Pictured: Professor Farah Magrabi, Australian Institute of Health Innovation; Dr Rimante Ronto, Department of Health Sciences; Shamim Joarder, Learning Analytics
Macquarie professor announced as Australia’s representative on the Global Partnership for AI
Professor Farah Magrabi has been nominated by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources as one of Australia’s representatives for a three-year term on the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) secretariat.
The GPAI secretariat sits within the OECD and aims to foster international collaboration on the responsible use and development of AI through two centres of expertise. Professor Magrabi will be working with the International Centre of Expertise in Montréal in Artificial Intelligence.
Australia joined the GPAI in June 2020, as one of the founding members, with the goal of helping to support and guide the responsible development and use of AI; facilitate international collaboration in a multi-stakeholder manner; and be a global point of reference for multidisciplinary research on AI.
Membership of the GPAI allows Australian experts to collaborate with international counterparts to build capacity and understanding in the use AI technologies that address national and global challenges such as drought, bushfires, energy stability and pandemics.
Dr Rimante Ronto recognised for teaching excellence
Senior Lecturer in Health Sciences Dr Rimante Ronto has been recognised with an Early Career Academic Award for Teaching Excellence by the Council of Academic Public Health Institutions Australasia. One of the keys to Dr Ronto’s win is her use of digital tools in teaching, which enhance active learning while supporting diverse learning styles, fostering student engagement and supporting the development of digital literacy and critical thinking.
Macquarie iLearn team recognised for their innovative work
The iLearn Insights team, led by Shamim Joarder, has won the CAUDIT Innovation in Teaching and Learning Award. The award celebrates digital innovations that have had a transformative effect on teaching and learning activities in the higher education and research sector. Congratulations to the team on this award.
ARC Centre of Excellence award
Congratulations to Professor Bronwyn Carlson, Department of Indigenous Studies, who is a Chief Investigator (CI) on a successful ARC Centre of Excellence grant led by Monash University: the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Carlson will be the Deputy Director for a Centre led by Professor Jacqui True from Monash University, together with a team of 29 other CIs and principal investigators (PIs), six other universities and 47 partner organisations. A total of $34,999,990 has been granted over seven years.
As Deputy Director (Indigenous), Carlson will support the Centre in its commitment to Indigenous research ethics, approaches and governance models, and will assist the centre director to define the overall research strategy. As a Node leader at Macquarie, she will also coordinate, manage and support all Macquarie team members including new recruits and PIs.
She will also lead the Indigenous pillar as well as two of its three workstreams: The Violence of Colonialism, and Racial Analysis and Anti-Racism Praxis. The Indigenous pillar will apply Indigenous scholarship to understand violence as shaped by dominant norms/beliefs and institutional structures, including colonial, racialised and gender hierarchies. As pillar lead, Carlson will be responsible for ensuring the three workstreams are meeting their annual research objectives within the timeframes and budgets specified.
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) – 2022 Sustainability Awards finalists
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) announced Macquarie Law School’s Professor Cathy Sherry as a finalist for a 2022 AASHE Sustainability Award in the Campus Sustainability Research category. The award recognises outstanding scholarship in higher education, with Professor Sherry being nominated for her article ‘Learning from the Dirt: Initiating university food gardens as a cross-disciplinary tertiary teaching tool’, which documented the process of creating food growing spaces for teaching and research on a high-density university campus. AASHE is a US organisation with more than 900 university members from around the world. Finalists were selected from more than 430 submissions.
ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme success
Distinguished Professor Ian Paulsen, DECRA Research Fellow Dr Amy Cain, Dr Sasha Tetu and Research Fellow Dr Liping Li from the School of Natural Sciences and Dr Ming Li from the School of Engineering have been awarded funding of $682,792 to develop a multifaceted technology platform that enhances single cell genomics. The project will improve much-needed capabilities in separating single cells from complex bacterial communities, mapping important cells within tissues, and rapid genetic sequencing. The state-of-the-art research equipment will support a wide variety of applications by generating significant advances across multiple sectors, including producing fuels, plastics and industrial biochemicals in microbes, and identifying agricultural pests and diseases.
Nationally, 45 projects were funded, by ARC with a success rate of 33.8 per cent.
National Health and Medical Research Council grant success
Congratulations to Professor Greg Leigh and Professor Teresa Ching from the School of Education and NextSense Institute. They have been awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council Targeted Call for Research grant, led by Associate Professor Valerie Sung from Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. The grant, ‘Building on newborn hearing screening success: towards national standards and data management: ANCHOR (Australian National Child Hearing Outcomes Registry)’, will develop the structure and prerequisites for a database for Deaf or hard-of-hearing children in Victoria and Queensland as a prototype that can be rolled out nationally. They have been awarded funding of $1,436,994 over three years.
2023 Macquarie University Research Fellowship Scheme
Congratulations to the recently announced recipients of the 2023 Macquarie University Research Fellowship (MQRF) Scheme.
Dr Geraldine Fela from the Department of History and Archaeology was recognised for the project ‘Here to Stay! Remembering the 1998 Waterfront Dispute’. This project will interview 40 workers, union officials and key decision makers from Patrick Corporation and the Coalition government involved in the 1998 waterfront dispute. As the climate crisis pushes us towards a new period of turbulence and transition in Australian working lives, it is of crucial importance that we hear from those who experienced a similar period of abrupt transformation 25 years ago.
Dr Catherine Gascoigne from Macquarie Law School was recognised for the project ‘Towards a new legal framework for adjudicating causal questions in international investment law’. This project aims to develop a new model for analysing causation in international investment law disputes. Specifically, it seeks to analyse the current deficiencies in international investment law jurisprudence (particularly the use of historical causal principles that are unsuited to this area of law) and show how they can lead to unjust outcomes.
Dr Christian Gelder from the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature was recognised for the project ‘Mental health modernism: Modern literature and the aesthetics of mental health’. Focusing on the period between 1908 and 1948, this innovative and interdisciplinary project will deliver the first literary history of mental health psychology.
Dr Alistair Sisson from the School of Social Sciences was recognised for the project ‘The politics of housing data: examining the uneven quantification of housing problems’. This project examines the drivers and consequences of the range of efforts to quantify housing problems in Australia. The project will advance critical understanding of quantitative data among policymakers, advocates/activists, researchers and the public, including how such data can challenge or reinforce established policy paradigms and power relations.
2022 Macquarie University Fellowship for Indigenous Researchers scheme
Congratulations to Rose Barrowcliffe, Department of Indigenous Studies, who has been awarded a Macquarie University Fellowship for Indigenous Researchers (MUFIR) award for the project ‘Making the right to know possible: metadata for discovering and accessing records relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’. This research aims to develop methods for integrating Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) protocols and Indigenous knowledges into the metadata of archival records.
Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Shortlist
Dr Peter Edwell, Department of History and Archaeology, was shortlisted in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for his book, ‘The Case that Stopped a Nation: The Archibald Prize Controversy of 1944’. The book recounts the 1944 Archibald Prize scandal involving William Dobell’s winning portrait of fellow artist Joshua Smith, and the court case that ensued. The judges’ comments state “…this book about the portrait that shocked and stunned a nation, and the impact it had on Dobell, makes a substantial contribution to Australian art history.” Read more on The Lighthouse.
Two Macquarie researchers named in the Clarivate™ Highly Cited List 2022
Emeritus Professor Richard Kefford from Macquarie Medical School and Associate Professor Richard McDermid from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences have been named among the most influential scientists in the world by the Clarivate™ Highly Cited Researchers list, for producing multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top one per cent by citations for field and year. This is the second year McDermid appears on the list for his influential research into space science. Internationally-renowned Kefford has appeared on the list for consecutive years for his acclaimed melanoma research.
Our alumni shine as finalists in the Australia China Alumni Awards
Ten Macquarie alumni have been named among finalists in this year’s Australia China Alumni Awards, which recognise the achievements of Australian-educated Chinese alumni.
Among them is Alan Bai (Graduate Diploma of Accounting (1997), Master of Applied Finance (1998)) in the Community Service Award category. Through the Chong Ren Foundation, Bai has helped finance school buildings and IT equipment in underprivileged areas of China, including for communities devastated by the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.
Macquarie law alumna The Hon Dr Helen Sham-Ho OAM JP took out the coveted Alumni of the Year category at last year’s awards, in recognition of her service to the community, social justice and multiculturalism. Sham-Ho was the first Chinese-born Member of Parliament in Australia, serving in the New South Wales Parliament for four terms.
The 2022 winners will be celebrated at upcoming ceremonies in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Shenyang.
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