The Australian Research Council (ARC) has announced $58.3 million in funding over five years for 17 Australian Laureate Fellowships, supporting ground-breaking research excellence across a broad range of areas.
Impressively, seven NSW researchers were successful in this year's round.
The objectives of the Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme are to:
- attract and retain outstanding researchers and research leaders of international reputation, with exceptional ability to lead, collaborate, mentor and supervise, and enhance their capacity to create an enduring legacy
- build focus and scale in research by forging new links among researchers, the international research community and/or industry and other research end-users
- support a program of innovative and ground-breaking research that addresses a significant problem or gap in knowledge
- create a cohesive research program and implementation plan that represents value for money
- provide an excellent research training environment and exemplary opportunity to nurture early or mid-career researchers
- produce new or advanced knowledge resulting from the outcomes of the research with economic, commercial, environmental, social and/or cultural benefits for Australia, and to enhance research in Australian Government priority areas.
The seven successful NSW academics are:
Professor Andrew Baker, UNSW Sydney, $3,038,909
Project: Caves and their stalagmites: linking climate to groundwater recharge
Professor Baker aims to generate new knowledge that is only possible by combining the analysis of cave stalagmites, underground hydrological monitoring and climate hydrological modelling to identify when this replenishment occurred in the past, present, and future.
Professor Yihong Du, University of New England, $2,450,000
Project: Partial differential equations for propagation and aggregation
Professor Du aims to develop partial differential equation (PDE) theory and techniques to significantly improve the understanding of propagation and aggregation phenomena occurring in ecological invasion, disease spreading, krill swarming and elsewhere.
Professor Christopher Gibson, University of Wollongong, $3,613,497
Project: Regional decarbonisation transitions: an inclusive place-based approach
Professor Gibson aims to investigate how decarbonisation impacts Australian regions and develop a novel place-based approach to empower communities and industries during a transformation that poses a significant risk of leaving many energy-intensive regions behind.
Professor Liza Lim, the University of Sydney, $3,738,560
Project: Multispecies Creativity and Climate Communication
Professor Lim aims to advance the role of the arts as the missing link in global movements of multispecies justice, using innovative musical approaches to communicate the urgency of climate change and lead social change.
Professor Andrea Morello, UNSW Sydney, $3,385,000
Project: Establishing practical quantum information in higher dimensions
Professor Morello aims to develop a revolutionary quantum computer platform, where information is robustly and densely encoded within large atoms inside a silicon chip.
Professor Sharon Robinson, University of Wollongong, $3,307,820
Project: Islands in the Ice: Interpreting the future of Antarctic ecosystems
Professor Robinson aims to better understand polar regions by combining data from key locations around the Antarctic continent to determine how vegetation in ice-free, coastal areas has responded to recent climate change.
Professor Michael Ward, the University of Sydney, $3,662,360
Project: Defining the wild-domestic animal interface and microbial spillover risk
Professor Ward aims to utilise case studies across an array of contexts to generate a new understanding of the wild domestic animal interface (i.e. the points of contact between wild and domestic animals) to allow advanced assessment of the risk of microbial spillover.
Further information can be found at: Australian Laureate Fellowships 2024 | Australian Research Council