Seventeen Macquarie University research projects have been successful in securing $7.4 million in funding in the 2022 Discovery Projects scheme announced by the Australian Research Council (ARC), while research groups from the Faculty of Science and Engineering, in partnership with industry collaborators, have been awarded over $2.5 million in the latest round of the ARC’s 2022 Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) and 2021 Linkage Projects (round 1) schemes.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Sakkie Pretorius says the breadth and depth of high-quality projects awarded funding across these schemes strongly reflects Macquarie’s longstanding commitment to research excellence and innovation.

“Discovery funding supports our researchers to drive and deliver our strategic vision to generate new understandings, build deeper knowledge and deliver world-leading research. LIEF and Linkage funding provides opportunities to further strengthen Macquarie’s collaborative relationships with industry partners to help respond to, and solve, some of the world’s great challenges.”

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Sakkie Pretorius, said “Each of these awards reflect our University’s strong and thriving commitment to research that has real-world impact and applications. Through consilience, our pioneering researchers, individually, collaboratively, or partnered with industry and the wider community, can unlock new knowledge and explore previously out-of-reach possibilities,” he says.

“I congratulate all our recipients across the University on their success in securing these grants, it is an absolute testament to your diligence and dedication to your disciplines and I look forward to seeing the positive and world-changing impact of the research these awards enable.”

Congratulations to our 2022 Discovery Project grant recipients

Faculty of Arts

Macquarie Chief Investigator(s)	Title	Amount Awarded
Professor Amanda Wise and Associate Professor Selvaraj Velayutham from the Macquarie School of Social Sciences	Social Resilience, Migrant Integration and Informal Sport in Public Space	$303,442
Professor Martin Bommas, Professor Naguib Kanawati from the Department of History and Archaeology and Associate Professor Craig O’Neill	Crisis as Opportunity: Societal Change in Early Middle Kingdom Egypt	$408,881

Faculty of Science and Engineering

Macquarie Chief Investigator(s)	Title	Amount Awarded
Dr Ji Li, Dr The Anh Bui and Professor Xuan Thinh Duong from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences	Harmonic analysis of Laplacians in curved spaces	$375,000
Dr Thomas Williams from the School of Natural Sciences	From trash to treasure: engineering waste carbon utilisation in yeast	$494,550
Associate Professor Johannes Le Roux and Dr Rachael Dudaniec from the School of Natural Sciences	Using assisted evolution to win the war against invasive species	$323,500
Associate Professor Alexei Gilchrist from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences	Quantum measurement as a resource	$270,000
Associate Professor Yuling Wang and Professor Alison Rodger from the School of Natural Sciences	Next-generation epigenetic analysis: direct reading of DNA methylation	$390,000
Dr Haoran Ren and Professor Judith Dawes from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences	All-on-chip twisted light modulator for ultrahigh-capacity data processing	$350,000
Associate Professor Paul Hesse, Professor Kirstie Fryirs and Dr Timothy Ralph from the School of Natural Sciences	Will rivers be smaller when the climate is hotter?	$443,000
Dr Stuart Hawkins from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences	Advanced Bayesian Inversion Algorithms for Wave Propagation	$420,000
Associate Professor Daniel Zucker from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences	Seeing Dark with Light: Revealing the Milky Way with Stellar Streams	$700,000
Professor Marie Herberstein and Associate Professor Linda Beaumont from the School of Natural Sciences	Why are warning colours in animals so rare?	$403,431
Professor Ian Wright and Emeritus Professor Mark Westoby from the School of Natural Sciences	Leaf and wood physiology and biomass allocation as drivers of plant growth	$584,995
Dr Ajay Narendra from the School of Natural Sciences	Overcoming limits of miniaturisation to enhance spatial memory capacities	$739,586

Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences

Macquarie Chief Investigator(s)	Title	Amount Awarded
Professor Anina Rich from the School of Psychological Sciences	Understanding and improving sustained attention under vigilance conditions	$405,924
Associate Professor Kay Bussey from the School of Psychological Sciences	Reducing Cyberbullying: Turning Bystanders into Constructive Defenders	$406,241

Macquarie Business School

Macquarie Chief Investigator(s)	Title	Amount Awarded
Professor Tom Smith, Dr Jianlei Han and Professor Martina Linnenluecke from the Department of Applied Finance	Political connections and the cleantech transition in China and Australia	$391,682

 

Congratulations to our ARC 2022 Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) funding recipients:

Macquarie Chief Investigator(s)	Project	Amount Awarded
Associate Professor Richard McDermid from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Associate Professor Simon Ellis and Professor Mark Casali from Australian Astronomical Optics	MAVIS: A Revolutionary New Instrument for the European Southern Observatory	$1,749,940
Dr Christian Schwab from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Professor David Coutts from the MQ Photonics Research Centre	The MARVEL exoplanet facility	$296,339

 

Congratulations to our ARC 2021 Linkage Projects round 1 funding recipient:

Macquarie Chief Investigator(s)	Project	Amount Awarded
Professor Richard Han, Professor Annabelle McIver and Dr Xi Zheng from the School of Computing	Robust and Scalable Autonomous Landing for Drones	$459,593