Sydney academics awarded prestigious ARC Grants

The Australian Research Council (ARC) have announced the latest round of successful Discovery Project and Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grants.

The University was awarded 36 Discovery Project grants, totalling $18 million, and six LIEF grants totalling almost $6 million, which accounts for more than 20 percent of the total LIEF funding allocated this year. 

ARC Chief Executive Officer, Judi Zielke, said that for every $1 of research that the ARC funds, $3.32 is generated in economic output back into the Australian community.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Emma Johnston emphasised the significance of these grants in driving transformative research agendas. 

"The success of our researchers in securing these prestigious grants underscores the University of Sydney's commitment to fostering an environment of academic excellence and innovation," stated Professor Johnston. 

"Through these grants, our researchers will have the opportunity to push the boundaries of knowledge, driving impactful change in their respective fields and contributing to solutions for the most pressing global challenges."

Below is a list of the University of Sydney’s successful ARC grants funded in this round, including the lead academic and the funding awarded.

• Dr Natalie Silver, $169,128 – Investigating superannuation as inheritance.
• Professor Nathan Lo, $574,037 – Testing links between life-history and genome evolution. 
• Professor Itai Einav, $413,390 – Developing a novel granular stress sensor for soil exploration. 
• Associate Professor James Shine, $853,565 – Evaluating the network neuroscience of human cognition to improve AI. 
• Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, $587,000 – Exploring liquid metal solvents for high entropy and atomically configured systems. 
• Professor Agnieszka Tymula, $328,879 – Multidisciplinary analysis of financial reference points and well-being. 
• Professor Alexander Molev, $387,592 – Investigating quantum algebras with supersymmetries. 
• Professor Fernando Calamante, $469,263, Developing novel tractography-guided MRI methods for studying healthy brain ageing. 
• Professor Dacheng Tao, $522,390 – Creating quantum generative diffusion models for molecular research. 
• Professor Joel Mackay, $780,618 – Investigating how the chromatin remodeller CHD4 regulates gene expression. 
• Professor Dingxuan Zhou, $402,491 – Developing an approximation theory for structured neural networks. 
• Professor Jennifer Gamble, $709,714 – Investigating whether the plasma membrane is the control hub for cellular ageing. 
• Associate Professor David Ubilava, $190,000 – Investigating the effect of political conflict on food markets in low- and middle-income countries.
• Professor Anthony Cesare, $703,903 – Understanding mitotic telomere deprotection. 
• Dr Chang Xu, $510,000 – Developing generative visual pre-training on unlabelled big data. 
• Professor Ben Thornber, $477,804 – Revolutionising wind farm optimisation. 
• Professor Andrew Mathas, $524,369 – Investigating categorification and KLR algebras. 
• Professor Claire Wade, $511,077 – Studying the sensing of seasons without the eye for animal breeding. 
• Professor Edward Holmes, $718,978 – Exploring virus diversity to prevent future pandemics. 
• Associate Professor Dagmar Reinhardt, $398,033 – Developing accessible playgrounds for children with vision impairment. 
• Associate Professor Alexander Fish, $472,719 – Addressing fundamental problems in Number Theory and Combinatorics. 
• Associate Professor Marianne Fenech, $664,259 – Attracting, preparing, and sustaining quality teachers in early education. 
• Professor Patrick Tam, $747,027 – Assembling the building blocks in the blueprint of the embryonic head. 
• Professor Joachim Gudmundsson, $547,662 – Developing algorithms for future-proof networks. 
• Professor Beniamin Goldys, $481,984 – Mathematics for future magnetic devices
• Associate Professor Feike Dijkstra, $756,919 – Investigating root effects on soil organic matter in grasslands. 
• Professor Eduardo Altmann, $503,877 – Learning the meso-scale organisation of complex networks. 
• Professor Luming Shen, $523,390 –Unlocking self-healing bio-concrete through multiscale modelling. 
• Professor Alan McKee, $348,424 – Improving digital sexual literacy in Australia. 
• Associate Professor Giorgia Alù and Professor Rebecca Suter, $391,371 – Mapping creativity in captivity during WWII. 
• Dr Alyson Ashe, $705,986 – Discovering the molecular controls of epigenetic inheritance. 
• Professor Kalervo Gulson, $502,649 – Artificial intelligence in education: Democratising policy. 
• Professor Andrew Leach, $453,248 – Mapping the frontiers of private property in Australia. 
• Professor Murray Lee, $411,200 – Policing Australian popular music. 
• Professor Brian Uy, $569,705 – Composite clad steel-geopolymer concrete systems for resilient structures. 
• Professor Kristie Miller, $317,143 – Making better decisions: An investigation of time-biases.

• Professor Gwenaelle Proust, $546,254.00 - improving access to powder manufacturing.
• Professor Elizabeth New, $1,000,000 - Deep imaging for understanding molecular processes in complex organisms.
• Professor Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou, $950,000 - establishing a fuel cell and electrolyser prototyping facility.
• Professor Chris Ling, $1,341,398 - to develop a diffrractometer to rapidly solve the atomic-scale structures of molecules and materials.
• Professor Xiaozhou Liao, $1,200,000 - develop testing capability for materials under extreme environments.
• Associate Professor Lining (Arnold) Ju, $928,291 - to establish a single-molecule facility allowing researchers to explore cellular processes and molecular mechanisms.

The majority of LIEF funding will support the Univerisity's Core Research Facilities (CRF) network, further bolstering the open-access research infrastructure that the University operates.

In the infrastructure space, the University also stands to benefit from the federal government’s recent commitment of $650m to support research infrastructure through its National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) program, with four established nodes within the CRF network and new nodes in the pipeline.