From the building blocks of quantum computing to where the bush meets the farm, our scientists are at the forefront of the expansive effort to ensure our world is sustainable, resilient and safe for all life on Earth.
University of Sydney science researchers are creating pathways to a resilient future for people, animals and the planet with projects that tackle existential challenges head on.
Dean of the Faculty of Science Professor Marcel Dinger says: “Many of our research goals focus on the huge societal challenges that we see coming. These include climate change, food security, and energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”
Professor Michael Ward, Chair of Veterinary Public Health & Food Safety, is conducting research that aims to create a practical online tool that will help organisations to assess the risks of disease-causing germs being spread among wild and domestic animals and then on to humans (microbial spillover).
It’s a problem that impacts ecosystem sustainability, puts the health of livestock at risk, stresses food security in remote communities, and puts public health at risk of another pandemic.
Before the software can be developed, there’s a lot of work to be done in identifying risk factors. The first step involves studying how wild animals interact with each other and with domestic animals. It’s called the “wild domestic animal interface”, but the problem is that it’s ill-defined.
Professor Ward says: “First, we’re trying to define it, then establish how you measure it and then look at the dynamic drivers of that interface and the implications for microbial spillover risk.”
Professor Michael Ward setting up a wildlife camera to track how wild and domestic animals interact.
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LinkThis is more than a disease modelling project, says Professor Ward. Because the emphasis is on getting high-quality data, the project uses different technologies in the field to help the team understand how animals come into contact with each other or with people.
“For example, what's the chance that a wild dog and a domestic dog will have some sort of contact that's sufficient to allow disease spillover to occur? That's a field measurement problem, so we use camera traps, genetics testing, GPS collars and scat (poo) sampling – all of these are important for our modelling to be meaningful,” he says.
The GPS collars applied to dogs to track movement and potential for disease spillover.
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LinkWe have to maintain our environment while reducing risks to animal and human health.
The project builds on previous work using various case studies. These include leptospirosis cases in dogs and humans in Sydney, foot and mouth disease transmission in a wild pig–domestic cattle ecosystem, avian influenza in wild and domestic birds, and rabies transmission from wild and domestic dogs.
Each interface is multi-factorial: “For example, with avian influenza in Australia, you’ve got wild birds and you've got domestic poultry, so there’s an interface issue but we don't really understand what drives it. We will look at multiple factors using lots of different case studies to try to work out the fundamental drivers.”
In this case alone, factors to consider include migratory wild birds who may have changed their routes, bringing them into contact with chickens, or wild ducks contaminating the chickens’ water source, or humans’ desire to have free range chickens, which allows them to have contact with wild birds.
Once the various risk factors for disease spread in various circumstances have been identified, the risk assessment tool can be developed.
“You could put in certain values for a certain situation and, by tweaking the inputs, you can see how that affects the potential outcomes in a given situation.”
Professor Ward has been awarded a Laureate Fellowship for the five-year project, which could help with urban planning, agriculture management and disease mitigation strategies.
It is hoped that the risk assessment tool will be used by agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH), as well as national, state and local governments.
“By 2030, we’d like to have a virtual collaborating centre that meets the needs of large organisations. It's very much for the public good, providing risk assessment information to help people make better decisions.”
Avian influenza has a devastating impact on the poultry industry and has led to egg shortages.
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Resilience research in the Faculty of Science spans not only the natural world but also the mysterious world of quantum computing, the advent of which heralds the threat of quantum hackers. The race is on to find new encryption algorithms that can stand up to a quantum attack.
Quantum resilience, also known as post-quantum cryptography, is the research focus of Nalini Joshi AO, Payne-Scott Professor of Mathematics and Chair of Applied Mathematics at the University of Sydney.
Quantum computers have an enormous potential capacity for storage of information and extremely fast processing times. Professor Joshi explains this with the analogy of the Greek legend of the minotaur who was kept in an elaborate labyrinth. When the hero, Theseus, goes into the labyrinth to slay the minotaur, he trails a long spool of thread behind him so he can make his way out again.
“Classical computing is like that. You're doing things sequentially, step by step. But quantum computing would be like floodwaters rising through the floor of the whole labyrinth, so every tunnel is engulfed simultaneously. Everything is being sampled at once. It's a totally different way of operating a computer.
"By exploring the vast numbers of possibilities inside a quantum computer, there are potentially totally different results. It’s expected there will be discovery of medicines and materials that are unimaginable now, such as smart materials that will make sustainable, long-lived batteries.”
The impact of quantum computing is going to be enormous. Our government has promised to invest a billion dollars in buying a quantum computer that may become operational by 2030...but potential benefits come with diabolical challenges.
While governments are enamoured with the idea of new quantum computing hardware, the theoretical side of the issue needs to be addressed, she says.
“These benefits also come with diabolical challenges. When quantum computing comes online, it will break all of our current security protocols. Most of our online transactions are protected by what's called public key cryptography. People have hacked large databases, such as Optus or Medibank Private, and collected our data, and experts believe that the data is being stored until quantum computers are available – and then hackers will use them to break the protocols that are currently protecting our information.”
Currently, various quantum resilience algorithms are being collected and evaluated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US. However, most of the ideas have been hacked and shown to be not viable.
“There are three remaining protocols left on the NIST evaluation, and this, in my opinion, is too small a repertoire for us to feel safe,” says Professor Joshi.
“The protocols that we use now rely on certain intrinsic properties of mathematical operations, such as commutability, which is when the order of operation doesn't matter. If I go left around a room or right around a room, I get to the same place. But with quantum computing, it’s not necessarily commutative, just as putting on socks then shoes is different from putting on shoes then socks: the result is very different.
Professor Nalini Joshi's research will be vital in our defence against quantum attacks.
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Link“My work is looking at the mathematical underpinnings of these cryptographic algorithms to try and find a wider array of potential quantum resistant algorithms to protect us in the future. You could have an algorithm which relies on non-commutative mathematical operations that would survive and be resilient.”
Professor Joshi aims to have a plausible algorithm that can be robustly tested in about three years.
For Professor Dinger, both research programs project future risks to humanity and society and will help us to tackle them when the time comes.
“Rather than reacting to a crisis at the time, we will already have a deep understanding of how these events can occur and how we can respond to them. These are resilience strategies to protect us from very high impact events.”
Professor Nalini Joshi investigating the mathematical underpinnings of cryptographic algorithms.
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