20 October 2007

The Faculty of Engineering had great success in the latest round of ARC Grants with more than $10 million in funding received.

The new funding, through ARC Discovery, Linkage, Linkage Infrastructure and Linkage International grants will help enhance UNSW Engineering’s profile in key research fields including energy, water, advanced materials and manufacturing, environmental monitoring and information and computer technologies.

Infrastructure available to Faculty researchers will be significantly improved through the success of two projects which will inject funds for water research, the first led by Associate Professor Richard Stuetz and the second by recently appointed Faculty Early Career academic, Dr Pierre Le-Clech. Several Chief Investigators from Engineering were also involved in a bid, led by the Faculty of Medicine for equipment for high-resolution imaging of live cells and tissue. Professor Stuetz will also receive approximately $2 million in Linkage funding over the next five years due to his part in a successful multi-institution bid for management of corrosion and odour problems in sewer systems.

Surveying and Spatial Information Systems had some big wins in Discovery, Linkage and LIEF awards, with four of their academic staff being chief investigators on successful grants. Dr Linlin Ge from the school leads a Linkage project in mapping of environmental change using radar with the Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia. Dr Ge was also involved in a successful LIEF grant in support of high resolution airborne radar which is essential infrastructure for this environmental research.

Chemical Sciences and Engineering’s Dr Martina Stenzel, as the lead investigator with partner Sirtex Technology Pty Ltd, received funding for a multidisciplinary project researching a drug delivery system for the treatment of liver cancer. Another successful applicant in Advanced Materials research was Dr Chi who was awarded a prestigious Postdoctoral Fellowship (APD) and will be joining Professor Amal’s laboratory to work in the nanomaterials field. Chemical Engineering researcher Dr Leonie Barner was also successful in the Discovery round. Dr Barner’s research in advanced polymer chemistry focuses on functional particles for diagnostic applications and will be conducted in collaboration with overseas partner investigators.

Civil Engineering lead investigator Professor Mark Bradford, in collaboration with BlueScope Lysaght, received funding towards research investigating the interaction of creep, shrinkage and partial interaction in composite beams, producing valuable design guidance to keep UNSW Structures research at the forefront internationally. Civil Engineering also performed well in the Discovery funding outcomes with several grants awarded. Among them, Associate Professor Ashish Sharma won support for research into water flow modeling in catchments with no historical measurements.

Professor Robert Randall, from Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering working in collaboration with Rolls-Royce, received Linkage funding for research into diagnostics of turbine engine bearings which may lead to the technology being used in the Joint Strike Fighter. Mechanical Engineering also had success in the Discovery round, including Associate Professor Jun Wang who won support for a project which will advance understanding of nano-surface formation using a micro-abrasive jet which will contribute to ultra-precision engineering in industries such as computing, photovoltaics and communications.

Petroleum engineering was particularly successful with grants awarded to Dr Yildiray Cinar and Dr Nam Tran. Dr Cinar’s research into microtomography-based network model technology will place Australia in the forefront of this field while Dr Tran will contribute to fundamental research into the development of geothermal resources.

In Computer Science and Engineering, several researchers were successful in the Discovery round. Associate Professor Boualem Benatallah won funding for research in next generation ubiquitous service spaces and Dr Wei Wang’s proposal for improving keyword searching in relational databases was also successful.

Electrical Engineering received significant funding with academics gaining 4 Discovery grants, including one for Associate Professor Francois Ladouceur with a successful project based around chiral microstructured fibres funded through the University of Sydney. In another collaborative grant, Associate Professor Outhred and Dr MacGill were CIs on a successful Discovery project with Professor Anderson from the Australian School of Business.

Overall, the Faculty of Engineering had great success in the latest ARC funding outcomes and it is hoped that the grant funding will maintain the high research profile of the Faculty.
All successful ARC funding outcomes can be found at http://www.arc.gov.au/applicants/fundingoutcomes.htm