this increase in demand for mental health care means more mental health nurses are urgently needed in this sector to provide this vital care for people, and to support them towards achieving their personal sense of health and wellbeing. The innovation inherent in this project is to addresses the mental health nursing workforce shortage by tapping into the underutilised workforce resource, student nurses as paid employees, by supporting their preparation and mentorship with targeted mental health knowledge and skills and support. This type of design is to increase student nurses' immersive, authentic experience, and help them to contribute meaningfully, competently and confidently as part of the mental health team. Furthermore, to support their career pathway into mental health as a registered nurse and grow the pipeline of mental health nurses. Interested HDR students to contact Dr Natasha Reedy at natasha.reedy@unisq.edu.au References ABS. (2022). National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing (2020-2022). https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/mental-health/national-study-mental-health-and-wellbeing/latest-release Lakeman, R. (2012). What is good mental health nursing? A survey of Irish nurses. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 26(3). www.psychiatricnursing.org

Keywords: workforce; nursing; pre-registered nurse; mental health; rural; remote; regional
Research categories: Nursing
Locations: School of Nursing and Midwifery

Society needs more efficient engines that produce less pollution, which requires the combustion to operate in regimes where flame stability is marginal. Because of the limitations of modern computers to simulate real combustion phenomena, models must be developed. The student will perform very accurate simulations of the evaporation and subsequent combustion of droplets in a combustion chamber. These simulations will be used to improve the physical understanding of the behaviour of these systems and also to develop models which can be used in full-scale simulations.

Keywords:
Research categories: Automotive Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences,School of Engineering

Anaerobic digestion is a complex multi-stage bioprocess involving various types of bacteria and methanogens for the conversion of organics to methane gas which can be harvested for clean energy production. Some recent evidence showed that the addition of some nanoparticles had positive impacts on some microbial communities which resulted in increased methane production during anaerobic digestion, but very little is known about how this happens and why. We have a gas chromatograph to analyze methane, HPLC to analyze various intermediates and a gas chromatograph coupled with mass spectrometry available in our laboratories to carry out this research.

Keywords: Nanoparticles; Anaerobic digestion; wastewater; interspecies electron transfer; bioenergy; energy production; sustainability; biorefinery
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Energy input in agriculture has increased significantly around the world. Precision agriculture involves knowledge-based technical management systems to optimize application of fertilizer, chemicals, seeds, and irrigation resources to reduce input costs and to enhance crop yield while simultaneously reducing harmful environmental impacts. This study will evaluate the opportunities of fuel and labor savings resulting from adoption of precision agricultural technology by using GPS guidance and/or autosteering systems.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

We are now in the big data era and there are huge amounts of data available from where we can discover useful patterns and knowledge to support critical actions and decision-making processes using advanced data analytics and mining techniques. This project provides a abundance of research opportunities in many possible topics within data mining such as outlier detection, clustering, high-dimensional data analysis and data privacy, etc. Students will acquire useful skills and capacities that are in high demand from academia and industry.

Keywords:
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Data Format
Locations: Centre for Crop Health,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Topological Insulators (TIs) are a class of quantum materials that exhibit topological surface states. These materials are usually small band gap semiconductors where the bulk of the material is insulating, but they exhibit special surface states that are conducting and topologically protected. The materials are usually made of heavy atoms that give rise to strong spin-orbit coupling and this leads to the formation of surface states that are not destroyed by scattering or impurities. TIs are proving to be ideal materials for study in condensed matter physics, as the physics of these materials is novel and they offer huge scope for developing new theories and for the discovery of new materials. In this proposal, we describe the methodology to be adopted to obtain high quality materials, for the different experiments proposed. We propose to synthesize a range of materials, some of which are already known to be Topological Insulators and other new materials such as Dirac semimetals and Wyles semimetals.

Keywords:
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Materials Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials

This research aims to develop a long durée history of feminist publishing in Australia. Building on an emergent historiography, its objective is to establish a historical narrative about the many threads of Australia’s feminist publishing scene across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Research may relate to newspapers and newsletters in the suffrage and women’s liberation movements, as well as the development of feminist presses, magazines, and digital cultures. It could also chart the parallel rise of academic knowledge production about feminism and gender studies. This research project will be grounded in historical research and based on the analysis of primary sources in traditional and digital archives.

Keywords: History, women’s history, feminist history, history of the book, literary history, intellectual history, gender studies, media studies, journalism, nineteenth century, twentieth century, twenty-first century
Research categories: Journalism and Professional Writing,Literary Studies,Literary Studies
Locations: Open Access College

Students are being encouraged to research any important unexplored issues in the above-mentioned fields that are contemporary and relevant to their own country or region. The research topic may be related to Australia or other regions as well. Primary and secondary data and materials can be used, and quantitative or qualitative research methods or a combination of both methods can be applied. The chosen topic should explore the causes of problems and provide solution strategies to benefit the people, society, and economy.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture,Applied Economics,Banking, Finance and Investment,Development Studies,Ecology,Econometrics,Economic Theory,Environmental Management,Other Commerce,Other Economics,Other Environmental Sciences,Other Health Sciences,Public Health,Tourism
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,Institute for Resilient Regions,Rural Economies Centre of Excellence,School of Business

With the limitations on fossil fuel reserves, alternative fuels need to be developed. The student will perform simulations and experiments on alternative fuels to determine the feasibility of an alternative fuel to produce the performance and emissions that are needed for the fuel to be used as a standard fuel.

Keywords: Alternative fuels; Engines; Experiment; Simulation
Research categories: Automotive Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences,School of Engineering

There is a strong need for the development of a reliable quality measurement system in sugarcane industry as the quality of sugar cane varies significantly across the field. The objective of this project is to evaluate the use of NIR sensor, microwave sensor, or refractometer for in-field quality measurements. The technology developed in this project has the potential to offer major value-adding opportunities for the sugar industry in Australia.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Text mining technology is applied to analyse social media data to find public sentiment towards various social and personal issues such as election results prediction, cancer management etc.

Keywords: text mining, data analysis, text mining
Research categories: Information Systems
Locations: School of Management and Enterprise

The objective of this study is to correlate the vocal communication of livestock with their state of welfare. Outcomes of the proposed research: An automatic system for monitoring of livestock to facilitate increased frequency of surveillance while minimizing human labour inputs, with the goal of improving animal welfare. Animal calls have partly evolved as communication signals to indicate some types of “need” and they are relatively easy to record. Hence, it seems to be reasonable to regard vocalizations as easy indicators of an animal’s state of welfare. The dependence of animal vocalizations on wellbeing makes voice recognition a potentially useful tool for judging stress levels in animals. The proposed project seeks to develop an automated noise recognition and analysis system for automatic monitoring of health and welfare of livestock.

Keywords:
Research categories: Animal Production
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Shape memory polymers (SMPs) and their composites (SMPCs) can hold a programmed temporary shape and recover to their original shape once exposed to a particular external stimulus. This project intends to investigate SMP/SMPC stimulated by near infrared (NIR) light. The project will study the use of rare earth materials in SMP to increase the photo-thermal effect. Further the project will perform in-depth investigations of thermo-mechanical properties and shape memory effects of the developed SMP/SMPC.

Keywords: shape memory polymer, shape memory polymer composites, NIR, optical fires, Light activation, Smart Materals, Functional Materials
Research categories: Aerospace Engineering,Engineering Design,Materials Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials

Plastic pollution is a growing environmental problem, in part due to the extremely stable and durable nature of this polymer. As recycling does not provide a complete solution, this research will focus on alternative ways of degrading plastic. Fungi provide a wide array of enzymes specialized in the degradation of recalcitrant substances and are very promising candidates in the field of plastic degradation. The candidate will work with USQ own fungal culture collection to investigate plastic biodegradation

Keywords: fungus, biodegradation, enzymes,
Research categories: Ecological Applications,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering
Locations: Centre for Crop Health,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

The aim of this study is to explore teachers’ practices in using technology to teach literacy and numeracy and later suggest a professional development strategy to impact their technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge in selected primary schools in Queensland.

Keywords: Mathematics teachers, Professional Development, Technology
Research categories: Education Systems
Locations: School of education

Australians are at high risk of malignant keratinocyte cancers and eye disease due to solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Implementing sun-protection to mitigate health risk of erythemally-effective UV is a strategic initiative of World Health Organisation. UV forecasting apps used as a skin health decision support system to predict UV Index can mitigate the risk of skin cancer and eye disease. Predictive models inform real-time sun-protection behaviour in humans and advocate for better public health risk reduction. In this project students learn about artificial intelligence (AI) models and learn to build explainable and interpretable AI systems (denoted as xAI models) that have the skill for real-time simulation of UV index. They will integrate innovative mathematical tools such as deep Taylor decomposition, layer wise relevance propagation (LRP), Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME), sensitivity analysis and feature heat maps to analyse sky images. The xAI approach will offer the explanation of machine decisions and predictions to justify their reliability. The models will also provide greater interpretability, which often means we would better understand the mechanism underlying the algorithms when building an xAI model for UV forecasting. Some of the other well-known methods such as wavelet and Bayesian method will also be used using satellite data to yield high performance. Overall, this project will contribute to the mitigation of health-risk (e.g. skin cancer and eye disease minimisation efforts). The project aims to enhance the science of solar UV index while developing forecasting capabilities for real-time advice to mitigate risk of solar UV-exposure-related disease. It will suit students with some background in health, solar science, computing, climatology, meteorology, mathematics, statistics, environmental or atmospheric physics. Student will learn Python, r or MATLAB programming, extensive data analysis and explainable AI modelling tool. The research project is strongly centred on AI and Health Technologies. This project is suitable for PhD, Research or Coursework Masters Thesis. It provides opportunity to publish in high quality Q1 journals. The research student will be part of the Advanced Data Analytics Research Group under Prof Ravinesh Deo. For more details see https://eportfolio.usq.edu.au/view/view.php?id=116719.

Keywords: skin cancer; solar radiation; artificial intelligence; machine learning; health risk; predictive modelling; applied mathematics; computing; climate; environment
Research categories: Applied Mathematics,Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Atmospheric Sciences,Environmental Science and Management,Public Health and Health Services,Statistics
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Evaporation loss from farm dam water storage is a significant challenge for the agricultural industry. Considerable energy is also required in agricultural production. This project will develop a CFD model to simulate and optimise the design of floating solar systems. The optimal designs will be obtained to achieve the best outcomes for both clean energy generation and water evaporation reduction.

Keywords: CFD modelling, solar energy
Research categories: Engineering Design,Other Engineering
Locations: Centre for Agricultural Engineering,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Science relying on experiments are at risk of non-reproducible outcomes particularly associated with low power and estimated effects that are exaggerated in magnitude. The cost of designing and running experiments can lead researchers to try and minimize the number of sampling units they use. Additionally, experiments may need approval from ethics committees who must assess the risk of over or under-use of subjects while achieving the desired outcomes through the implementation of well-powered experiments. This project aims to develop an online tool that improves reproducibility by providing scenario alternatives for researchers based on their initial parameter specifications, and educational support to help them choose the most effective form of analysis and reporting. This will improve the confidence and statistical understanding of researchers which will assist in managing the risks associated with conducting small experimental studies and enhance the experimental protocol formed prior to data collection. This app will promote sample size estimation as a range, rather than a single number point estimate, and will encompass a scenario-based decision process for the user. Potential research students interested in developing a project proposal in this field are invited to contact us to discuss their ideas.

Keywords: statistics, reproducibility, statistical coding, python, visualisation
Research categories: Statistics
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

this research will address the challenges over digital identity for its privacy preservation

Keywords: Digital Identity Privacy
Research categories: Information Systems
Locations: School of Management and Enterprise

This topic will investigate and evaluate the extent to which advanced materials are used by the SME engineering sector. Such materials have to potential to contribute significantly to sustainable development and revolutionise activities like building and infrastructure construction. The research will enable improved understanding of how these materials are used or not used by industry, and evaluate those factors that aid and hinder their adoption. Such factors include perceptions by industry about these materials, experience with their use, availability of relevant standards and codes, design and construction methods and practices, risk factors, and how and where they might best be used in engineering projects.

Keywords: Advanced materials, SME, building, infrastructure, sustainability
Research categories: Civil Engineering,Environmental Engineering,Materials Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Fungi and yeasts have many applications in drug production, food processing, fermentation (beer, wine and bread), biological control agents, and enzyme technology. However indigenous Australian fungi have rarely been considered or applied to industrial applications. The aim of this project is to screen indigenous microorganisms available in culture collections for novel applications. Examples include screening (i) oleaginous yeasts indigenous to Australia for their capacity to accumulate intracellular lipids for biodiesel production, (ii) ethanol producing yeasts for their capacity to produce ethanol for the brewing industry, (iii) filamentous fungi for their capacity to produce enzymes such as glucoamylase for the saccharification of starches or cellulases/hemicellulases/ligninases for the hydrolysis of lignocellulosics materials for biofuels production. The experimental work will involve screening microorganisms on Petri dishes or fermentation flasks with analysis of relevant intermediates and products.

Keywords: fungus, yeasts, screening, biofuel, fermentation, enzymes, biorefinery, brewing, ethanol, lipids, biodiesel
Research categories: Biochemistry and Cell Biology,Ecological Applications,Ecology,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering,Environmental Science and Management,Evolutionary Biology,Fisheries Sciences,Food Sciences,Forestry Sciences,Genetics,Industrial Biotechnology,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Microbiology,Other Biological Sciences,Other Chemical Sciences,Other Engineering,Other Environmental Sciences
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Ampelomyces spp. are the best-known natural mycoparasites of powdery mildew fungi worldwide. Their hyphae and pycnidia commonly occur inside powdery mildew colonies in the field. Ampelomyces strains can be isolated from powdery mildew mycelia and maintained on artificial media. Some strains have already been commercialized to be used as biological control agents (BCAs) of powdery mildew infections of some crops in Europe, USA, India, Korea, and elsewhere. This project will focus on the isolation of new Ampelomyces spp. strains from diverse powdery mildew species in Australia, their genotyping based on already existing molecular markers, such as nrDNA ITS, ACT1, RPB1 and EukNR sequences and microsatellites, and selection of promising BCA candidates based on mycoparasitic activities of the newly isolated strains. Genomic tools and genetic transformation will be applied to study, and enhance, the biocontrol potential of the selected strains.

Keywords: Biological control, fungi, parasites, crop diseases, powdery mildew
Research categories: Crop and Pasture Production
Locations: Centre for Crop Health

Gasification is a distributed technology which converts biomass (eg, grain waste) into bioenergy as well as biochar under the influence of temperature with limited oxygen. The purpose of this project is to evaluate and further develop this technology for agricultural applications in Australia. Small-scale lab experiments will be carried out to characterize the properties of the feedstock. Numerical methods will also be applied to understand how the design and operating factors influence the performance of the energy systems being considered. The technology developed in this project has the potential to offer major value-adding opportunities for the grain industry in Australia.

Keywords: Grain, energy, bio-energy
Research categories: Applied Economics
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Prediction distribution is the basis for many predictive inferences. Unlike the common practice of estimating parameters of a model or performing tests of hypotheses regarding the parameters involved, often the aim of a researcher/practitioner is to predict the value of a (or a set of) future response(s) from a given model. The technique of prediction is used in many real world situations as it has common sense appeal and simple interpretation. The prediction distribution is the probability distribution of one or more future (unobserved) responses, conditional on a set of observed responses from the same model. The method is useful in both univariate and multivariate problems. Predictive inference is possible for models with independent as well as dependent and correlated responses. Bayesian and other approaches are adopted for the purpose of predictive inference. Available methods can handle the conventional normal model and non-normal robust models. Application of predictive inference includes problems in areas such as tolerance regions, model selection, process control, optimisation, perturbation and many others. The customary use of the normal model comes under serious question when the population distribution is symmetric but have heavier tails that the normal distribution. Also, the normal model fails to incorporate dependent but uncorrelated responses. In such cases the multivariate Student-t distribution provides an appropriate model for the population. For such models we can obtain the maximum likelihood estimators of the mean and scale parameters of multivariate Student-t distribution. The model has been used to find appropriate test statistic to test the mean vector. The distributions of the sum of squares and product matrix for the multivariate Student-t model as well as the predictive distribution of future model have been proposed. Similar results for the matrix T and elliptically contoured model are also obtained. Both classical and Bayesian approaches can be applied. Projects in this area will extend this previous work.

Keywords: Prediction distribution, future response, conditional distribution, Bayesian prediction, tolerance region
Research categories: Other Medical and Health Sciences,Statistics
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

In this research the effect of early-diagnosed dementia subjected will be tested to determine whether this chronic illness affect both low-limbs. The COP path of early-diagnosed dementia subjects will be tested on level surface and short access ramp upslope and downslope walking. Plantar pressure will be acquired during gait on these surfaces. A newly developed COP path analysis technique will be utilised to determine the effect on both low-limbs gait characteristics. COP path and plantar pressure distribution will be compared to the data of adults and older adults to determine the incidence of COP path anomalies.

Keywords: Plantar pressure, gait, dementia, COP path, older adult
Research categories: Human Movement and Sports Science
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research

Accurate and reliable predictive models for short and long-term electricity demand and energy price are critical in engineering and science applications as these models can assist in decisions made by renewable and conventional energy engineers, electricity providers, end-users, and government entities to address energy sustainability challenges to support National Electricity Market (NEM). The energy demand knowledge also assists in the expansion of energy distribution networks, energy pricing, and energy policy development. The energy price and demand are often inter-related and covary so a model representing their changes is essential to model future demand and price. In this research project, students will design artificial intelligence models to forecast energy load and energy price over minute-scale, hourly, daily or seasonal scales. They will build joint distribution (i.e. multivariate) models based on copula and deep learning for a knowledge-based expert system. As a major contribution to energy modelling research, students will develop models based on other significant predictors, particularly in geographically diverse locations where climatic factors affect the electricity load. The study will therefore use climatic factors (e.g. temperature) in the prediction of electrical energy demand and energy pricing. The project will suit students with background in electrical engineering, mathematics, computing and renewable energy. Students will explore and apply deep learning models for improved design of data-intelligent models. This project is suitable for PhD, Research or Coursework Masters Thesis. It provides opportunity to publish in high quality Q1 journals. The research student will be part of the Advanced Data Analytics Research Group under Prof Ravinesh Deo. For more details see https://eportfolio.usq.edu.au/view/view.php?id=116719.

Keywords: electrical energy; demand & energy load; machine learning; big data analytics; energy pricing; energy policy
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Atmospheric Sciences,Computer Software,Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Information Systems,Mathematical Physics,Numerical and Computational Mathematics,Other Engineering,Other Information and Computing Sciences
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Site specific fertilizer application not only reduces the harmful effects to the environment but also have economic benefits to the farmers by optimising the amount of fertilizer applied. This project focus on tractor automation with multi sensor hardware and attached sprayer for the development of on the go fertilizer application. Optimization techniques for real-time cloud storage and processing of sensor data for developing the precision map will be evaluated. ROS based CAN bus communication with the tractor and spraying system will be developed and evaluated for the real time fertilizer application.

Keywords:
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Agricultural environments are generally large and have unpredictable ground surfaces. As such, mobile robots have great difficulty in navigating and localising in such environments. However, these environments also have many properties that are ideal for navigation, such as their uniformity and structure. This research attempts to trade off such advantages to create a robust mobile robot that can operate in agricultural environments. Students will require skills in field work robotics, sensor technologies, and computer algorithms.

Keywords: Mobile robots, agriculture, navigation, localisation
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering

Water trading systems provide an economic framework for the transfer of quantities of water—private ownership of which is endowed by statutory water rights legislation—to enhance/ensure highest value end use (i.e. optimisation) of scarce water resources. In this way, water markets commoditise water within an economic production-focused framework. However, water resources have significant value beyond their function in short-term economic activity. In reality, there are many competing demands for water resources and ensuring and allocating sufficient water of acceptable quality for different uses and users is a highly complex task, often subject to value conflicts. Despite this, the environmental and social impacts of water markets are relatively unknown. The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment espoused an ecosystem services framework for investigating the wider socio-ecological values associated with biodiversity and natural systems which has since gained acceptance as a guiding principle in environmental policy making. This research applies an ecosystem services valuation approach to contemporary water markets operating in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia, to better understand the socio-economic-ecological trade-offs and synergies associated with this form of water resource governance. It will investigate the broader socio-ecological values related to water trading to develop an integrated water benefits model of the total transaction system. It will also explore techniques to link bio-physical and socio-economic values, as well how these values change over different spatial, temporal and social organisational scales. Finally, it will critically analyse a range of policy settings (including a range of instruments and interventions) and provide a foundation for improved water resource decision-making and management.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Applied Economics,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

Building information model (BIM) provides detailed information on building components, geometry, spatial relationships, and semantic properties in three-dimension (3D) space. BIM helps understand geometric and semantic properties of buildings and provides the basis for a variety of functional analyses and applications such as facility management and maintenance, heritage (archaeology and architecture) protection, building deformation monitoring, town planning and decision support. The key aspect of building information modelling is to use an efficient way to obtain 3D building data for detailed description of building structure. Terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) offers the capability of collecting high-density and high-accuracy 3D point cloud. Recently, it has been realised that the TLS has the potential for building information modelling. However, the applications of TLS in BIM have not been extensively tested. Moreover, the efficient ways and algorithms for extracting effective building structure information from large volume of laser scanning data have not been developed. Therefore, this research project aims to develop new ways and algorithms to extract object-based building geometric/structural information from laser scanning point cloud data and test their applications in building information modellings.

Keywords: Terrestrial laser scanning, Laser scanner, GIS, Remote sensing, 3D building modelling, Building information modelling, BIM, Building structure, Point cloud, 3D cadastre,
Research categories: Geomatic Engineering,Other Built Environment and Design,Other Environmental Sciences
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Powdery mildew fungi (Erysiphales) are one of the most conspicuous groups of plant pathogens. Important crops, including wheat, barley, grapevine, and a number of fruit and vegetable crops, as well as ornamentals, grown in the field and glasshouses, are amongst the major targets of powdery mildew fungi. Their control is mainly based on the use of resistant cultivars, repeated application of fungicides, and agro-technical methods. In spite of their economic importance, the precise identity, host range, life cycle, perennation, virulence patterns, and other characteristics of a number of powdery mildew fungi infecting diverse crop species have not been deciphered yet. The project will focus on these aspects of powdery mildew fungi causing disease in horticultural crops in Queensland and elsewhere, based on field, glasshouse and laboratory experiments, as well as molecular studies including DNA genotyping, phylogenetic analyses, and qPCR methods.

Keywords: mycology, plant disease, plant biosecurity, crop protection, horticulture
Research categories: Crop and Pasture Production
Locations: Centre for Crop Health

Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) suffer terrible health inequities. For example, they exhibit more cardio-metabolic and mental health conditions, are much more dependent on health care services and ultimately die earlier than their neurotypical peers. Physical activity and exercise training prevents and managements many cardiometabolic diseases and elicits other benefits to physical and mental health. There is an urgent need to increase exercise and physical activity habits in individuals with ID, as they remain much lower than people without an ID. However, there are unique barriers to physical activity and exercise training in individuals with ID. The most effective testing and training approaches for improving cardio-metabolic health in ID also remain to be explored. This project will determine the utility of different exercise testing and training approaches for improving aerobic fitness, muscular strength and important cardio-metabolic risk factors in individuals with ID. Using client-centred training, training engagement strategies, an inclusive environment, exercise professionals and fun-based training, the project will examine different approaches to enhance physical activity and exercise habits in individuals with ID. These studies will help determine the most effective strategies to promote physical activity and exercise training in individuals with ID, which will reduce their risk of cardio-metabolic disease and premature death. The project will help improve the health and wellbeing of individuals with ID, make a significant contribution to the literature, and refine exercise prescription guidelines and advice for people with ID. The successful PhD candidate will join an established multidisciplinary team of researchers and work in world class facilities within an inclusive and supportive environment. For informal discussion regarding the project, please contact: josh.denham@usq.edu.au

Keywords: Intellectual disability, clinical exercise physiology, exercise training
Research categories: Human Movement and Sports Science
Locations: School of Health and Medical Sciences

Irrigation water resources are currently facing a number of stressors due to climate change/variability and new environmental demands. Optimal operation of limited irrigation water resources under uncertainty of climate and the requirement for environmental preservation is an international concern. There is an urgent need to develop a reliable management framework which could help facilitating decisions of not only water resources planners but also farmers. The developed management framework would allow satisfying the requirements of sustainable development by not only achieving the conventional objective of maximum economic benefit but many other objectives relating to environmental, social and ecological factors; and constraints will be considered. Such a multi-objective irrigation water resources optimal allocation would be achieved by a combination of advanced simulation and optimisation techniques with uncertainty handling capability. This research topic is directly related to the Drought and Climate Adaptation Program funded by Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) to USQ (Project code: DCAP USQ).

Keywords: Irrigation, water resources management, climate change, optimisation, drought, sustainable development
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Applied Mathematics,Civil Engineering,Econometrics,Environmental Science and Management,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

Spray drift from aircraft applying pesticides is still a concern in many rural areas. In particular, herbicide spray drift can travel large distances downwind of the sprayed paddock. This can cause significant damage to crops, in addition to being an environmental nuisance. Several improvements in atomiser design took place in the 1990s, but a review is required to see if any further developments have taken place around the world since then. Herbicide spray drift damage continues to be the subject of regular legal action, wastes significant time and money, and is something which could be eliminated with more effective atomiser (spray nozzle) design. The most effective nozzle designs, which produce droplets mainly within the 100 to 300 micron size range, are those of the rotary atomiser type, which feature well defined fluid issuing points or teeth. Collaboration with UQ Gatton Campus is envisaged, with laser droplet sizing of nozzle prototypes at the wind tunnel laboratory based there.

Keywords:
Research categories: Environmental Engineering,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Poor applications of fumigants can result in considerable loss and increase the resistance of grain pests. In this research, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) will be developed to simulate the distribution of fumigants in grain storage silos. The model will then be used to evaluate different strategies of phosphine fumigation and aeration or ventilation management for the effective pest control in a grain storage ecosystem.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Agricultural production responses to climate variability require salient information to support decisions. If farmers are to benefit from seasonal climate forecasts, the information must be presented in terms of production outcomes at a scale relevant to their decisions. Agricultural outcomes of decisions are more relevant to stakeholders than raw climate information: a farmer is more interested in receiving likely distributions of crop yields or economic returns than a seasonal precipitation forecast. Unfortunately, still there is a gap between the information routinely produced by climate prediction centres and regional climate outlook forums, and the need of farmers and other agricultural decision-makers. A greater capacity is needed to convert raw climate information into distributions of relevant outcomes for agricultural risk assessment and management. An integrated assessment will be developed which couples a stochastic weather generator with a crop simulation model to assess yields and economic returns relevant to crop productions in selected case studies. The weather generator can produce climate scenarios in space and time scales being suitable for crop simulation models, based on historical climatology and modified climatology conditioned on the seasonal forecast. Analysed results of the linked models will provide assessment of likely outcomes and production risks for seasonal forecasts of different seasonal climate scenarios. Furthermore, farmer decisions e.g. cultivar, plating window and configuration, trading water, irrigation scheduling, deficit irrigation will be optimised in a dynamic decision-analytic model which can employ the seasonal climate forecast uncertainty. This research topic is directly related to the Drought and Climate Adaptation Program funded by Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) to USQ (Project code: DCAP USQ15).

Keywords: Seasonal climate forecast, decision support, downscaling, crop modelling, economic modelling, stochastic programming, stochastic weather generators
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Applied Mathematics,Econometrics,Environmental Science and Management,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

Food waste is a problem worldwide due to the volume generated by rich countries and the environmental threat that it represents. Food waste has a strong potential to be transformed into valuable by-products. This research will investigate the hydrolysis of food waste to generate a novel fermentation medium containing sugars, amino acids and essential minerals. Sugars can then be converted by fermentation to biofuels (bioethanol, biodiesel or biogas) or platform chemicals (succinic acid, lactic acid and many others). We have all the equipments and resources to carry out this research including: autoclave, 5L Sartorius automated fermenter, GC for gas analysis and HPLC for analysis of chemicals in the fermentation broth.

Keywords: Biorefinery, platform chemicals, food waste, biofuels, hydrolysis, saccharification
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Achieving universal health coverage is still a long way to go. Worldwide 400 million people lack access to one or more essential health services (WHO 2015). Poverty is the main reason for this poor health coverage. The government alone cannot solve all these problems due to lack of fund in social welfare programs. The wide spread emergence of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries can play a significant role in this regard. A part from loan delivery, providing social services, especially health related services to this poor people should also be the ultimate mission of these MFIs. They can operate the following health-related programs: health- related education (including nutrition and sanitation), health care financing such as health loans, training community health workers, direct delivery of clinical services and health insurance. The main questions will be addressed in this project are: 1. Can microcredit play any role in increasing health seeking behavior? How? 2.What role microfinance can play in enhancing health knowledge of the poor? 3.How can health services be delivered to the poor with microcredit? Are these services effective to improve health status of the poor especially women and children?. This project can be conducted by using primary or secondary data from other developing countries. Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any of the above topics or related topics are encouraged to contact Associate Professor Rasheda Khanam (rasheda.khanam@usq.edu.au) for further details. The potential students are expected to have: (1) an academic background in any of these fields: economics, health economics, development economics, econometrics, statistics and public health, AND, (2) research publications in relevant fields

Keywords: Microcredit, Health Knowledge, Health-Seeking Behaviour, Health Services Delivery
Research categories: Agricultural Biotechnology
Locations: Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development,Centre for Health Sciences Research,Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Business

This project aims to cover the economics of agriculture in its broadest sense, from farm productivity and innovation to land use and the environment to climate adaptation and vulnerability assessment, at every scale of analysis from households to markets and the macroeconomic impacts. The research can employ quantitative and/or qualitative methods using both primary and secondary sources of data and information. The thesis can be written in either traditional format or in PhD by publication. The following is a list of indicative, but not exhaustive, broad topic areas on which PhD research proposals are invited: * Agriculture economics and policy * Farm productivity and innovation * Rural entrepreneurship * Carbon footprint analysis * Climate adaptation * Social cost-benefit analysis * Non-market valuation * Potential to develop markets to sustain the provision of services that have non-market values * Applied economic and policy issues

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Applied Economics,Econometrics,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development,Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Business

This thesis aims to identify the factors that are associated with the increased presence of obesity among Australian children. In particular, this thesis will examine the factors that cause difference in the incidence of childhood obesity between families from high and low socio-economic status. Results from this research will contribute to policy implications that can result in the reduction of the obesity rate among Australian children and improve the equity of children regarding access to health care and nutritional practice. This project can be conducted using quantitative data from either Australia or from other countries. Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any of the above topics or related topics are encouraged to contact Associate Professor Rasheda Khanam (rasheda.khanam@usq.edu.au) for further details. The potential students are expected to have: (1) an academic background in any of these fields: economics, health economics, econometrics, statistics and public health, AND, (2) research publications in relevant fields

Keywords: Childhood obesity; Socio-economic status; Australia
Research categories: Applied Economics,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development,Centre for Health Sciences Research,Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Business

Industry problem / challenge to be addressed: Around 4 million tonnes of food reaches landfill in Australia each year and forms part of Australia’s organic waste, the country’s largest unrecovered stream of waste that goes into landfill. Waste management in Australia has hit a road block as it faces more waste with less landfill capacity and increasing disposal and energy costs. New technologies in composting, waste to energy (combustion) and anaerobic digestion (AD) present feasible approaches to divert organics to landfill. Of the three technologies, AD of source separated food waste represents the most beneficial use of this wet organic fraction as it produces renewable natural gas for heat, electricity and vehicle fuel in addition to biosolids for commercial or agricultural use. However, the use of source segregated food waste is not established in Australia because of the technical challenges associated with collection, sorting, processing, and the beneficial use of recovered material. Project description: The key concept of the research is to valorise the energy from food waste by anaerobic digestion (AD), with a full evaluation of the overall life cycle energy balances associated with this process. The research comprises a number of closely interrelated components with a common underlying goal: to evaluate and where possible improve the energy production process from the perspective of the overall net energy gain achieved within defined system boundaries that include collection, sorting, processing, and beneficial use of recovered material. Key activities: • Assess the amount of food waste that is produced, as a fraction in a given region. • Determine the composition and characterisation of food wastes and evaluate the efficiency and yield of source segregated food waste collection schemes from domestic properties, restaurant and catering facilities, food markets and food manufacturers in a specified region. • Determine the energy and carbon footprints of the food waste to energy process in the specified region including collection, transport, treatment and final product use, considering both direct and indirect inputs. • Optimise digestion processes using interventions to improve the chemical and microbiological factors affecting potential energy gain from the food waste substrate. Expected industry outputs • Provision of best practice guidelines for collection systems for the separation of food waste to be treated by AD. • Development of decision support tools to assess anaerobic digestion technologies forof food waste across Australia, based on project activities carried out in a given region. • Development of institutional framework at all levels of government (state and federal) to guide sustainable and cost effective of conversion of food waste to energy.

Keywords: Renewable energy; Waste management; Food Waste; Biogas: Anaerobic digestion; Waste to energy
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Chemical Engineering,Environmental Engineering,Environmental Science and Management,Industrial Biotechnology,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Other Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences,Other Chemical Sciences,Other Engineering
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Many people are suffering from depression without knowledge of it. As a result, they are unable to access to appropriate helps. Finding and helping such depressive people have motivated us in the work proposed in this thesis project, which will evaluate users' expressions on social networks and alert potential depression adopting the techniques in natural language processing, text mining and sentiment analysis. With the outcome of the work, social workers can find depressive people and deliver help to them efficiently; guardians like parents can have an eye on their children's psychological conditions closely; people suffering from minor depression can monitor their psychological conditions easily, so that they could pull back at early stage and avoid falling into more severe circumstances if anything wrong is happening. The proposed thesis will make potential theoretical contributions to understandings of depression on social networks, as well methodological contributions to text mining and sentiment analysis.

Keywords: Sentiment analysis, opinion mining, social networks, depression
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Information Systems,Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Forests play an important role in the global carbon balance and make a significant contribution to mitigation of climate change. Australia has some of the most carbon-dense forests in the world, with the potential to sequester carbon equivalent to 25% of our current annual emissions. In recent years, policies have been developed to increasing the carbon sequestration role of Australian forests. Accurate description of forest structure is essential for estimation of biomass and carbon accounting. Remote sensing technologies have been used for estimation of above ground forest biomass. However, three-dimensional information on forest structure for estimating biomass cannot be directly obtained from passive remote sensing data. Fortunately, it has been shown that active remote sensing technologies via airborne and terrestrial laser scanning offer the capability for detailed description of the forest structure in three-dimensions. This project aims to use both airborne and terrestrial laser scanning to measure 3D forest structure for biomass estimation and carbon accounting.

Keywords: LiDAR, Laser scanning, GIS, Remote sensing, Spatial science, Surveying, Geography, Forest, Carbon, Environment, Agriculture
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Environmental Science and Management,Forestry Sciences,Geomatic Engineering
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,School of Engineering and Built Environment

This research will investigate the development of sustainable infrastructure, with a view to developing a methodology for assessing the main factors in its planning, design, construction, or asset management. Such factors might include environmentally sensitive design, use of advanced and sustainable materials, resilience to natural disasters, water sensitive urban design, energy efficient use of the infrastructure, sustainable use and life cycle management of the and environmentally responsible project management and development. The methodology developed should be capable of forming the basis of a computer model for use by planners and designers of infrastructure projects to select the best development and life cycle management option that balances the requirements of sustainability and those of major stakeholders

Keywords: Sustainability, infrastructure, design, construction, development, management, life cycle, energy
Research categories: Civil Engineering,Environmental Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,School of Engineering and Built Environment

There is a strong need for the development of a reliable quality measurement system in sugarcane industry as the quality of sugar cane varies significantly across the field. The objective of this project is to evaluate the use of NIR sensor, microwave sensor, or refractometer for in-field quality measurements. The technology developed in this project has the potential to offer major value-adding opportunities for the sugar industry in Australia.

Keywords: NIR, sugar cane, agriculture
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Different technologies are being developed that have the potential to be more efficient and less polluting than current engine and furnace designs. The student will conduct experiments or simulations to test how these novel designs can be improved and become standard.

Keywords: Engines; Furnaces; Experiment; Simulation
Research categories: Automotive Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences,School of Engineering

In this project we will explore the feasibility to ferment soybean meal using a filamentous fungus under solid state fermentation. The fungus will produce cellulolytic enzymes to digest the non-digestible carbohydrate in soybean meal, leaving a higher amino acid content and a higher nutritional value. We have all the equipments and resources to carry out this research including: autoclave, 5L Sartorius automated fermenter, GC for gas analysis and HPLC for analysis of chemicals in the fermentation broth.

Keywords: fungal hydrolysis; soybean meal; nutritional value; enzymes; solid state fermentation
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

As increasing numbers of neurodiverse students enter tertiary education it is important that universities understand the unique needs and challenges that they may face (Gardiner & Iarocci, 2014). This importance is underlined by evidence indicating that neurodiverse students are at increased risk of thwarted belonging that may result in increased use of masking and increased suicidal thoughts and behaviours (Cassidy et al., 2020). Similarly, Australian research indicates that neurodiverse students may not reach their academic potential due to stress and feelings of social isolation (Cai & Richdale, 2016). A qualitative or mixed methods research project would draw on the lived experiences of the students to provide insight into the impact the pathway program has had. Areas of focus could include: • Academic success • Wellbeing and belonging • Employability • Self-efficacy The pathways courses of enabling education programs are integral to supporting equity of access to tertiary education for marginalised groups (Baker, Irwin, Hamilton, & Birman, 2020). Despite this, there is a paucity of research that focuses on the experiences of neurodiverse students in Pathways courses, with studies tending to focus either on school-aged or undergraduate students. This study will aim to address this gap by focusing on the wellbeing influence of neurodiverse students undertaking Pathways courses at USQ College.

Keywords: Neurodevelopmental, belonging, wellbeing, academic success, enabling education, pathway programs, employability, ASD, autism, autistic spectrum disorder, widening participation
Research categories: Education Systems,Education Systems,Other Education,Other Education,Other Psychology,Psychology
Locations: Open Access College

Alkali-activated cements (AACs) are manufactured from industrial waste materials, such as coal combustion ash (fly ash) and slag. They possess the lower CO2 emissions, lower energy consumption than conventional Portland cement but equivalent mechanical properties that can satisfy for construction purposes. One of the biggest challenges to scale-up the industry application of this type of sustainable materials is the uncertainty of durability. Are these materials durable over time, for decades, even longer? This project aims to investigate to the molecular structure and microstructure of AACs with three levels of Ca/Si ratio and understand their degradation under simulated but accelerated service conditions, for example, the marine conditions, the sewage conditions, and the ambient conditions. The degradation of the AACs due to concentrated salt (sulphates) attract, biochemical attack and accelerated carbonation and efflorescence impacts will be revealed and related to the durability of AAC concretes. This project will present world-leading knowledge and transformable skills of green cement development and manufacturing.

Keywords: Concrete; Cement; Durability; Geopolymer; Fly ash; Sustaibility; Alkali-activation; Carbonation
Research categories: Civil Engineering,Materials Engineering
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment

The respiratory system is classically suggested to be “overbuilt” and exceeds the demands placed upon it. However, this situation may not apply during high-intensity exercise where the demands may exceed its capacity. In many trained athletes, the respiratory system is “underbuilt” and can limit exercise performance. One approach to overcome this limitation is to undertake inspiratory muscle training (IMT). This would improve the fatigue resistance and efficiency of the respiratory muscles. The value of IMT is, however, still under debate. While IMT always results in significant improvements in inspiratory muscle function at rest, the significance of these adaptations to the exercise response have yet to be defined. Accordingly, this project aims to investigate the functional significance of IMT to the respiratory response to exercise. Recommendations on the use of IMT in athletes in international guidelines are ambiguous. The outcome of this study will, therefore, have an impact on athlete practices as the results will clarify whether IMT leads to improvements in the respiratory response to exercise. The candidate will join a successful team of multi-disciplinary scientists from several institutions, and will work in state-of-the-art laboratories with exceptional core facilities.

Keywords: respiratory; muscle; exercise; fatigue
Research categories: Cardiovascular Medicine and Haematology,Human Movement and Sports Science
Locations: School of Health and Medical Sciences

In this project, we will investigate the production of enzymes from organic waste such as food waste using a filamentous fungi. Tests will involve the fermentation in liquid or solid state cultures in our laboratory. The mixture of enzymes will be evaluated for their efficiency to hydrolyze organic waste and sludge which will improve current processes. We have all the equipments and resources to carry out this research including: autoclave, 5L Sartorius automated fermenter, GC for gas analysis and HPLC for analysis of chemicals in the fermentation broth.

Keywords: solid state fermentation; food waste; sustainability; organic waste; enzymes; sludge hydrolysis
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

The project aims to undertake high quality research in the following research areas: • GIS, Remote Sensing and image processing for natural resource, land use and land cover changes and environmental applications. • GIS for spatial analysis, modelling and environmental applications. • Time series of satellite imagery and machine learning for urban dynamics modelling. • High-quality digital terrain modelling from airborne LiDAR data for hydrologic modelling and flooding mapping. • Integration of LiDAR and satellite image data for forest fuel loads and burning severity modelling. • Airborne and terrestrial laser scanning for forest and environment applications. • Deep learning/machine learning for big spatial data analysis and applications. • Spatial-temporal analysis of high-resolution spatial data for forest disturbance and biomass dynamics modelling. • Terrestrial laser scanning for building information modelling (BIM) and applications. • Multi-source spatial data and CityEngine for 3D modelling and visualisation • Applications of UAV in mining, forest, natural resource and environment. Potential PhD or masters students interested in any of the above research issues/topics or and any topics in the above research areas are welcomed to contact Dr Xiaoye Liu (xiaoye.liu@usq.edu.au) for additional information.

Keywords: GIS, Remote sensing, LiDAR, Laser scanning, Deep learning, Machine Learning, Spatial analysis, Satellite image, UAV, Forest, Object-based image analysis, Environment, Time series, Digital terrain modelling, DTM, Building information modelling, BIM
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Ecological Applications,Environmental Science and Management,Forestry Sciences,Geomatic Engineering,Other Information and Computing Sciences,Statistics,Urban and Regional Planning
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

The environmental impacts and the sustainable development of agricultural activities have been identified as a significant issue. At present, the greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector (excluding land-clearing) represents 16% of Australia’s total national emissions. There are growing pressures from the community to significantly improve the management practices and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and water uses from the farming sector. This project will use life cycle assessment (LCA) method to analyse and quantify the environmental impacts of agriculture, thus contributing to a more sustainable future.

Keywords: Grain, energy, bio-energy
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a chronic restrictive lung disease that causes irreversible scarring of the tissue deep inside the lungs. The cause of the condition is not known and impacts approximately 3 million people worldwide. The earliest clinical manifestations of these patients is a progressive and irreversible decline in lung function leading to exertional dyspnoea and exercise intolerance. Unfortunately, the mechanisms of exercise limitation in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis are poorly understood, as it is not feasible in patients to examine repeated exercise tests. In patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, however, the mechanisms of exercise limitation are well known. This is partly due to undertaking exercise testing in healthy individuals with applied resistive loads. These replicate airway obstruction and have demonstrated that resistive breathing increases the mechanical and energetic cost of breathing, reduces blood flow to the exercising limbs which exacerbates limb muscle fatigue, dyspnoea and ultimately leads to exercise limitation. Whether these mechanisms also partly explain exercise limitation in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is unknown. Chest wall strapping is an experimental intervention that restricts expansion of the thorax during breathing and can be used to simulate the effects of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in healthy research participants. While this is an imperfect model of the disease, chest wall strapping allows testing that is not feasible in clinical populations. Accordingly, this project will investigate the mechanisms of exercise limitation in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis using a model of chest wall strapping. We will test the hypothesis that chest wall strapping increases the mechanical and energetic cost of breathing, reduces blood flow to the exercising limbs which exacerbates limb muscle fatigue, dyspnoea and ultimately leads to exercise limitation. This will lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms of exercise limitation in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and better treatments to improve exercise capacity. The candidate will join a successful team of multi-disciplinary scientists from several institutions, and will work in state-of-the-art laboratories with exceptional core facilities.

Keywords: Exercise; respiratory; lung disease; muscle fatigue
Research categories: Cardiovascular Medicine and Haematology,Human Movement and Sports Science,Physiology
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Health and Medical Sciences

This proposal focuses on the analysis of several types of EEG signals (such as anaesthetised, sleep and epileptic EEGs), using multi-disciplinary approaches from Computational Intelligence, Brain Modelling and Biomedical Research areas. This research will lead to • an intelligent device that can help clinicians administer the appropriate dosages of anaesthetic drugs in real time. • a software tool that can identify sleep stages and patterns of people who have sleep disorders • an effective real-time diagnostic method to predict epilepsy seizures. This proposal tackles important issues in human health. The outcomes of the research will assist the diagnoses and treatment of neurological disorders and diseases, and better clinical practice. It will benefit the community by reducing medical costs and improving the quality of people’s lives.

Keywords: Electroencephalography (EEG), Artificial Intelligence, Pattern Recognition
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Climate is one of the fundamental factors that determine where different types of agriculture, forestry and freshwater aquaculture can be successfully pursued. For primary industries such as the cotton industry, climate conditions, including variability, determine annual production and actual profitability. Australia’s cotton production relies largely on irrigated areas: about 400,000 ha of irrigated cotton is grown (depending on water availability), compared to 5,000-120,000 ha for dry land cotton. Along with adequate nutrition, water availability is very important to achieving adequate yields (high quantity and god fibre quality) in cotton. In Australia, cotton is grown in a region with the highest levels of climate variability in the country which has required farmers to have a relatively high ability to diversify. Such growing conditions have led to significant levels of adaptive capacity and considerable adaptation have been achieved over the past decades. Although these characteristics will support ongoing effective responses to climate variability and change, any adaptation strategies need to be considered in the context of other environmental, social, and economic and political frameworks. They will be most effective if they can also integrate multiple risks from a range of interacting processes across spatial and temporal scales. The multifaceted biophysical impacts of climate variability on cotton production are complex, geographically varied, and encumbered with varying degrees of uncertainty. Experience in undertaking production system and transformational changes is also limited, and many transformational changes will involve unknown and unpredictable risks to the personal and financial well-being of the people and communities directly involved, and to investment in land development, and production infrastructure. Given primary industry responses to climate variability/change impacts move from adjusting current practices to changing production systems or transforming industries, the complexity, cost and risk of climate-driven enterprise changes will increase. There is therefore a need to actively engage in the research required to support incremental adaptations to climate, system and transformative changes in the future so as to ensure the cotton industry is able to continue adapting to climate change impacts in the longer term. This PhD will investigate adaptation pathways and water management systems (namely irrigation control systems) in Cotton industry. Outcomes from different scenarios will help to developing regionally-specific pathways and maintaining or increasing the profitability and sustainability of cotton production and related industry and communities.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Applied Economics,Atmospheric Sciences,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

This topic invites students interested in pursuing a Doctorate (or Masters) in the research area related to: data, data collection, teacher’s use of date in early childhood contexts, teacher’s use of data to write transition statements, leadership in ways of building professional capacity in the use of data in early childhood contexts, or any other associated theme.

Keywords: early childhood, data collection, documentation, transition statements, professional capacity
Research categories: Agricultural Biotechnology,Curriculum and Pedagogy,Other Education,Specialist Studies in Education
Locations: School of education

Soil compaction affects agricultural lands throughout the world. It leads to reduced water and air entry into soils. It also increases machinery fuel use and results in reduced root growth and crop yields. This project will demonstrate and assess the ability of CTF to improve the productivity and sustainability of conservation farming by avoiding the waste of energy, soil damage and delayed operation caused by the uncontrolled wheel traffic in mechanised agriculture.

Keywords: Soil compaction, agriculture
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering and Built Environment

This project aims to undertake high quality and policy relevant research on the following issues (but not limited to): • Health care financing and expenditures • Production of health and health behaviours • Demand for health and health care • Demand and supply of health service • Inequality in health and access to health service • Socio-economic inequalities child and maternal health • Health, socioeconomic status and lifestyle factors • Economic evaluation of health and health care • Impact of health on labour market outcome • Health care costs of non-communicable diseases Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any of the above topics or related topics are encouraged to contact Associate Professor Rasheda Khanam (rasheda.khanam@usq.edu.au) for further details. The potential students are expected to have: (1) an academic background in any of these fields: economics, health economics, labour economics, econometrics, statistics and public health, AND, (2) research publications in relevant fields.

Keywords:
Research categories: Applied Economics
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Business

Wetalla reclamation plant is a Biological Nutrient Removal (BNR) process treating municipal wastewater from Toowoomba region. The plant includes membranes such as reverse osmosis to reclaim water for the local industries. This project will sample the water at every stage of the process and monitor the non-biodegradable compounds by Gas Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry in order to shed more light on the recalcitrant and soluble microbial products produced by bacteria during the process. It will also reveal the organic compounds causing fouling of the membranes.

Keywords: Gas Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), recalcitrant, soluble microbial products
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Analytical Chemistry,Chemical Engineering,Civil Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Engineering materials are used in a wide range of applications. They include metals such as steel and aluminium, concrete, asphalt, fibre composites, nanomaterials and plastics. However, the continued production of traditional materials can contribute to ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, natural resource shortages, energy demand, use of toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process and waste. An option is to better use engineering materials. For example, a number of engineering materials, such as steel and concrete, can be successfully recycled or reused. Natural materials, such as wood and hemp, can be also contribute the sustainability. There are thus many opportunities for research in the improved use and recycling of engineering materials, including smart design processes to more closely match material designs to the product life cycle, development of alternative materials, and the use of lean production and construction activities to improve the production process and reduce waste. Such research would be expected to make a positive impact on sustainable engineering practices.

Keywords: Sustainability, engineering, materials, recycling, production, waste management
Research categories: Building,Civil Engineering,Design,Environmental Engineering,Manufacturing Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment

There is an interesting opportunity to work at USQ to solve issues faced by the Queensland prawn farming industry which is worth several millions. The project aims to improve on farm water remediation processes and culture pond water quality. In response to incursion of an exotic virus that causes white spot disease, this multimillion dollar aquaculture industry is looking for more efficient ways to reduce reliance on seawater drawn from the environment by implementing novel engineered bioreactors technology to remediate effluent water containing elevated dissolved and particulate waste levels. A PhD candidate is expected to work on a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) to treat ammonia from waste effluent and convert it into bio-floc rich in bacterial nitrogen that could be harvested as new feedstock for growing prawns.

Keywords: prawn, farming, wastewater, bioreactor, sustainable, remediation
Research categories: Agricultural Biotechnology,Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering,Fisheries Sciences
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

This thesis topic will be undertaken as part of an ARC Discovery project that investigates how everyday lifeworlds of Year 4 (9-10 year of age) students in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore shape children’s orientations to educational success. Situated in the global cities of Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore, the ARC Discovery project explores connections between policy contexts, school experiences and everyday activities of children growing up in the Asian Century. This exciting ARC Discovery project is a partnership between Flinders University, The University of Southern Queensland, The University of Newcastle, the National Institute of Education in Singapore and the Education University of Hong Kong. The ARC project has two funded PhD scholarships, one of which will be based at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) with Prof Sue Saltmarsh as the Principal Supervisor. Associate supervision will be provided by the other members of the research team located within Australia (Professor Nicola Yelland, Flinders; and Dr I-Fang Lee, University of Newcastle), with Dr Sayan Chakrabarty as the USQ-based Associate Supervisor. The USQ PhD scholarship candidate will focus on the intersection of policy and culture, with suggested topics including: - The ways in which policy discourse shapes and is shaped by everyday practices of teachers, families and students - How the articulation of testing and student outcomes within policy discourse is implicated in producing context-specific educational and cultural practices - How local responses and resistances to policy discourse, policy effects and policy cultures compare to responses and resistances in the broader global context In addition to the ARC scholarship, this program of research can accommodate additional postgraduate students interested in exploring aspects of the above topics, or other related topics in consultation with Professor Saltmarsh. The research team has expertise in social, cultural, educational and economic theory, and draws on qualitative research methodologies including ethnography, visual ethnography, discourse analysis, social semiotics and policy studies, and quantitative methods including surveys, questionnaires and statistical analysis.

Keywords: education, education policy, childhood studies, culture
Research categories: Specialist Studies in Education
Locations: School of education

This project aims to develop electrochemical conversion technologies to convert carbon dioxide into global needed chemicals. It targets the bottleneck issues in managing the gas-liquid-solid reaction sites and improving the conversion efficiency of reactor, through the synthesis of advanced electrode materials, understanding of mass transfer and the engineering design of a reactor. The project expects to develop new electrochemical catalysts, to optimise the structure of electrodes and ultimately improve carbon dioxide conversion efficiency and reaction selectivity. The expected outcomes of this project will provide an efficient and economically viable electrochemical technology to convert carbon dioxide to a valuable product such as formic acid or syngas, with the potential to significantly reduce the emission of carbon dioxide from steel-making processes and coal-fired power plants.

Keywords: carbon dioxide, electrochemical conversion, catalysis
Research categories: Materials Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials

My supervisory range is fairly widespread around a number of music history topics from 16th century music to concert music of the present. in particular I have expertise in 20th century Australian music and symphonic music from throughout the century.

Keywords: 20th century Australian music , symphonic music
Research categories: Historical Studies
Locations: School of Humanities & Communication

This project aims to undertake high quality and policy relevant research on the following issues (but not limited to): • Poverty and welfare issues in developing countries • Health, nutrition, fertility and mortality issues in developing countries • Food security and health outcomes • Intra-household resource allocation and its impacts on children and women • Microfinance • The economics child labour and education • Child labour and its impact on health • Women empowerment and its impact on child health and education • Issues of development economics in south and southeast Asia • Social policy issues Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any of the above topics or related topics are encouraged to contact Associate Professor Rasheda Khanam (rasheda.khanam@usq.edu.au) for further details. The potential students are expected to have: (1) an academic background in any of these fields: economics, health economics, development economics, econometrics, statistics and public health, AND, (2) research publications in relevant fields

Keywords:
Research categories: Applied Economics,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Business

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are low-pressure systems with organized convection that form over the warm tropical oceans. TCs produce damaging winds, heavy rainfall and storm surges that can result in wide-spread flooding near the tropical coastal regions. On average, 11 TCs form in the Australian region during the TC season (November to April) of which 40% make landfall over Australia with the potential for huge socio-economic losses given the growth in coastal settlements and infrastructure developments. For example, severe TC Debbie in 2017 was one of the most destructive systems to make landfall in Australia that had a total economic loss of A$3.5 billion. A significant fraction of annual precipitation over tropical Australia has been attributed to TCs, providing 30-45% of the annual rainfall at some stations over north-west Australia. A recent study with limited datasets shows that Australia has witnessed considerable cases of inland TCs after the landfall since 1979 compared to other regions that maintained tropical characteristics over land for a few more days, enhancing the TC-related hazards. However, our present understanding of the trend of landfalling TCs is very limited, as is our knowledge of the driving mechanisms of changing characteristics after the landfall, and associated impacts on northern Australian rainfall variability. This project will investigate what contributes to the decay, re-intensification or sustenance of an inland TC after landfall over Australia and the contribution of TCs to rainfall variability using the latest available best-track datasets, high resolution reanalyses and surface observations. The outcomes from this project will consist of a comprehensive understanding of the landfalling TCs, including an updated database of inland TCs over Australia, which will aid in better handling the model uncertainties in future projections of such events. A self-motivated promising student with a background in meteorology and with prior data analysis experience (e.g. NCL, Python, Matlab etc.) would be preferable. Travel to Melbourne may be encouraged to carry out this research work with a possibility of paper publication(s) in high quality research journals.

Keywords: convection, economic loss, precipitation benefits, hazards, climate and weather
Research categories: Atmospheric Sciences
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

Accurate and efficient measurement of greenhouse gases is essential to reduce emissions from livestock. Knowledge and practices aimed at reducing methane emissions from livestock can serve the dual purpose of improving feed efficiency, productivity and farm income, while also helping lower Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. This research will investigate different types of non-invasive sensing techniques for cattle methane emissions in real on-farm environment (under in vivo conditions).

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: Centre for Agricultural Engineering

Traditionally, autonomous mobile robots utilise active-based sensors such as laser and sonar system for obstacle detection and avoidance. However, many mobile robots are incorporating vision systems for more complex tasks in image recognition and localisation. Visual information obtained from a camera image, and moreover multiple camera images can theoretically provide (under certain conditions) complete 3D structure of a scene. This ultimately makes active sensors redundant, an observation also evident in biological animals. This project looks to develop a visual-based technique for the task for autonomous robots. Students should have skills and interest in developing and implementing computer-vision algorithms, alongside developing control aspects of the mobile robot platform, such as a quadcopter, or ground-based mobile robot, or even a walking robot Spot Mini.

Keywords: Obstacle Avoidance, Computer Vision, Image Processing, Mobile Robot, UAV.
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering

The project seeks to innovatively transform recruitment and retention of rural pharmacists where shortages and maldistribution exist. The project will leverage the Australian developed Pharmacist Community Apgar tool and consumer consultation to generate innovative real-time pharmacist recruitment and retention solutions. The expected outcomes will enhance a community’s capacity to identify its resources, capabilities, and gaps to establish bespoke pharmacist recruitment and retention strategies. The project will provide significant benefits beyond rural access, by creating savings that benefit consumers, health services, and health budgets, while the study outcomes have broader application across other rural industries.

Keywords: Pharmacist, Workforce, Rural, Allied health, Employment
Research categories: Health Services And Systems
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Nursing and Midwifery

This program aims to enhance Boeing’s processes by introducing Industry 4.0 frameworks, focussing on the development digital twin workflows for composite components which includes design, manufacturing, service, and MRO. These digital twin workflows will primarily be utilised for a case study focussed on the repair of composite components to eliminate both engineering and laborious processes leading to more efficient MRO of future spacecraft and aircraft fleets. Within this program, there are two Master opportunities available with a focus on the identification of physical data, data collection, data processing, FEA analyses, and the digital twin process flow for the relifing of airframe structures: Topic #1: Method identification for relifing of airframe structures Identify and evaluate methods that can be employed to extend the service life of composite components, ensuring that aircraft can continue to operate effectively without the need for premature decommissioning. This involves comprehensively establishing maintenance, repair, and modification approaches to prolong airframe structures. These Masters opportunities are supported by the Innovative Launch, Automation, Novel Materials, Communications, and Hypersonics (iLAuNCH) Trailblazer Program as a part of an industrial collaboration with Boeing and MEMKO. As part of this program there may be opportunity for domestic travel between UniSQ Toowoomba Campus and Boeing & MEMKO facilities in Melbourne in addition to travel for relevant conferences to present research achievements.

Keywords: aerospace, composites, digital twin, numerical modelling, maintenance and repair
Research categories: Aerospace Engineering,Manufacturing Engineering,Materials Engineering,Mechanical Engineering,Numerical And Computational Mathematics,Other Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials

This project aims to undertake high quality and policy relevant research on the following issues (but not limited to): • Healthcare financing and use of maternal and child health services • Cost efficient postnatal care for mothers and children in developing countries • Cost benefit analysis of (1) childhood illness and treatment (2) vaccination of children • Inequality in child and maternal mortality in developing countries. • Social determinants of childhood (newborn death, neonatal mortality, still birth) mortality • Socio-economic inequalities in women and children nutrition • Women’s empowerment and health seeking behaviour • Women empowerment and fertility preferences and regulation • Impacts of women empowerment on child health in developing countries Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any of the above topics or related topics are encouraged to contact Associate Professor Rasheda Khanam (rasheda.khanam@usq.edu.au) for further details. The potential students are expected to have: (1) an academic background in any of these fields: economics, health economics, development economics, econometrics, statistics and public health, AND, (2) research publications in relevant fields

Keywords:
Research categories: Applied Economics,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Business

Understanding the origin of health and development deficits of low-income children is not only important for the scholarship of knowledge, but it is also vital for informing cost efficient policies to improve outcomes for these children. There is a clear policy debate whether we should target direct income transfers to the family or whether we should instead target the factors that may mediate the relationship between income and child outcome. The broad aim of this project is to provide new policy-relevant research focussing on the role of income in determining children’s cognitive, behavioural and health outcomes and empirically investigating the routes through which income affects child outcomes. This project will examine this association both in cross section approach and in longitudinal dimension using fixed effects and random effects approach to account the potential endogeneity of income. This project can be conducted using either Australian data or overseas data. Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any of the above topics or related topics are encouraged to contact Associate Professor Rasheda Khanam (rasheda.khanam@usq.edu.au) for further details. The potential students are expected to have: (1) an academic background in any of these fields: economics, health economics, econometrics, statistics and public health, AND, (2) research publications in relevant fields

Keywords: Family income, Child cognitive and non-cognitive development, Health inequalities, Panel data
Research categories: Applied Economics,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: Institute for Resilient Regions

Recently the advances in particles based simulation methods as well as meso and nano scale measurements of material properties yield a new paradigm for understanding the multi-scale behaviour of complex materials including soils, soft matters, nanomaterails . The main objective of this project is to use molecular models/coarsed grain models and High Performance Computing techniques to investigate the interactions between soil platelets to develop meso-scale models of soil aggregates. The research will then extend to analyse the distribution of particle sizes and different soil minerals. The goal is to use the bottom-up approach to improve macroscopic models of soil behaviour.

Keywords: Molecular Dynamics, multiscale, mesoscale modelling
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: School of Engineering

This project aims to develop a number of subsystems as part of a Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) system being developed to improve production efficiency. Principal components of precision farming are the accurate real time yield/performance monitoring and control systems. The emergence and on-going research/development into new real-time sensing technologies and data acquisition systems are primarily focused on improving the accuracy and reliability of these systems. However, considering the diverse range of on-farm environmental variables requiring monitoring and control, their integration and a sound decision making process based on all these variables still remains a challenge. This project will enable students to develop a number of subsystems in the areas of real-time data acquisition, analysis, decision making, environmental and other on-farm control systems. This project area presents opportunities to work in cross-disciplinary application areas of mechatronic engineering and electrical, electronic and computer engineering. The specific focus of project/s undertaken will be determined by negotiation as appropriate to each student’s major and interests.

Keywords:
Research categories: Animal Production
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering and Built Environment

The use of clinical signs for assessing depth of anaesthesia (DoA), although universally employed, is notoriously unreliable. Changes in middle latency auditory evoked potentials have been shown to reflect reliably the level of anaesthesia with a wide range of anaesthesia drugs and to detect awareness. This study is to develop a reliable method to evaluate the depth of anaesthesia to minimize the change of awareness and overdosing.

Keywords: Depth of Anaesthesia, Graph Theory
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

There is an increasing demand for national and regional scale elevation data for use in environmental modelling and spatial analysis to support environmental policy development and implementation. Digital elevation data and derived products such as digital elevation models (DEM) are important components in national and regional spatial data infrastructure. To support sustainable development and resource management at a catchment scale, the improvement and update of existing DEMs or, alternatively, the development of a new high-accuracy and high-resolution DEM has been identified as a priority by many catchment management authorities. Recently, it has been shown that the deployment of airborne LiDAR (light detection and ranging) systems offers a way to acquire high-density and high-accuracy terrain data. LiDAR data promise to become one of the major sources of digital terrain data, and may become the primary choice for the updating of catchment-scale DEMs. The DEM requirements at catchment scale are diverse and refer to many identified natural resource issues, including drainage systems, groundwater, lakes and wetlands, water quality, landslides, salinity, and biodiversity. The overall objective of this research is to investigate the ways of processing the airborne LiDAR data for high quality DEM generation in terms of both accuracy and efficiency and explore the applications of LiDAR data at catchment scale.

Keywords: GIS, Remote Sencing, Spatial Science, LiDAR, Digital Elevation Model, DEM, Digital Terrain Model, DTM, Environmental Management, Natural Resources
Research categories: Environmental Science and Management,Geomatic Engineering,Other Environmental Sciences
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,School of Engineering and Built Environment

In Australia, conventional treatment of piggery wastewater is carried out in anaerobic ponds occupying a large surface. Residence times are typically long (>100 days) and solids removals are low. Towards the end of the design lifespan of the pond, sludge accumulation may encroach on the pond treatment volume, adversely affecting pond function. At this point in time, the pond effluent may become unsuitable for flushing sheds and irrigation onto agricultural land, due to higher total solids concentrations, while the large surface area may emit high levels of offensive odours as pond biological function becomes impeded. Producers are then faced with the major practical and financial problem of determining how to desludge a relatively large pond without interfering with the ongoing operation of the piggery. These issues and more will be addressed using an anaerobic baffled reactor.

Keywords: anaerobic baffled reactor; piggery wastewater
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

There are currently rapid changes in the Australian energy landscape, with increased use of wind and solar renewable energy. Renewable gas in the form of biomethane produced from organic wastes is largely an untapped renewable energy resource in Australia. In Europe and elsewhere, large amounts of biomethane are converted into vehicle fuel or injected into natural gas grids to supply industry and households with clean green energy. Australia is at a turning point. Major gas grid owners are asking for green biomethane solutions. The opportunities are great. Around 130,000 commercial businesses rely on gas, plus 44% of Australia’s household or more than 6.5 million homes. Unfortunately, there are currently no feasible technology concepts for Australia. This is an urgent research need. This project will draw on extensive industry connections via the International Energy Agency Bioenergy Task 37: Energy from Biogas to collaboratively research, explore, clarify and develop biogas to biomethane options for Australia. Industry collaboration is a great strength in this project, enhancing adoption readiness of research, industrial relevance and employability.

Keywords: Biogas, biomethane, green gas, upgrading, agriculture, anaerobic digestion, organic waste, natural gas
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Chemical Engineering,Environmental Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment

3D GIS offers new insights into spatial data for 3D modelling and visualisation and has attracted increasing interest in a wide range of applications. Technologies for high quality terrain and other 3D object data acquisition are advancing rapidly. Recently, it has been shown that airborne and terrestrial laser scanning systems provide efficient way to acquire high-quality 3D data. Innovation in 3D modelling technologies and software such as 3D visualisation environment of ArcScene and ArcGlobe in ArcGIS, KML (Keyhole Markup Language) in support of presentation of GIS data in Google Earth, CityGML and newly available Esri CityEngine for 3D city modelling, make it possible to efficient 3D visualisation and modelling. Potential master and PhD students can select 3D GIS topics they are interested in: • Multi-source 3D data integration for 3D modelling • 3D modelling and geodatabase integration • 3D city modelling and applications • Integration of 3D GIS and Building Information Modeling (BIM) • 3D technologies for urban and regional planning • 3D GIS for natural resources and environmental management • 3D utility management • 3D cadastre.

Keywords: GIS, 3D GIS, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, 3D Modelling, 3D Visualization, 3D Cadastre, 3D City Modelling, 3D Urban and Regional Planning, Building Information Modelling, BIM
Research categories: Environmental Science and Management,Geomatic Engineering
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,School of Engineering and Built Environment

By 2040 the requirement for global electricity generation is expected to rise by 45%: renewable energies will play a key role to satisfy the energy demand. This project aims to develop deep learning models correcting the bias in NWP forecasts to support smart energy systems by using multivariate time series, sky images and atmospheric parameters to build an xAI model. Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) e.g., photovoltaics and wind are the fastest growing resources with contributory shares expected to rise to 15% by 2040 and more than half arising from wind. Yet, renewable energy resources must be explored for their feasibility in meeting the constant supply requirement in order to eliminate any imbalance between supply and demand that can disproportionately increase financial risks to energy utilities and the supply risk to consumers. Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models use forecasts and availability of wind and solar energies in the future (e.g. inter-daily scales) or monitor very short-term supply (e.g. hourly scales) ensuring that the energy utilities can maintain their businesses while the consumers remain satisfied. However, NWP models have significant uncertainties in their global climate model parametrisations that can also cause major errors in the meteorological variables fed into solar and energy prediction systems. Incorrectly predicted solar and wind energy causes power outrage, reducing the confidence in meeting energy demand and security. The project will develop advanced analytics with big data and deep learning to operate the whole energy fleet sustainably, based on demand, supply and price the forecasting of energy resources in a robust informatics platform. Here, Optimal = Reliable + Economical + Sustainable. Integration of VREs represented by frontiers offer the highest return for a defined level of risk or lowest risk for a given return. Deep learning will use its capability to establish patterns, trends and fluctuations in NWP variables in respect to a demand load, producing pareto optimal solution. The project will use machine learning to build xAI models for bias correction in NWP variables, that can increase confidence in solar and wind energy forecasts. The student will learn industry-standard Python, r or MATLAB programming, extensive data analysis and explainable AI modelling tool. The project suits students with interest in renewable energy, mathematics, atmospheric science, computing and environmental science. The research project is strongly centred on AI and Renewable Energy Technologies. The project may be undertaken with Queensland-based energy company and an industry mentor. This project is suitable for PhD, Research or Coursework Masters Thesis. It provides opportunity to publish in high quality Q1 journals. The research student will be part of the Advanced Data Analytics Research Group under Prof Ravinesh Deo. For more details see https://eportfolio.usq.edu.au/view/view.php?id=1

Keywords: energy; renewable energy; artificial intelligence; data science; atmospheric science; mathematics; physics
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Atmospheric Sciences
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

On-farm, intensive feed and processing sectors from red meat, dairy and pork industries produce significant quantities of waste. Understanding key information gaps on waste composition and quantities in these industries is a fundamental step to fully realising the opportunities in unlocking new revenue streams to produce energy products, fertilisers, feeds and chemicals for use in agriculture. This project will assess waste aggregation opportunities across these industries in combination with waste from municipal water treatment and explore options to integrate novel conversion technologies that increase the conversion of organic waste to energy using co-digestion.

Keywords: Organic waste, codigestion, anaerobic digestion, biogas, agriculture, red meat processing, pork, dairy, waste water treatment
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Chemical Engineering,Environmental Engineering,Environmental Science and Management,Industrial Biotechnology,Interdisciplinary Engineering
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment

The adverse effect of weight gain on health and wellbeing is well documented. Many research studies have investigated the effects of overweight and obesity on numerous chronic conditions, but maintaining long term acceptable weight is yet to be investigated. A person is identified as an acceptable weight if his/her body mass index (BMI) is less than 25 (kh/m^2). This project will examine the effect of maintaining long-term acceptable weight on health and wellbeing. Secondary data will be collected from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) involving three age cohorts (young, middle-aged and older women). This project will also compare the outcome with those who don’t maintain acceptable weight for a long time. This data will also be compared with the available data sources from developing countries. Depending on the time and cost, this project also aims to collect some primary data from Australian university students and the results will be compared with those of both developed and developing countries. Understanding the characteristics of people who do remain in the acceptable weight range may shed light on potential strategies for the prevention of weight gain.

Keywords: Overweight, acceptable weight, chronic conditions
Research categories: Demography,Public Health and Health Services,Statistics
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences,School of Health and Medical Sciences

Tropical cyclones are natural disasters whose tracks or intensity are challenging to predict. Physical and dynamical models are gold standards in such predictions, but a lack of reliable forecast models can have a devastating impact on people’s lives and infrastructure. Data-driven approaches can help in the design of cyclone forecasting models to complement physical methods and help in disaster risk management. This project aims to adopt deep learning artificial intelligence methods to develop reliable forecast models, to predict the formation, tracks and intensity of tropical cyclones. Deep learning refers to machine learning (or computational) algorithms that can identify antecedent (past) features in covariate data to model the future property of a target variable (e.g. a cyclone path, intensity, etc). Deep learning has been extensively used in climate and weather forecasting due to its capability to model nonlinear and relatively complex relationship of many atmospheric variables. The project will develop data-driven approaches to forecast tropical cyclones, provide a higher accuracy and reliability advantages, adequate lead times and more certain characteristic features that can lead to user confidence and improved disaster mitigation. Such methods can lead to innovations in cyclone modelling and thus, save lives and minimise infrastructural damage. The project will build deep learning models with high resolution weather prediction data, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), Global Forecast System (GFS), UKMET (UKMON), Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF), Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System-Tropical Cyclone (COAMPS-TC) and other statistical-dynamical methods. Students will validate model data, arrange cyclone data into categories, basins of formation, recurving and straight-moving, intensity at model initialisation for analysis. The project will build models for 6 hourly interval predictions, hybrid forecasts using deep learning and copula-statistical methods for probabilistic conditional forecasts upon given variables to account for uncertainties in tracks or intensity and sensitivity to atmospheric conditions. The study will use artificial intelligence to make positive outcomes for natural disaster risk management. The project is strongly centred on disaster risk mitigation and will suit students with a background in meteorology, atmopsheric sciences, physics, mathematics, computing or climate science. The project is suitable for MSC but is also scalable to a PhD level. It provides opportunity to publish in high quality Q1 journals. The student will be part of Advanced Data Analytics Research Group under Professor Ravinesh Deo. See https://eportfolio.usq.edu.au/view/view.php?id=116719

Keywords:
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Atmospheric Sciences
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

The project will look at hydrogen production from waste in an anaerobic bioreactor. Anaerobic conditions promote the growth of methanogens which consume hydrogen and CO2 to produce methane gas. We will be looking at ways to inhibit hydrogenotrophic methanogens to optimize hydrogen production.

Keywords: anaerobic, hydrogen
Research categories: Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Students' preparation in mathematics and statistics, is of special relevance in this study because a seamless transition to postsecondary education might be hampered for many students by a lack of a basic mathematical foundation. Students who struggle with first-year mathematics may not be able to continue or may fail some courses.

Keywords: Mathematics, statistics, Students' preparation, mathematical foundation
Research categories: Applied Mathematics
Locations: UniSQ College

Problem solving is one of the most widely used classroom activities in teaching mathematics. At the same time, problem posing activities are quite often neglected and even excluded from teachers’ consideration. Moreover, there is a significant mismatch between students’ problem solving and problem posing activities while studying mathematics on any level. In particular, secondary mathematics. One of the reasons is teachers’ problem posing skills are underdeveloped. We analyse problem posing as a theoretical issue in Teacher Education and investigate the factors that encourage teachers to use problem posing activities as part of any learning process in mathematics. We also focus on developing educational materials in a constructivist framework which can contribute to the professional development of mathematics teachers.

Keywords: Problem solving, problem posing, constructivist framework
Research categories: Curriculum and Pedagogy,Specialist Studies in Education
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

In a changing climate, nations suffer from extreme and catastrophic floods. Flood monitoring and forecasting provides advanced warnings to mitigate the impacts of floods. These are mainly achieved by an estimation of river height, streamflow, time of rainfall and peak flow at a specified point in time resulting from changes in rainfall. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology, in partnership with national agencies provides river water level forecasts. Despite their effectiveness, the traditional flood forecasting methods can be somewhat time-consuming, expensive and relatively complex to implement especially in geographically diverse locations. In this exciting project, research students learn about joint distribution (i.e. multivariate) models based on copulas and deep learning algorithms to predict hourly and daily flood events. Such forecasts can be used in flood mitigation design system. The study will adopt flood indices based on daily effective precipitation to monitor and forecast the events considering a weighted sum of current and antecedent rainfall, and a time-dependent reduction formula applied on the recent (vs. older) rainfall to account for water accumulation due to hydrological factors. Hourly & daily data will be used to develop flood model considering rainfall accumulation redistributed by an objective formula factored viz a time-dependent function and applying machine learning models to predict flood events in advance. The research project is strongly centred on natural disaster risk mitigation theme. It will suit students with good background in engineering, hydrology, mathematics, computing, climate or water resources. Students will explore deep learning to enhance the performance accuracy of flood prediction system. This project is suitable for PhD, Research or Coursework Masters Thesis. It provides opportunity to publish in high quality Q1 journals. The research student will be part of the Advanced Data Analytics Research Group under Prof Ravinesh Deo. For more details see https://eportfolio.usq.edu.au/view/view.php?id=116719.

Keywords: Flood Risk; Artificial Intelligence; Mathematical Modelling; Disaster Management; Predictive Modelling; Hydrology; Water Resources
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Atmospheric Sciences,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Fungi and yeasts have many applications in drug production, food processing, fermentation (beer, wine and bread), biological control agents, and enzyme technology. However indigenous Australian fungi have rarely been considered or applied to industrial applications. The aim of this project is to collect, identify and classify Australian fungi and yeasts that may be screened for their potential use in novel industrial applications. The number of known species of yeasts worldwide has doubled in the past decade as gene sequences now allow the easy and rapid identification of species. Yeasts will be isolated from leaf surfaces from a range of locations and plant species. These isolates will be grown in pure culture and identified using phylogenetic analysis of gene sequences. Novel species will be formally described in the scientific literature.

Keywords: fungus, yeast, molecular biology, gene sequence, phylogenetic analysis
Research categories: Biochemistry and Cell Biology,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering,Evolutionary Biology,Genetics,Industrial Biotechnology,Microbiology
Locations: Centre for Crop Health,School of Engineering and Built Environment

An environmental monitoring module will be designed and built to monitor/record and communicate environmental data from livestock farms to a central web-server using wireless communication techniques potentially. The variables to be monitored will include air temperature, humidity, ammonia, carbon dioxide and potentially methane concentrations. The monitoring module will be minimised and encased so it can be installed permanently in a livestock buildings.

Keywords:
Research categories: Animal Production
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Aeronauts mostly survive their stay in space for years on packed foods. Fresh vegetables grown with no soil, which reduce the weight and eliminates other issues carrying soil in space, in controlled atmosphere (aquaponics and hydroponics) is the requirement for Space agriculture. An automatic system with a suite of sensors automatically monitoring and assisting the plant growth will be developed in this project.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Detection and prediction of abnormalities from brain signal data is a significant research area in modern medical technology. ‘Brain signal data’ refers to electroencephalogram (EEG) signal data. Currently, EEG is the most frequently-used technique for studying the functional states of the brain. EEG is becoming increasingly important in the diagnosis and treatment of mental and brain neuro-degenerative diseases and abnormalities. The study of the brain electrical activity, through the EEG records, is one of the most important tools for the diagnoses of brain diseases, such as epilepsy, brain tumour, head injury, sleep disorder, dementia and monitoring depth of anaesthesia during surgery. It may also be recommended for the treatment of abnormalities, behavioural disturbances (e.g. Autism), attention disorders, learning problems, language delay etc. If a brain abnormality can be accurately identified, patients can be given timely treatment to slow progression or avoid sudden deterioration. Furthermore, if impending abnormalities can be predicted in their early stages, the treatments can significantly improve patient’s’ survival and quality of life. Vast amounts of multi-channel EEG signals are visually analysed by neurologists to identify and understand abnormalities within the brain and how they propagate. Visual inspection of EEG signals is not a satisfactory procedure because there are no standard criteria for the assessment and it is time-consuming, error-prone, and subject to fatigue. Therefore, there is an ever-increasing requirement for developing an automatic analysis system to ensure the proper evaluation and treatment of brain disorder diseases. The aim of this project is to develop reliable, robust and analysis techniques that will be able to detect abnormalities from EEG signal data discovering brain disease. This project also helps to predict future abnormalities based on EEG signals. This project will advance the existing techniques in medical applications to identify brain disorder diseases and also to provide appropriate early-warning indicative information to reduce health risks and enhance health monitoring.

Keywords: Electroencephalogram (EEG), Epileosy, dementia, sleep disorder
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Biomedical Engineering,Medical Biotechnology
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Flow separation has a significant impact on the performance of wind turbine blades. These blades have variable cross-sectional area and angle of attack, and the blade linear speed varies with the length of the blade. These variables make it a challenge to enhance blade performance, and a thorough investigation of flow characteristics is needed. Coupling both computational and experimental available tools will enhance the knowledge of the three-dimensional separation mechanism.

Keywords: flow separation, Computational, wind turbine blade
Research categories: Aerospace Engineering,Civil Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering

Global warming, driven by increasing greenhouse gases, could increase the likelihood of surpassing climate thresholds for agriculture and in turn the possibility of rapid declines in productivity. The breaching of climate thresholds could have wide-ranging consequences; rapid increases in food insecurity, spikes in agricultural commodity prices from reductions in supply, as well as large-scale land use change from the relocation and / or regional intensification of agricultural production to maintain global supply. Understanding and quantifying climate induced threshold responses therefore pose a unique and important research challenge for agricultural production under climate change. Explicitly quantifying thresholds allows for values (i.e. particular climatic conditions) to be ascribed to threshold changes and thus clear guidance and recommendations about whether there are important limits, or tipping points, that researchers, managers, farmers and policy makers should be aware of and where possible avoid and / or aim at adapt too. Potential research students interested in developing a project proposal in this field are invited to contact us to discuss their ideas. Statistical skills and familiarity with R and / or Python programming languages are essential.

Keywords: Agriculture; Climate change; Thresholds
Research categories: Climate Change Science
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

The importance of heritage sites and practices has long been linked to cultural identity and is a common rationale for conserving heritage. Underpinning this rationale are claims of a connection between the conservation of heritage and community wellbeing. There is a growing interest in exploring these connections more methodically to understand the links between heritage, identity and wellbeing. This includes identity work with marginalized communities, including Australian Indigenous communities, people who are institutionalized including the elderly, mentally ill and frail, and those who have suffered life trauma, including returning military personnel. In this growing area of research there is scope for a number of research projects.

Keywords: heritage, history, identity, wellbeing, health, community
Research categories: Anthropology,Archaeology,Cultural Studies,Curatorial and Related Studies,Historical Studies,Other History and Archaeology,Other Studies in Human Society,Psychology
Locations: Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Humanities & Communication

The detection of cracks is a crucial task in monitoring structural health and ensuring structural safety. The manual process of crack detection is painstakingly time-consuming and suffers from subjective judgments of inspectors. This project develops an innovative and practical condition assessment approach for in-situ evaluation of cracks as soon as they appear in civil infrastructure using cutting-edge computer vision, image enrichment, AI deep learning and micro-computing technologies. The research outcome will facilitate cost-effective, quick and reliable ways of assessing and maintaining key civil infrastructure.

Keywords: Structural health monitoring, computer vision, image enrichment, micro computing
Research categories: Civil Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Raw sewage has been treated by the waste activated sludge process for a hundred years. Due to increasing population and more stringent regulation regarding effluent quality, membranes have been introduced in the process to uncouple hydraulic and solid retention times. The main problem remains membrane fouling which requires regular cleaning. This is due to the high Mixed Liquor Suspended Solids (MLSS) that these membrane bioreactor operate at which results in a cake layer on the membrane as well as soluble colloids that clog the membrane pores. In this project, we will investigate the use of a baffled bioreactor to keep the sludge in the upstream compartments to achieve low solids concentration in the membrane compartment. Further improvement will be studied by using plastic biocarriers and powdered activated carbon (PAC) creating an hybrid baffled membrane bioreactor with biomass immobilization using biocarriers and PAC.

Keywords: waste activated sludge, moving bed bioreactor, membrane bioreactor, aerobic wastewater treatment, biocarriers, powdered activated carbon
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

This proposed project seeks to identify ways to offer greater support and improve access and outcomes for incarcerated university students based within correctional centres. This may include exploring how student experience and outcomes of incarcerated students are being shaped by imprisonment itself as well as the impact of compounding factors such as gender, race, class and sexuality on student inmates.

Keywords: incarcerated students; corrections education; carceral; prison; offender; intersectionality; widening participation
Research categories: Education Systems
Locations: Open Access College

This project seeks to transform healthcare recruitment and enhance nurse retention, a workforce at high risk of resigning from employment and leaving the profession altogether. The project will examine recruitment and retention capabilities, resources, and gaps of health services, while evaluating turnover, economic cost, and efficacy of current nurse retention interventions. The project provides real-time solutions to health services, while developing targeted, nurse informed, interventions, that better support nurse retention and reduce professional turnover. The expected outcome is to establish a suite of evidence-based resources to better support nursing workforce sustainability across Australia.

Keywords: Nursing, Workforce, Employment, Recruitment, Retention
Research categories: Health Services And Systems,Nursing
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Nursing and Midwifery

This program aims to enhance Boeing’s processes by introducing Industry 4.0 frameworks, focussing on the development digital twin workflows for composite components which includes design, manufacturing, service, and MRO. These digital twin workflows will primarily be utilised for a case study focussed on the repair of composite components to eliminate both engineering and laborious processes leading to more efficient MRO of future spacecraft and aircraft fleets. Within this program, there are two Master opportunities available with a focus on the identification of physical data, data collection, data processing, FEA analyses, and the digital twin process flow for the relifing of airframe structures: Topic #2: Data processing for the re-lifing of airframe structures Analyse the key elements that affect an aircraft's longevity, structural integrity, and performance. Establish a connection between these critical factors and the concept of a digital twin model. Establish a clear and standardised process for assessing the post-repair condition of aircraft structures, verifying their continued airworthiness, and recertifying them for flight. These Masters opportunities are supported by the Innovative Launch, Automation, Novel Materials, Communications, and Hypersonics (iLAuNCH) Trailblazer Program as a part of an industrial collaboration with Boeing and MEMKO. As part of this program there may be opportunity for domestic travel between UniSQ Toowoomba Campus and Boeing & MEMKO facilities in Melbourne in addition to travel for relevant conferences to present research achievements.

Keywords: aerospace, composites, digital twin, numerical modelling, maintenance and repair
Research categories: Aerospace Engineering,Manufacturing Engineering,Materials Engineering,Mechanical Engineering,Numerical And Computational Mathematics,Other Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials

Chicken meats are increasely favored as healthy and delicious dishes on dinning table by Australian families. Phosphorus (P) and Calcium (Ca) are essential nutrient in broiler’s body growth. However, the effect of these two and others on chicks body and bone tissus is intrincated, and consequently too difficult to analyse. This project aims at assisting the pualtry industry, in particular in broiler farming, reduce the production cost while minimising the P residural in the excreta by formulating the most effective and nutriential diets. We approach this by Logit regression and machine learning technology.

Keywords: Broiler growing, nutrient in poultry diets, statistical analysis, machine learning
Research categories: Animal Production,Statistics
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Research projects related to nursing employability and career development are welcome. Depending on student interest and context, a range of issues would be relevant if there is a potential to add to the body of knowledge. Contexts might include employability in the nursing curriculum, workforce sustainability, rural and remote areas, and the use of technology and its application to promoting employability diversity within the profession. Projects also related to psychological factors that influence the recruitment, and retention of rural health workers are also encouraged.

Keywords: nursing, employability, career development, rural and rural
Research categories: Curriculum And Pedagogy,Education Systems,Nursing
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Nursing and Midwifery

Food waste represents a significant fraction of municipal solid waste. Proper management and recycling of huge volumes of food waste are required to reduce its environmental burdens and to minimize risks to human health. This project will evaluate different technologies for converting food waste to energy.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Solar distillation technique has been used for thousands of years. The technique was utilized by Greek mariners and Persian alchemists to produce freshwater or pharmaceutical extracts. Dominant procedures of desalination are energy intensive and rely on fossil fuels. Nowadays, solar desalination techniques contribute to less than 1% of desalination process. This project aims to improve the efficiency of existing solar desalination techniques using both empirical and computational (CFD) approaches.

Keywords: Solar energy, desalination, wind energy
Research categories: Environmental Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering

In contrast with other wastewater treatment plants where the sludge is treated anaerobically to produce methane and electricity, Wetalla reclamation plant in Toowoomba is applying aerobic digestion to stabilize the sludge. Aerobic digestion is essentially a biological process where aerobic and facultative bacteria degrade further the organic matter in the final sludge to reduce the final volume and also obtain a mature humus-like compost that can be used as fertilizer in agriculture. It can also be used as soil cover or landfill cover depending on its quality. One way to measure its quality is to measure the CO2 emission rate. A high CO2 production will indicate an unstable product with high content of easily biodegradable material promoting bacterial growth. This could badly affect plant growth if the material was used as compost. It is therefore important to monitor the CO2 production rate to ensure that the aerobic digestion process is working properly. Typical residence times are 2-3 weeks and the biosolids should be overturned regularly to ensure good oxygen mass transfer. USQ has recently acquired an online CO2/CH4 analyzer to measure emission rate from soils. The monitoring of Wetalla’s biosolids is important for several reasons: - Gather data from the process and ensure that the design residence time is sufficient to obtain a stabilized final residue suitable for further applications - Estimate the volatile solids destruction in the process and the overall kinetic. - Fine-tune the overturning/mixing regime: if the CO2 emission rate from the final residue was found to be lower than the required standard, it would mean that fewer turnings could be applied which could save electricity. - Ensure that the aerobic process is operating properly by measuring methane emissions. If Methane was found it would mean that aeration is not sufficient and that anaerobic bacteria are growing. Methane emissions should be avoided as methane has a strong greenhouse gas potential. USQ researchers have already obtain some data from the process and need a student to analyze them and possibly go to the plant to obtain further data.

Keywords: sludge, sustainability, Carbon dioxide, methane, respirometric activity tests, wastewater treatment plant, biosolids
Research categories: Agricultural Biotechnology,Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Analytical Chemistry,Atmospheric Sciences,Biochemistry and Cell Biology,Chemical Engineering,Civil Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

This project develops an assessment approach for effectively evaluating road or railway bridges subject to overloads. This research project will be carried out within the School of Civil Engineering and Surveying and Centre for Future Materials with industry partner involvement. The School and Centre play a leading role in the research and development of innovative structure and material solutions for various civil infrastructure applications. This research will focus on experimental data analysis leveraging the power of real load-monitoring data and artificial intelligence techniques. The outcome of this study can enhance the understanding of the infrastructural behaviour and develop appropriate assessment methodology that would greatly benefit the civil engineering industry and wider community.

Keywords: Overload, assessment, bridge, artificial intelligence
Research categories: Civil Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Late nineteenth century Britain was an age of sex scandals and scandals revealed the extent that a dominance higher order was dependant on lower orders of disgraceful Others. This project would welcome research into the participation of scandal and ensuing panic into the discursive construction of individual and subcultural behaviours, which could be evident from literature, moral and political discourse, journalism, religious movements or other sources.

Keywords: Victorian period; scandal; sexuality; Others
Research categories: Literary Studies,Literary Studies
Locations: Open Access College

Textual Analysis of Filmic and/or Televisual case studies of the postmodern Horror genre and its (mis)representations of gender, identity and sexuality since the 1970s

Keywords: Horror, gender, sexuality, textual analysis, feminist, psychoanalytic, film, television, British, American, Australian, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s
Research categories: Cultural Studies,Cultural Studies
Locations: Open Access College

Academic Numeracy has been defined as the “capacity to confidently and competently use mathematics at University level, and to be able to apply, interpret, critique and communicate mathematical concepts in particularly disciplinary contexts” (Brady 2016). Having adequate numeracy is critical not only to succeed in a wide range of tertiary studies, but also to subsequently perform in the workplace. Importantly, the dimensions of “confidence” and “critical awareness” - of the maths needed in the chosen profession as well as the students’ own knowledge - are integral aspects of being numerate (e.g. Galligan 2013). For example, a recent study (Peters et al. 2019) reported that both objective numeracy (the ability to do the maths correctly) and self-efficacy (confidence, leading to persistence) were important for an individual to attain numeracy’s benefits. Conversely, a mismatch in these dimensions (that is, high objective numeracy paired with low self-efficacy or vice versa) led to poor outcomes. A systematic approach to academic numeracy development in tertiary institutions (e.g. see Galligan 2013b, Brady 2016) would be most beneficial, as it would promote alignment, continuity and sustainability of programs, courses, resources and initiatives. Having an academic numeracy framework to assess the assumed, target and actual numeracy skills of students would be very useful in order to inform course / program development and delivery, assist academic and learning support staff on how to best support the development of students' academic numeracy skills, and assist with the design, development and implementation of intervention initiatives seeking to embed numeracy in courses and programs. This project focuses on the progressive development and trialling of an Academic Numeracy Framework (Howarth et al. 2021; see https://www.unisq.edu.au/library/teaching-support/academic-frameworks). Several lines of investigation are available, including theory work to adapt the existing framework to incorporate confidence and awareness elements, as well as quantitative or mixed research methods in order to trial the implementation of the Framework in targeted courses or programs at UniSQ.

Keywords: academic numeracy, mathematics, academic support, teaching and learning
Research categories: Curriculum And Pedagogy,Education Systems,Other Education,Specialist Studies In Education
Locations: Open Access College

The removal of malodorous organics from gas streams presents a challenge as often the odorous components are of low concentration but have a strong negative hedonic value even at these low concentrations. Example of such pollutants include: hydrogen sulfide and thiols, amines, aldehydes and ketones released from manufacturing facilities. This project will look at a novel electro-chemical process to oxidize and breakdown these compounds.

Keywords: Volatile organic compounds, odour, adsorption, gas treatment
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Analytical Chemistry,Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Maintaining a reliable water supply will continue to be a problem that faces society. One of the obstacles that needs to be addressed is the evaporation from water storages. A number of phenomena influence the evaporation rate; this project will focus on the generation of waves due to wind. This process accelerates evaporation by increasing the surface area of the water as well as mixing the surface layer of water with deeper water. This project will involve very accurate simulation of the water’s surface under wind conditions to measure the behaviour.

Keywords: Evaporation; Simulations
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Civil Engineering,Environmental Engineering,Mechanical Engineering,Other Engineering
Locations: Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences,School of Engineering

Australian food is a blend of culinary traditions enriched by waves of successive migrant groups from different parts of the world. For migrants food traditions are a link to country of origin, home and family, and for ‘local communities, food may superficially become a means for cultural understanding and acceptance. This project explores the role of food in the resilience of migrant groups in regional Australia, both as a means of maintaining cultural practice and identity, and as an agent of acceptance and assimilation.

Keywords: food, culture, migration, identity, integration, community
Research categories: Anthropology,Cultural Studies,Historical Studies
Locations: Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Humanities & Communication

This project aims to undertake high quality and policy relevant research on the following issues (but not limited to): • Socio-economic determinants of child physical and mental health • Health care costs of child mental health, obesity, asthma • The economic consequence of child mental health • The economic impacts of people's environment on child physical and mental Health • The costs of mental illness, substance use, suicide and suicidal ideation • The costs of childhood bulling • The economics of teen-age suicide and suicidal ideation • Screen time and cognitive and non-cognitive development of children • Time allocation, child academic performance and health • The economic consequences of childhood and adolescent obesity Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any of the above topics or related topics are encouraged to contact Associate Professor Rasheda Khanam (rasheda.khanam@usq.edu.au) for further details. The potential students are expected to have: (1) an academic background in any of these fields: economics, health economics, econometrics, statistics and public health, AND, (2) research publications in relevant fields

Keywords:
Research categories: Applied Economics,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Business

No doubt that one of the major source of pollution in poultry buildings is the bedding (Banhazi et al., 2008). Capturing/removing emission at the point of exit is still one of the most obvious ways of reducing airborne emission from both agricultural and industrial facilities. Although the principles of removing pollutants from air is well known, there are no commercially available tools developed for poultry farmers to harness air-cleaning technologies that have been proven in other industrial applications. Thus building on previous and successful studies (Banhazi, 2007); the development of an air-scraper specially designed for poultry buildings would deliver practical benefits for producers. in this project we will aim to improve the design of air-scrapers to enhance the pollutant removal capacity of the filtration device.

Keywords:
Research categories: Animal Production
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Actual mathematical research and learning inquiry activities in a classroom have many common features. We investigate inquiry activities from the educational point of view and analyse how they can be constructed similarly to the process of mathematical research, and how this mode of teaching can contribute to the development of students’ mathematical thinking. For example, Hanna and de Villiers noted that in actual mathematical research mathematicians have to convince themselves first that a mathematical statement is true and then move to a formal proof. This and other similar features are the subject of investigation. One of the most important questions within the research topic is to find out how natural for students is a process of learning mathematical discovery and, more broadly, inquiry activities in a classroom from a psychological point of view.

Keywords: Mathematical discovery, inquiry activities, proofs
Research categories: Curriculum and Pedagogy
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Sustainable, healthier and cruelty-free animal products. Current systems of meat production are exerting strain on finite resources and exacerbating climate change. Animal production is responsible for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions, extensive land and water use, and environmental damage. There are impacts on human health, animal welfare, disease transmission, hormone/antibiotic use, deforestation and meeting the needs of a growing population and increasing demands for protein (Fraser, 2020; Lima et al., 2022; Neethirajan, 2023). Ethical issues include crowding, dehorning, tail docking, castration, branding, de-beaking, tooth grinding, and forced insemination usually without anesthesia or pain relief. Transport can lead to injuries, dehydration, death and use of painful devices such as cattle prods. Despite growing interest in more sustainable animal production the end point is always slaughter. Around three-quarters of crop production is used for animal farming which represents an inefficient use of resources. In clearing of forests for the expansion of agricultural land we not only lose invaluable biodiversity but also diminish the capacity to absorb CO2 (Gebre & Gebremedhin, 2019). There is an urgent need for alternatives to existing animal products (Kumar et al., 2022; Van Vuuren et al., 2018). Whilst there is growing interest in plant-based alternatives the percentage of consumption is still low; in the meantime the climate crisis increases in intensity. Cell-culture has potential to rapidly displace traditional livestock production. This project will build and evaluate a supply-chain transition model for cell-cultured meat and other animal product production; it will include economic evaluation of the scale and investment needed. References Fraser, E. D. (2020). The challenge of feeding a diverse and growing population. Physiology & behavior, 221, 112908. Gebre, T., & Gebremedhin, B. (2019). The mutual benefits of promoting rural-urban interdependence through linked ecosystem services. Global ecology and conservation, 20, e00707. Kumar, P., Mehta, N., Abubakar, A. A., Verma, A. K., Kaka, U., Sharma, N., ... & Lorenzo, J. M. (2022). Potential alternatives of animal proteins for sustainability in the food sector. Food Reviews International, 1-26. Lima, M., Costa, R., Rodrigues, I., Lameiras, J., & Botelho, G. (2022). A Narrative Review of Alternative Protein Sources: Highlights on Meat, Fish, Egg and Dairy Analogues. Foods, 11(14), 2053. Neethirajan, S. (2023). The Significance and Ethics of Digital Livestock Farming. AgriEngineering, 5(1), 488-505. Van Vuuren, D. P., Stehfest, E., Gernaat, D. E., Van Den Berg, M., Bijl, D. L., De Boer, H. S., ... & van Sluisveld, M. A. (2018). Alternative pathways to the 1.5 C target reduce the need for negative emission technologies. Nature climate change, 8(5), 391-397

Keywords: vegan; alternative protein;
Research categories: Business and Management
Locations:

Language teacher development is crucial for effective technology integration. Researchers explore and discuss approaches, tasks and resources that help language teachers develop their knowledge, skills and strategies for teaching languages in digital environments. Topics include digital literacy, computer-assisted language learning and technology-enhanced language teaching. Quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research can be considered and conducted in various contexts.

Keywords: Applied Linguistics, TESOL, language teachers, digital literacy, computer-assisted language learning, technology-enhanced language teaching
Research categories: Education Systems
Locations: School Education

Cloud computing is an innovative technology of computing and communication by leveraging the distributed servers over the globe. The security of cloud computing has increasingly gained concerns in recent years. This project aims to investigate the strategies of mitigating the security issues by using the Software Defined Networks (SDN) technology.

Keywords: IoT, Securty, SDN
Research categories: Communications Technologies
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Interest in biochar, a carbon-rich organic product, has increased greatly over the last decade. Biochar has multiple uses, ranging from soil amendment to water filtration. Currently, biochar is also being incorporated into livestock feeds and compost operations. This project will develop new novel methodology for value-added utilization of low-value agricultural waste. Different agricultural waste materials will be tested to find out the optimal pyrolysis temperatures and methods to make biochar. Analytical and spectroscopic methods will be used to characterize the biochar. Then biochars will be mixed with fertilisers to evaluate their effect on soil quality and plant growth using greenhouse experiments. The results of this research will provide in-depth understanding on how to effectively make biochars and how biochars can be best used to improve soil and environmental quality.

Keywords: Biochar, soil, crop, agriculture
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Personalised exercise prescription is crucial for athletic performance and involves careful consideration of the frequency, duration and intensity of training. Functional threshold power (FTP) has emerged as a popular method for quantifying training intensities used by cycling coaches, cyclists and popular simulated (online) training platforms (i.e. Zwift). FTP is defined as the maximum amount of power that can be sustained in one hour and is often expressed in watts (W) or watts relative to body weight in kilograms (W/Kg). There tends to be 3 to up to 7 training intensity zones based on FTP. Despite its widespread use amongst coaches and competitive (up to pro level) cyclists, the physiological relevance or stimulus achieved from training at each FTP 'zone' is unclear. Whether FTP-based training zones can delineate the heavy and severe domains of exercise is unknown. Furthermore, training studies on the exercise adaptations from training at different intensities relative to FTP are lacking, making it difficult to determine its utility in eliciting chronic adaptations. This project will determine the physiological relevance of exercise intensities relative to FTP and characterise the training-induced changes at different training zones. It will make a substantial contribution to the cycling performance literature. The findings will be relevant to novice and professional cyclists, coaches and exercise professionals.

Keywords: cycling, exercise, performance, training, cardiorespiratory fitness
Research categories: Human Movement and Sports Science
Locations: School of Health and Medical Sciences

The rapid progress of remote sensing technologies provides scientists with new ways of solving conventional problems. Newly available high-resolution spatial data from various sensors such airborne LiDAR, WorldView-2 satellite, and UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) offer capability of capturing and modelling spatial features in much more detail than ever before. Detailed description and modelling of natural and human phenomena is required for sustainable environmental management in adaption of climate changes. Advanced new remote sensing technologies and urgent requirement in reply with important environment problems inspire researchers to develop and test more reliable approaches to discover new knowledge for improvement of the applications of these new technologies in natural resource and environmental management. Candidate high degree research students can select topics which they are interested in from the following: • High quality DEM generation from LiDAR and high-resolution imagery for flood plain mapping and hydrological modelling; • Urban sprawl and land use/land cover change analysis; • Forest biophysical feature extraction and species identification; • Applications of UAV for mining industry or riparian ecosystem management; • Development of new algorithms and data processing methods for detection, interpretation, characterisation, and modelling of Earth surface features.

Keywords: GIS, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, LiDAR, Image Processing, UAV, Ecosystem, Agriculture, Forest, Land Use / Land Cover Change, Integration, Data Fusion.
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Environmental Science and Management,Geomatic Engineering
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Unmanned aerial vehicles have been widely used in agricultural research for various machine vision applications. For larger farms use of multiple UAVs as a group that works together has greater advantages in terms of coverage area, time etc. This project aims at autonomous control of fleet of UAVs using ROS, where every drone has a specific task and coverage and each UAV communicate with each other to avoid collisions and optimize the path.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Strengthening of existing structures such as bridges, buildings and other infrastructure has become an important issue for the civil and structural engineers. External post-tensioning is considered as one of the most appropriate techniques for strengthening and rehabilitation of the existing structures. It is important to understand the behaviour of structural rehabilitation using external post-tensioning, so that the rehabilitation could be optimised and cost could be reduced. This research project will include experimental and analytical investigation of structures strengthened by external post tensioning. A comparison of existing design models and prediction equations will also be made. The outcome of this study can enhance the understanding of the behaviour of externally post-tensioned structures and develop appropriate design methodology for structural rehabilitation.

Keywords: Infrastructure; post-tension; prestress concrete; rehabilitation; structures; materials engineering; structural design
Research categories: Civil Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Materials Engineering
Locations: Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development,Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a family of organic compounds of widespread presence in the environment. They are recalcitrant, ubiquitous, prompt to bioaccumulation, and potentially carcinogenic. Effluent for Wastewater treatment plant (WWTPs) constitute a major source of PFAS into water bodies and their presence should be closely monitored, especially considering the increasing applications of potable and non-potable reuse of treated wastewater worldwide. Modelling PFASs’ fate and distribution in WWTPs is a valuable tool to overcome the complexity and cost of monitoring and quantifying PFAS. In this project, the PhD candidate will build a mechanistic model to evaluate the fate of PFAS in both water and sludge lines of a local WWTP.

Keywords: PFAS, PFOS, PFOA, modelling, wastewater
Research categories: Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

In Australia, water is a scare resource. With climate change, there is an increasing need of relocating crop production to the high rainfall area of tropical and coastal region. This project will develop methods to improve the overall performance of current farming systems, in particular the drying and harvesting systems so that they can adapt to the new coast wet environment.

Keywords: Harvesting, Drying, Grain
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Thermoelectric materials directly convert thermal energy into electrical energy, offering a green and sustainable solution for the global energy dilemma. This project aims to develop inexpensive, abundant, and low-toxic metal selenide nanomaterials for high-efficiency energy conversion using novel industry-level approach, coupled with nanostructure and band engineering strategies. The key breakthrough is to design high performance thermoelectric nanomaterials with engineered chemistry and unique morphology for new generation thermoelectrics. The expected outcomes of this project will lead to an innovative technology for harvesting electricity from waste heat or sun light, which will place Australia at the forefront of energy technologies.

Keywords: Thermoelectric; power generations; nanostructure and band engineering strategies
Research categories: Environmental Engineering,Materials Engineering,Mechanical Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials

The transport of nutrients in porous media can be considered as a mesoscopic mechanics problem. Micromechanics can thus be applied to investigate the behaviour of such a multiphase system. On meso length scale (microns), effective numerical simulation methods include Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD), Smoothed Dissipative Particle Dynamics and Lattice Boltzmann methods. in DPD, the method to be considered here, DPD particles are regarded as groups of molecules and thus the DPD simulations can be conducted on time and length scales that are far beyond those of molecular simulations. We propose using freely-movable DPD particles to model the fluid (water) and spring-connected DPD particles to represent the nutrients and soil grains. Through the interactions of three types of particles, the movement of nutrients in porous media can be tracked in a direct manner. Furthermore, force fields (e.g. magnetic) can be easily accommodated in the DPD system by applying appropriate potentials. This direct (natural) simulation approach is expected to lead to a significant improvement in accuracy over continuous-medium-based approaches.

Keywords: Nutrient transport, porous media, particle method, mesoscopic simulation, macroscopic property
Research categories: Interdisciplinary Engineering,Numerical and Computational Mathematics,Soil Sciences
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,School of Engineering

This research aims to examine the history of feminism from global or transnational perspectives. Its objective is to contribute new understandings to contemporary historiographical debates that pay particular attention to gender, race, class, sexuality, language, and nationality, as well as the politics of inclusion and exclusion in feminist thought. Research may relate to women in social movements or women in politics, broadly defined. Grounded in historical research and based on the analysis of primary sources in traditional and digital archives, there is scope to develop the research from specific national or regional vantage points based on individual access to archival materials.

Keywords: History, women’s history, feminist history, intellectual history, feminism, gender studies, feminist theory, nineteenth century, twentieth century, twenty-first century
Research categories: Gender Studies,Historical Studies,Historical Studies
Locations: Open Access College

When applied to the higher education context, the term ‘transition’ usually refers to students’ experiences of moving into, through, and beyond university. These experiences might concern aspects related to their sense of belonging and wellbeing. Transitions are conceptualised broadly: one perspective is that they involve traditional, defined pathways, whereas an alternative view is that they are multiple, diverse and ongoing. Research projects on student transitions can draw on quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods approaches, and could focus on various subtopics including, but not limited to, the following: - Differing conceptualisations of what is meant by student transition (e.g. induction, adjustment, development, maturation, becoming, etc.) - Approaches to enhancing the first-year experience through a focus on transition pedagogy - Psychological, social, environmental, and/or cultural impacts on students’ experiences of transitioning into, through, and beyond higher education - Diversity in students’ experiences of belonging and wellbeing as they transition

Keywords: transitions pedagogy; belonging, wellbeing; well-being; mental health; student integration; enabling education; widening participation; higher education; employability; lifelong learning
Research categories: Curriculum and Pedagogy,Curriculum And Pedagogy,Education Policy,Education Systems,Education Systems,Other Education,Other Education,Sociology,Sociology,Specialist Studies in Education,Specialist Studies In Education
Locations: Open Access College

Powdery mildew fungi (Erysiphales) are one of the most conspicuous groups of plant pathogens. Important crops, including wheat, barley, grapevine, and a number of fruit and vegetable crops, as well as ornamentals, grown in the field and glasshouses, are amongst the major targets of powdery mildew fungi. Their control is mainly based on the use of resistant cultivars, repeated application of fungicides, and agro-technical methods. In spite of their economic importance, the precise identity, host range, life cycle, perennation, virulence patterns, and other characteristics of a number of powdery mildew fungi infecting diverse crop species have not been deciphered yet. For example, this is the case of the species causing disease in mungbean fields in Australia and elsewhere. The project will focus on the precise identification of the powdery mildew fungi infecting this crop, their host ranges, virulence profiles of diverse isolates, and quantification of the infection of different cultivars and breeding lines, based on field, glasshouse and laboratory experiments, as well as molecular studies including DNA genotyping, phylogenetic analyses, and qPCR methods.

Keywords: Powdery mildew, crop disease, molecualr biology, plant disease control, DNA
Research categories: Crop and Pasture Production
Locations: Centre for Crop Health

With increasing demand and decreasing availability of seasonal farm labour use of robotic fruit harvesting is increasing throughout the world. Fruits and agricultural produce in general are very sensitive and susceptible for bruising while handling as well as harvesting and cause damage with automatic or robotic harvesting and handling methods. Very small research on robotic end effectors has been done for handling agricultural produce. This project aims for designing and evaluating the end effector for fruit handling.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

For decades, landfilling has been the preferred method for disposing of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in Australia. While the management is kept at low cost, the way we treat our waste is not sustainable due to increasing fees and increasing amount of waste despite recycling strategies in place. Landfills contribute to air, soil and water pollution while space is becoming scarcer to build new landfill sites. Waste buried in landfill still has a calorific value which represent an untapped resource and commercial opportunity while cleaning our environment and rehabilitating landfill sites at the same time. This multidisciplinary project involves an external company and the research using state-of-the-art facilities at Toowoomba and Springfield campus will assist to develop a small scale commercial process to turn waste into electricity.

Keywords: landfill, waste, combustion, energy
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials

This topic invites students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any topic related to: reflection, the value of reflection, critical reflection and building professional capacity and the capacity of other through critical reflection, within the context of early childhood and early childhood education.

Keywords: early childhood, reflection, critical reflection, professional capacity building
Research categories: Curriculum and Pedagogy,Education Systems,Other Education
Locations: School of education

Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in the area of mentoring, especially for Early Career teachers (teachers in their first 5 years) and their mentors are encouraged to contact us. The student’s proposed project may include: • new ways and ideas for mentoring; or • mentoring and professional development; or • mentoring as holistic and collaborative; or • a topic that contributes to the current knowledge base about mentoring; or • mentoring in a field other than education Applicants are encouraged to utilise qualitative or a mixed methodology approach.

Keywords: mentoring, teacher, professional learning, early career teachers, beginning teachers, induction
Research categories: Education Policy,Education Systems,Other Education
Locations: Institute for Resilient Regions,School of education

The predominance of subsistence agriculture in Papua New Guinea (PNG) highlights the importance of food security. Small holders have generally learnt to manage the localised shortages of food that occur regularly through the use of families and friends and purchasing food from the sale of cash crops such as coffee and potatoes. It is the large scale shortages of food that occur irregularly that threaten human health and survival such as during the 1997 El Nino. Extreme events (droughts and floods) have significant impacts on agricultural production and natural resource management. On a national scale droughts are associated with El Niño's and wet events are associated with La Niña's. There are local and regional differences that are important to understand. During extreme events that cause widespread food shortages the PNG government has relied upon food aid (national and international) and more recently on small holders’ self-reliance to purchase imported food. It is the more remote and isolated rural communities that are most vulnerable because of their poor access to food distribution points and markets to sell produce from cash crops. Sweet potato is the dominant staple food and is therefore the most important crop in PNG. Over 60% of the rural population depend on it as their main food source. About 75% of annual sweet potato production is grown in the highlands. Climatic extremes, particularly high soil moisture, droughts and frosts are among the main constraints to production. Although sweet potato is relatively drought tolerant, excessive wet periods during tuber initiation followed by drought during tuber development significantly reduce tuber production, and the low yields may not be discovered until harvest. Repeated frost also significantly reduces tuber yield. Being a crop grown below ground, the yields of sweet potato are not known until harvest time. A climate integrated sweet potato production model can help predict yields some months in advance which will help with management of the impacts from these extreme events. Smallholders produce about 85% of the coffee grown in PNG making it a valuable cash crop for many villages. It is grown mainly for export and represents ~40% of all agricultural exports. The production of coffee is triggered by natural cycles of dry and wet conditions however extreme wet periods in poorly drained soils have as large a negative impact on production as drought, particularly during cherry ripening and development when large quantities of nutrients and water are required for high yields. A climate integrated model for Robusta coffee in Vietnam has been developed, but there is nothing for Arabica coffee which is the main species grown in PNG. This project will use the potato model in APSIM as the framework and data from Qld and PNG to parameterise a climate driven sweet potato model. Another aspect could be to develop an Arabica coffee model using PNG coffee data.

Keywords: smallholder agriculture production, food security, managing extreme climate events, modelling
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Atmospheric Sciences
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

Aerospace and automotive sectors are witnessing a major increase in innovative structures for light-weighting and higher performance requirements in the recent times. Polymeric foams are used traditionally for achieving a lower density and hence a lower overall vehicular weight for higher fuel efficiency. With innovations in vehicular technologies, concomitant advancements in materials and manufacturing technologies are warranted. To that end, this project will develop self healing strategies with shape memory polymer foams for automotive and aerospace structures. Utilising macromolecular chemistry and materials engineering principles, this project will develop self deploying structures with self healing capabilities.

Keywords: nanotechnology, biocomposite, polymer, foam, self healing, shape memory, smart materials, functional materials
Research categories: Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry,Materials Engineering
Locations: Centre for Future Materials,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment

Previous study show that a stationary split channel can generate swirling flow. The swirling flow have many applications in food, painting, and automotive industries. This project aims to optimize the naturally induced swirling flow for different applications using a combined computational (CFD) and empirical approach.

Keywords: Swirling Flows, wind energy, waste heat
Research categories: Mechanical Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering

The purpose of this project is to explore teachers’ practices in using technology to teach mathematics and later suggest a professional development strategy to improve their technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge in selected primary schools in Queensland.

Keywords:
Research categories: Education Systems
Locations:

New developments in sensory neuroscience have revealed specialized pathways that detect light to set how we think, feel, and act. Using novel lighting technology and computational methods, this project will measure how these attributes can be altered using targeted lighting interventions. This research will help transition lighting from a tool to a healthcare instrument and will ultimately support the health of disadvantaged and regional Australians.

Keywords: vision, lighting, sleep, cognition, mood, wellbeing, psychology
Research categories: Biological Psychology,Biomedical Engineering,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Neurosciences,Ophthalmology and Optometry,Psychology
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Psychology and Wellbeing

A key issue in Mathematics Education is how students can be supported in making transition from ‘it seems to be right’ to convincing arguments which work in general. In learning geometry, dynamic software environment may be useful as it enables students to interact with geometrical theory. It is extremely important to investigate ways in which dynamic geometry environments improve students’ understanding of the nature of mathematical proof and their skills in proofs. We analyse three applications of dynamic geometry software – heuristics, exploration and visualisation – as valuable tools in teaching proofs in geometry.

Keywords: Dynamic geometry environment, proof, heuristics, exploration, visualisation
Research categories: Curriculum and Pedagogy
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Important nano-materials can range from molecules to complex mixtures and composites. Understanding and simulating their bulk properties remain as a major challenge in the efforts to integrate them in various mechanical and electrical systems. A powerful enabling simulation technology based on coarsed grain method will be developed and empolyed by the project. Newly obtained knowledge will contribute to better understanding of the structure of complex materials, especially the CNT/graphene based materials.

Keywords: Nanomaterials, carbon nanotube, multiscale simulation, coarse grain method
Research categories: Materials Engineering,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,School of Engineering

The research project will lead to new security mechanisms for big data over cloud environments

Keywords: Big Data
Research categories: Information Systems
Locations: School of Management and Enterprise

Granting or restricting access to medical and healthcare networks in Cloud compouting has long been account for to be a problem of Web service security. Role based access control model is a recent paradigm that can use the X.509 Attribute Certificates to do authorisation and/or privileges management. This project adopts the art-of the state Cloud computing technology to develop secure medicial and Healthcare web applications.

Keywords: Eletronic Health Record, XACML, Public Key Cryptography, Web service security
Research categories: Distributed Computing,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment

This project aims to develop a generic framework for implementing a circular economy for organic waste in an Australian regional context. Key research questions addressed include i) how does a circular economy apply to an Australian regional context; ii) what are the enabling elements and iii) what approach is required to maximise success. The specific objectives of this research include: • To identify key components, drivers and policies of a circular economy that can be implemented in regional Australian centres • To identify regional feedstocks and evaluate options through feedstock analysis • To identify infrastructure and technology requirements and feasibility • To identify the value add, business and regional partnership opportunities • To illustrate example/s of a Circular Economy applied to the Toowoomba Region

Keywords: Organic waste, anaerobic digestion, biogas, biofertiliser, circular economy, regional centres
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Environmental Engineering,Industrial Biotechnology,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Urban and Regional Planning
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences,School of Engineering,School of Engineering and Built Environment

This project is focused on numerical and analytical analysis of partial differential equations modelling seismic and elastic waves. A popular model of such waves is the Nikolaevskiy equation. So far, interest to the equation was largely due to its capacity to generate self-excited structures, for example rolls. However, as was argued recently, solid matrix formed by rocks is an essentially passive system, therefore only decaying behaviour should have physical sense. We will thoroughly investigate this type of dynamics and also explore if the self-excited structures may still be formed provided the system is added up by external or internal energy-generating factors. This project has both theoretical and practical engineering aspects.

Keywords:
Research categories: Applied Mathematics,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre

International and domestic Non English Speaking Background (NESB) students’ language difficulties in learning and cross-cultural challenges in Australian universities are not only important, but are continuing issues when embarking upon their new journey in a different learning environment. According to their language proficiency, NESB students begin to study on many different types of programs that the Australian education providers offer. Despite the level of their different English language proficiency, these cohorts face a lot of hardships during their studies. The methodologies applied to this area are mainly composed of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Example specific project focuses are: • Avoiding plagiarism: A case study of EAP/undergraduate degree program • EAP teachers/university lecturers’ pedagogical views on hybrid mode EAP/undergraduate courses delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic • NESB students’ academic writing: A pedagogical framework for EAP/undergraduate assignment writing

Keywords: English as an additional language, cross-cultural variations, NESB students, cross-cultural adaptation, learning and teaching pedagogy, Australian academic context
Research categories: Cultural Studies,Cultural Studies,Education Systems,Education Systems,Other Education,Other Education
Locations: Open Access College

There is compelling evidence of a rise in the observed frequency and intensity of weather- and climate-related hazards both worldwide and in the Asia-Pacific region. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also predicts that many climate change consequences may express themselves through changes in the frequency, severity, or duration of extreme weather events in the short to medium future. The most recent Glob al Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction demonstrates that risks associated with death and economic loss are disproportionately concentrated in developing nations and harm individuals who are the most marginalized and underrepresented. Many proactive strategies and policies have been developed to mitigate the impacts of disaster risks. However, communities remain exposed to substantial flood risks despite these adaptation efforts. The risks that they remain exposed to after adaption (or ‘residual risk’) can be effectively transferred through financial schemes that, however, lack comprehensive investigation. Therefore, this project seeks new integrated physical-statistical-financial approaches to disaster risk reduction to address climate change challenges effectively and adaptively. This research topic is directly related to the Collaborative Regional Research Programme funded by Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) to UniSQ.

Keywords:
Research categories: Applied Computing,Applied Mathematics,Climate Change Impacts And Adaptation,Hydrology,Statistics
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

More Australians die from suicide than road deaths every year. Lifeline estimates that for each person who completes suicide at least 30 people have attempted suicide, and a further 2000 people a day think about ending their life. Predicting with certainty who will attempt suicide is difficult. What we know is that those who attempt suicide are more likely to have a pre-existing mental health problem than not. Organisations such as Beyond Blue, R U Ok, and Lifeline outline suicide prevention strategies that revolve around talking about suicide with the person you are worried about. However little empirical research has focused on how suicide is actually talked about between clinicians and clients, those bereaved by suicide, or in online spaces. There are suggestions for what to ask but little guidance on how to ask about what are delicate matters. The aim of this project is to explore how suicide talk is constituted. Depending on the student’s interest this may be between clinicians and clients or in online suicide support forums.

Keywords: Conversation analysis; Suicide; Online therapy; Internet; Online peer support; Discursive Psychology, Therapy, Interpretative phenomenological analysis, Psychobiography
Research categories: Clinical Sciences,Other Medical and Health Sciences,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Psychology and Wellbeing

The behaviour of mechanics problems can be modelled by differential equations (DEs). in solving DEs, one needs to express the field variables as linear combinations of nodal function values. Compact local approximations, where nodal values of DEs are also included, allow the achievement of high levels of accuracy of the solution and sparseness of the system matrix together. This project is concerned with the use of compact local approximations, based on integrated radial basis functions, to represent the field variables in DEs to enhance the efficiency of numerical solution procedures.

Keywords: Partial differential equation, radial basis function, mechanics, numerical method, compact local approximation
Research categories: Applied Mathematics,Interdisciplinary Engineering,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,School of Engineering

Water trading systems provide an economic framework for the transfer of quantities of water—private ownership of which is endowed by statutory water rights legislation—to enhance/ensure highest value end use (i.e. optimisation) of scarce water resources. In this way, water markets commoditise water within an economic production-focused framework. However, water resources have significant value beyond their function in short-term economic activity. In reality, there are many competing demands for water resources and ensuring and allocating sufficient water of acceptable quality for different uses and users is a highly complex task, often subject to value conflicts. Despite this, the environmental and social impacts of water markets are relatively unknown. The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment espoused an ecosystem services framework for investigating the wider socio-ecological values associated with biodiversity and natural systems which has since gained acceptance as a guiding principle in environmental policy making. This research applies an ecosystem services valuation approach to contemporary water markets operating in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia, to better understand the socio-economic-ecological trade-offs and synergies associated with this form of water resource governance. It will investigate the broader socio-ecological values related to water trading to develop an integrated water benefits model of the total transaction system. It will also explore techniques to link bio-physical and socio-economic values, as well how these values change over different spatial, temporal and social organisational scales. Finally, it will critically analyse a range of policy settings (including a range of instruments and interventions) and provide a foundation for improved water resource decision-making and management.

Keywords: economic framework; water markets; water trade; optimisation of scarce water resources; trade-offs and synergies; socio-economic analysis; ecosystem services
Research categories: Environmental Science and Management
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

This project aims to develop a novel non-clinical monitoring of intraocular health using cameras in mobile devices to capture and transmit required imaging data to the treating optometrist(s) and ophthalmologist(s). Further scope narrowing is required to better understand the research problem(s) and its potential application in the rural and remote healthcare. The approach will include conducting a literature review, technical feasibility, and experimental design. The expected outcome is a desktop study for proofing the concept and potentially supported by industry partner(s). This project will involve initial scoping, definition, and evaluation of current technologies and practices, identify any constraints and parameters, and finally proposes conceptual design options that may fulfil the design objectives.

Keywords: Mechatronic engineering, biomedical engineering, wireless and remote healthcare, mobile devices, glaucoma
Research categories: Biomedical Engineering,Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Engineering Design,Ophthalmology And Optometry,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Engineering

Irrigation and fertilization are the two major techniques used to obtain high crop yields around the world. The aim of this project is to use high performance computing techniques to investigate the interactions between soil and fertilisers at the particle level. The effects of different fertiliser formulations and various land and field management practices on crop yield and fertiliser use efficiencies will be examined. The greenhouse gas emissions will also be evaluated.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Students are being encouraged to research any important unexplored issues in the above-mentioned fields that are contemporary and relevant to their own country or region. The research topic may be related to Australia or other regions as well. Primary and secondary data and materials can be used, and quantitative or qualitative research methods or a combination of both methods can be applied. The chosen topic should explore the causes of problems and provide solution strategies to benefit the people, society, and economy.

Keywords: Applied Economics; Development and Environmental Economics; Energy Economics; Applied Health Economics; International Trade and International Business
Research categories: Social Work,Sociology,Tourism
Locations: Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development,Centre for Health Sciences Research,Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Business

To succeed in transforming healthcare, many countries are moving toward targeted, personalised healthcare. As a part of healthcare transformation, medical risk assessment aims to prioritise patients on the basis of their medical status and treatments in order to optimise the deployment of medical resources; targeted monitoring aims to provide personalised monitoring medical services to individual patients. To achieve these tasks, evaluation of massive data in various types is essential in order to access individual patients' medical status and personal demands. However, the current accessibility to patients’ individual medical status and demands is still limited in IT-based healthcare systems. This study aims to breakthrough the problem by exploiting a medical domain ontology to model patients’ behaviour in order to provide decision support to medical doctors and health carers.

Keywords: Data analytics, big data, health care, personalisation
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Information Systems,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Fungi and yeasts have many applications in drug production, food processing, fermentation (beer, wine and bread), biological control agents, and enzyme technology. However, indigenous Australian fungi have rarely been considered or applied to industrial and even medical applications. The aim of this project is to apply fungal fermentation to agrowaste to produce new functional foods. Fungal strains such as Aspergilus will be grown on sorghum by-products and the resulting amino acids will be identified, purified as functional foods, and tested for biomedical applications such as reduction of obesity using appropriate rat models.

Keywords: fungus, fermentation, agrowaste, sorghum, functional foods, obesity, rat
Research categories: Agricultural Biotechnology,Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Analytical Chemistry,Biomedical Engineering,Chemical Engineering,Complementary and Alternative Medicine,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering,Environmental Science and Management,Food Sciences,Medical Biotechnology,Microbiology,Nutrition and Dietetics,Public Health and Health Services
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,School of Engineering and Built Environment,School of Health and Medical Sciences

This research will address the concerns when individuals and organisations use the cloud services.

Keywords: Cloud Computing
Research categories: Information Systems
Locations: School of Management and Enterprise

This project focuses on ways to support the development of numeracy and literacy skills in young children (up to 8 years of age). This involves the design, process and use of digital technologies to create engaging and interactive learning experiences in numeracy and/or literacy. The project has three broad areas of focus: 1. Effective digital media design This aspect of the study focuses on context analysis for effective digital media design. Considerations include the content, presentation, and delivery of information, as well as the age and developmental level of children who will be using digital technologies and other contextual factors. 2. Utilizing digital media This area of study can involve using specific software or apps that are specifically designed for teaching early years numeracy and/or literacy skills. 3. Educator knowledge Research in this area focuses on how digital media is used in early years educational settings and teachers’ professional knowledge about the use of digital media for developing young children’s numeracy/literacy

Keywords: Digital media, numeracy, Literacy, Design based research, Professional development
Research categories: Education Systems
Locations: School of education

The onset of the Australian summer monsoon (ASM) is marked by a sudden transition from a dry to a wet regime over northern Australia. Knowing the approximate timing of this transition is of great importance for primary producers. In 2019, there was a delay in the transitional rainfall onset by about 20 days compared to the long-term average, contributing to the driest Nov-Dec period on record for northern Australia. Prior to this, the 2019 Indian summer monsoon (ISM, June to September) withdrew more than a month later than usual. This, along with the delayed ASM onset was linked to cooler-than normal eastern Indian Ocean temperatures extending beyond December. The main challenge moving forward is to better understand what drives the seasonal variations in the ISM and ASM, with the strong focus on improving predictability at longer (seasonal) lead times. This project will delve into the ISM-ASM relationship, in terms of the large-scale drivers that are associated with variations in ASM onset and amplitude, and its connection to the ISM using a variety of observations, reanalyses and climate model simulations. The project will employ the Bureau of Meteorology's latest seasonal climate forecast system (ACCESS-S) and evaluate the ISM-ASM relationship in a seasonal hindcast predictability framework. A possible project extension may include using the recently available CMIP6 model archive to study the ISM-ASM relationship, both from a historical decadal perspective and in future projections. The outcomes from this project will include a comprehensive understanding of the role of oceanic variability in driving monsoon variability and its potential predictability, which will aid the development of more skilful seasonal predictions of the ASM. Potential research students interested in developing a project proposal in this field are invited to contact us to discuss their ideas. Prior computational knowledge not essential but is desirable.

Keywords: rainfall onset, seasonal variation, ACCESS S, predictability
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Atmospheric Sciences,Oceanography
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

We propose to develop a novel forward osmosis (FO) concentration technology to enable effective anaerobic treatment of sewage. Anaerobic biological processes have many advantages including energy recovery through methane production and low sludge production. While they have been widely used to treat medium to high strength wastewaters, their applications for raw sewage treatment have been limited due to the dilute nature (400 mg COD/L). The successful implementation of anaerobic treatment of dilute wastewater calls for an effective and energy-efficient wastewater concentration technology. This can be achieved by incorporating an FO pre-concentration process before anaerobic treatment. In the proposed FO process, seawater or brine will be used as a draw solution to concentrate raw sewage by a factor of 10 times or greater (4,000 mg COD/L) at nearly zero energy input. The pre-concentrated sewage will then be treated anaerobically for significant energy recovery.

Keywords: Forward Osmosis; Anaerobic digestion; wastewater; bioreactor; membrane; biofuel; biorefinery; green energy; sustainability
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Biotechnology,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

Flash drought is a term and concept used to describe a drought that has undergone rapid intensification. Due to its rapid intensification, the impacts of flash droughts will likely occur too quickly for many of the usual drought-coping mechanisms to be deployed especially for agricultural flash drought events. Another challenge of the rapid intensification feature is that flash droughts are difficult to monitor and forecast. Understanding how flash droughts develop is crucial to improve their predictability. A systematic flash drought detection framework over the historical period based on high-resolution observation-based flash drought index (Evaporative stress index: ESI) will be built to analyse its climatology and their link with climate drivers. To ensure the success of flash drought detection, verification work will be carried out by collecting field data on flash drought occurrence and impacts felt by farmers in collaboration with the coordinator of regional climate advisers (Climate Mates). The observed flash drought climatology will be then used as a reference to assess the Bureau's forecast model ACCESS-S2’s ability to accurately reproduce flash drought. Potentially a flash drought forecast product from ACCESS-S2 ensemble forecasts could be developed along with the flash drought monitoring product to inform the relevant agriculture industries. Flash drought projection can also be implemented using the Bureau's high-resolution land surface model (AWRA-L) in collaboration with the hydro-projection project.

Keywords: evaporative stress index, ACCESS S, monitoring, prediction, on-ground validation
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Atmospheric Sciences
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

The Trauma Informed Behaviour Support (TIBS) program consists of essential elements of trauma-informed practice to guide educators to: (a) maximise the student's sense of safety, (b) assist students in reducing overwhelming emotion, (c) address the impact of trauma and subsequent changes in the child's behaviour, development and relationships. The TIBS program uses a three-tier approach to implementing TIC practices to support vulnerable students. The program is based on a trans-theoretical framework of practice that draws on developmental traumatology, social-learning, and systems theories. Information about the program can be found here: https://usq.pressbooks.pub/traumainformedpractice/ The research will investigate the impact of the online delivery of the TBS program, and its implementation in schools.

Keywords: trauma-informed, positive behaviour support; inclusive education; school psychology; multi-tier systems of support
Research categories: Education Systems,Psychology
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Psychology and Wellbeing

Research led by Nicole Green, Vicki Christopher and Michelle Turner explores centre- and school-based mentoring programs. Caring for young children and youth more collectively in communities requires many and varied interlocking initiatives (Ellis, Small-McGinley & De Fabrizio, 2001). Research on school-based mentoring programs suggests that an active partnership with early education contexts provides an opportunity to: recruit greater numbers of volunteers, address the needs of children and youth who are most at risk, serve greater numbers of children and youth, and reduce program costs. Developing and sustaining an effective mentoring program, which follows internationally credible effective practices, costs money. However, it is cheaper and more successful than the cost per capita of supervising young people in detention, juvenile delinquents, young offenders, etc. (Winston Churchill Report, 2006). Mentorship literature emphasises the emotional closeness between a child and mentor is the catalyst for improvement of other than academic outcomes, e.g., better attendance, improved classroom behaviour, improved communication or life skills. Research in Australia and internationally highlights further research is needed to: - Critically inquire and gain diverse insights in the development, implementation and experience of sustainable centre- and school-based mentoring programs in regional and rural Australia, and the important relationships between mentors and children. The supervisory team invites postgraduate students interested in mentoring practices. Research projects will benefit from utilising diverse research methodologies and conceptual frameworks so as to offer insightful evidence-based contributions to scholarly conversations and policy initiatives. International collaborations are welcomed.

Keywords: mentoring, school, early childhood
Research categories: Education Systems
Locations: School of education

Centre manifold method is an accurate approach for analytically constructing an advection-diffusion equation (and even more accurate equations involving higher-order derivatives) for the depth-averaged concentration of substances in channels. This project is focused on a direct numerical verification of this method with examples of the dispersion in laminar and turbulent flows in open channels. The one-dimensional integrated radial basis function network (1D-IRBFN) method is used as a numerical approach to obtain a numerical solution for the original two-dimensional (2-D) advection-diffusion equation. The 2-D solution is depth-averaged and compared with the solution of the 1-D equation derived using the centre manifolds.

Keywords: Contaminants, turbulent flows, modelling
Research categories: Applied Mathematics,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre

Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are present in househould products and foam that were used in Australia for several decades. Several cases of contamination were recently reported in the news. Some firefighting foams contain two PFAS – perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) – that improve the ability of the foam to smother fire. These chemicals will persist in the environment due to their non-biodegradability. This project will look at a novel electro-chemical process to oxidize and breakdown these compounds. Adsorption of PFAS will take place using graphite flakes and regeneration of graphite will take using low electrical current.

Keywords: PFAS, PFOS, groundwater, electro-chemical cell, graphite
Research categories: Chemical Engineering,Environmental Engineering
Locations: School of Engineering and Built Environment

The research program is led by Nicole Green, Michelle Turner, Michele Wright and Vicki Christopher, and is underpinned by the finding that, while a plethora of research exists about the nature of quality early childhood services, there is sparse research about the specific experiences of early childhood teachers in remote locations. The research program will also address the gap in relation to teaching in rural Australia which up until now focuses on primary and secondary education. New frameworks that move away from a deficit model and negative perceptions of rural and remote communities, challenge teacher education to consider a more contemporary view of remote teaching and learning, and assist in rethinking implications for education and training. In addition, universities around the world are increasingly concerned with ensuring that their students develop attributes which will better equip them for the world of work, and as members of society. Graduate attributes have been defined in the higher education sector as generic skill components, attitudes, values and dispositions, yet research has reported that generic attributes continue to lack a clear theoretical or conceptual base. Research has also indicated that, while universities internationally have sought to articulate the nature of the education they offer to students through a description of the generic qualities and skills their graduates possess, efforts to foster the development of generic attributes has been unsuccessful. Research in Australia and internationally highlights further research is needed to: - build an understanding of the attributes required to be an effective early childhood teacher in remote settings in Australia by exploring the perspectives of those working, training and recruiting in these areas. - examine university courses offering initial and graduate early childhood teacher education – map these attributes across early childhood programs and courses across Australia to develop a national picture of how these attributes are addressed by collating examples of how these are enacted - develop a model that will be used as a tool for identifying exemplary university curricula which comprehensively and effectively prepares graduate ECEC teachers with the relevant skill components, attitudes, values and dispositions for living and working in rural settings.

Keywords: early childhood, teacher education, graduate, attributes, rural
Research categories: Education Systems
Locations: School of education

Critical heritage studies has emerged as a research area that offers many opportunities to explore and challenge conventional heritage management and museums studies. There are opportunities to engage with significant theoretical issues and contribute to more equitable and representative models of heritage conservation and interpretation. This requires the development and application of new approaches and methods in heritage assessment, including ethnography and storytelling (e.g. Pocock et al 2014 and Pocock 2002); and more inclusive museums. A number of projects might be explored through considerations of social significance, intangible heritage, the interconnection of natural and cultural heritage, and the heritage values of the marginalized and underrepresented, including Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders, the elderly, the homeless, the poor, women, migrants, LGBTQI communities. Interdisciplinary approaches including anthropology, history and literary studies create new opportunities.

Keywords: heritage, history, identity, community, intangible, environment, storytelling, narratives
Research categories: Anthropology,Curatorial and Related Studies,Historical Studies,Literary Studies,Other History and Archaeology
Locations: Institute for Resilient Regions,School of Humanities & Communication

Asthma is an inflammatory disease of the airways that affects 235 million people worldwide (World Health Organisation). The disease is characterised by reversible airway narrowing, mucus hypersecretion and the pro-inflammatory response of cytokines and chemokines that results in the respiratory symptoms of wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath and tightness in the chest. This can have a detrimental effect upon quality life, leading to disability and in some cases death. Unfortunately, there is no cure for asthma and the treatments available to help manage the condition can lead to the user becoming tolerant and have several undesirable side effects. The care for individuals with asthma is also very costly. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to develop cheaper, more effective and less harmful treatments to manage and potentially cure asthma. Recent novel research suggests that nutritional interventions may represent a cost-saving, effective and safe method for reducing the incidence of asthmatic attacks. Several nutritional interventions have been shown to be effective at reducing a specific phenotype of asthma called exercise induced bronchoconstriction without any harmful side effects. This PhD will investigate further dietary interventions to reduce exercise induced bronchoconstriction and airway inflammation. The candidate will join a successful team of multi-disciplinary scientists from several institutions, and will work in state-of-the-art laboratories with exceptional core facilities.

Keywords: Asthma; Exercise; Diet
Research categories: Biochemistry and Cell Biology,Human Movement and Sports Science,Immunology,Medical Physiology,Nutrition and Dietetics,Physiology
Locations: Centre for Health Sciences Research,School of Health and Medical Sciences

Through the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture there are opportunities to identify projects that have practical applications – and the possibility of external funding. An attractive area is the concept of small autonomous robots, performing tasks such as weeding or planting with the aid of low cost machine vision, exploiting computing platforms such as the Android. Other areas can include mobile applications, perhaps legged, such as the ‘Turtle’ proposed for marine inspection. A technique has recently developed for a fast-model predictive controller, simple enough that it can be embodied in a microcontroller for near-optimal operation. This can be taken further in theory or in a practical application.

Keywords: Mechatronics, Control theory, computer vision, actuation, applications, software strategies, sensing.
Research categories: Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Mathematical Physics,Mechanical Engineering,Other Engineering
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering

Recently, rapid developments in remote sensing technologies have provided new ways of solving conventional problems. Advanced new remote sensing technologies and an urgent need to respond to some important environment problems have inspired researchers to develop and test more reliable approaches and to discover new knowledge for improvement of the applications of these new technologies. Traditional methods for forest classification were based either on the interpretation of aerial photographs or field work. These methods are labour intensive and time consuming. In past decades, remotely sensed data have been a valuable source of information in forest characterisation and classification. For example, high spatial resolution satellite imagery can be used to capture data relating to horizontal forest structure. However, it is unable to directly describe vertical forest structure. LiDAR, on the other hand, is able to describe the forest structure in three dimensions. This project aims to integrate the LiDAR data and satellite imagery data, along with the usage of object-based image analysis (OBIA) and machine learning based classifiers such as decision trees, random forests and support vector machines (SVMs) to improve the characterisation and classification of forest communities.

Keywords: LiDAR, Laser scanning, GIS, Remote sensing, Spatial science, Object-based image analysis, Image classification, Statistics, Machine learning, Support vector machines, Environment, Forest
Research categories: Environmental Science and Management,Geomatic Engineering,Statistics
Locations: International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,School of Engineering and Built Environment

Scientific evidence regarding the environmental impact of fire retardants is increasing. Commonly used in furniture foam and electronic goods, these chemicals tend to be highly persistent, and bioconcentrate/biomagnify in the environment. Transport of these chemicals can be over long distances, as several of the compounds are now being detected in the fatty tissues of wildlife present in Arctic and Antarctic regions. A review needs to take place of the range of chemicals used, and their potential impacts to atmosphere, soil, water and wildlife.

Keywords:
Research categories: Environmental Engineering,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development,Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences,National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture,School of Engineering and Built Environment

My supervisory range is fairly widespread around a number of music history topics from 16th century music to concert music of the present. in particular I have expertise in 20th century Australian music and symphonic music from throughout the century.

Keywords: music history, Pre-1960 Australian works, British Symphonic Works
Research categories: Historical Studies
Locations: School of Humanities & Communication

The river/catchment flow models of River Murray System are highly complex hydrological models with many uncertain environmental conditions, and the River Murray Operations are very complex functions to direct water releases from storages and control the diversions of water from the River Murray for irrigation and agricultural use, and for consumers in urban areas. Both hydrological modelling and water operation are the key functions of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA), which manages the River Murray System in close cooperation with state authorities to ensure reliable water supplies for all users. The existing river/catchment models used in MDBA have been continuously developed for decades. They fit into the River Murray Operations requirements. The River Murray Operations decisions are made by running a series of river/catchment models sequentially from upstream to downstream, and by taking in a range of technical considerations. The operation by using existing models, however, doesn’t contain any automatic optimization scheme. For example, the existing models used for flow prediction are based on historic data without considering rainfall forecasts, which would impact on the predictive accuracy. A lot of decisions depend upon how an operator responds to the model run results and understands of technical considerations. The objectives of this study are: • to investigate alternative ways of flow prediction modelling. • to develop practical optimization methods for River Murray Operations. • to develop a user-friendly software tool implementing flow prediction modelling and optimizing operation for River Murray System.

Keywords: River Flow Modelling, Big Data, Data Mining
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

User concept models are formal description and specification of user background knowledge. In their brains, users implicitly possess a concept model, which is generated from their background knowledge. While this concept model cannot be proven in laboratories, many knowledge engineers have observed it in user behaviour. When users read through a document, they can easily determine whether or not it is of their interest, on the basis of a judgement that arises from their implicit concept models. Therefore, there exists a hypothesis if a user’s concept model can be simulated, we can understand how a decision (e.g., whether a document is interesting) is made, and thus, we can infer user information needs by analysing the existing concepts in simulated user concept model. This study focuses on user concept models in the personalised information gathering considering challenges presented in Big Data era. The thesis project will make potential theoretical contributions to knowledge advancement in knowledge engineering and cognitive science, as well methodological contributions to text mining, information retrieval, and data format to help deal with Big Data challenges.

Keywords: User modelling, Ontology, Personalisation, Big Data
Research categories: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing,Cognitive Sciences,Data Format,Information Systems
Locations: School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Natural ecosystems play a key role in supporting agricultural production systems through a range of ecosystem services, including carbon storage, soil health, hydrological function, biodiversity, and pest and pollination services. Research undertaken to date in cropping landscapes has increased our understanding of the contribution that natural ecosystems on and around farms make in providing these important services. It has identified and quantified individual services and investigated best management practises to enhance their value. However, rarely does this research focus on the flow of services (and dis-services) between agricultural and natural elements within landscapes or the increased resilience that ecological theory predicts will ensue from integrated management of agri-ecological landscapes. Decision making (from farm level to policy level) in the face of projected increases in climate variability and growing pressure on the natural resource base is also increasingly complex and subject to significant uncertainty (e.g. Brady et al., 2012, 2019). This research will investigate the interactions between natural environments and crop production systems in agricultural landscapes and develop an integrated systems framework to support decisions aimed at enhancing both environmental and agricultural productivity outcomes at a range of scales from property to landscape level under a range of probable climate and land use/land cover futures. Potential research students interested in developing a project proposal in this field are invited to contact us to discuss their ideas.

Keywords: Ecosystem services; systems modelling; future climates; socio-ecological resilience; predictive modelling
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Ecological Applications,Ecology,Environmental Science and Management
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment,International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences

An increasing variety of agricultural and horticultural products are now grown indoors in greenhouses. For this purpose, the operators must create an optimal growing condition, using artificial lighting, heating and cooling. Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are the advanced third generation solar cells. It can provide a unique opportunity for growing certain crops by selecting transmission of certain wavelengths. The objective of this project is to develop and evaluate an innovative DSSC solar shading system for uses in intensive greenhouse agriculture.

Keywords:
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management
Locations: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

Increases in global GHG emissions are affecting global temperatures (IPCC, 2014a) and the water cycle. Changes in the global climate, with associated increases in the return period, size, and duration of extreme high-temperature events and following heat stresses are predicted (already happening), along with changes in rainfall and rainfall extremes (IPCC, 2014a). All these changes cause an increasing water scarcity across the globe (Gosling and Arnell, 2016). At a landscape scale, these changes impact the biophysical process and alter water-soil-plant-animal interactions (Ghahramani and Bowran, 2018), soil moisture dynamics (Holsten et al., 2009), soil degradation (Klik and Eitzinger, 2010) that will affect productivity and quality of agricultural production and consequently food security at a larger regional and global scale (Wheeler et al., 2013). Climate change is also a key source of uncertainty for medium to long-term planning in the water sector, including in agriculture, urban water supply, water treatment and environmental management. Impact on water resources primarily is through changes in temperature, evaporation, and rainfall, impacting the water systems in a variety of ways, both biophysical and socio-economic. Quantifying the likelihood of these impacts and the effectiveness of adaptations can be explored using systems modelling. This PhD research will provide a comprehensive understanding of the climate change impact on water and land resources at catchment and farm scale/paddock. It will identify impacts on water-soil-plant interactions by modelling while looking at mechanisms. The research will consider the suitability of models and modelling approaches to be considered for climate change impact and decision-making. It will include the specific role(s) of the models in management and major uncertainties associated with climate change's impact on water and land resources.

Keywords: CLIMATE CHANGE, AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS, MODELLING, SOIL CARBON,
Research categories: Agriculture, Land and Farm Management,Climate Change Impacts And Adaptation,Environmental Science and Management,Hydrology
Locations: Institute for Agriculture and the Environment

A class of bio-chemical systems can be simulated by a system of coupled oscillators. Phase of oscillations satisfies an evolution partial differential equation which takes different forms depending on the values of parameters. In the simplest case the equation is effectively a diffusion equation which is excitation-free. However, more complex forms are possible such as the Nikolaevskii equation and the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation incorporating linear excitation. We analyse a situation when the phase equation is based on nonlinear excitation. The nonlinear dynamics is explored numerically.

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Research categories: Applied Mathematics,Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Locations: Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre

Most plants on land associate with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi (subphylum: Glomeromycotina). These fungi can provide plants with access to important resources (i.e. phosphorus) while the plants provide the fungi with carbon. In both natural and managed ecosystems, plants are attacked by at least one, if not many, insect herbivores. For crop production, this can mean significant impacts on yield. The prophylactic application and reliance on many pesticides and fertilisers is unsustainable. As crop production must increase its sustainability the symbiosis between AM fungi and crop plants offers vast potential to increase plant growth, nutreint uptake and resistance to pests. This project will investigate how AM fungal community assemblage relates to plant defences against insect herbivores. This project will incorporate field-based (soil and root sampling), controlled-environment experimentation (glasshouse experiments) and lab-based analyses (amplicon sequencing) to disentangle how different AM fungi impact the defences of important Australian crop species.

Keywords: arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, microbial ecology, plant defence, pest protection, plant defence
Research categories: Crop and Pasture Production,Ecology,Plant Biology
Locations: Centre for Crop Health