Great news in CQUni Research - ARC results announced

CQUniversity researchers have gained more than $1.3 million worth of grants in the latest round of major announcements from the Australian Research Council.

The Discovery Project (DP) and Discovery Early Researcher Award (DECRA) grants will help computers better learn to classify what they see at a glance, put the teamwork into rail safety, boost chicken health on poultry farms, and help night workers to be more strategic about their sleep patterns.

The University is proud of the success of these researchers, based variously at the Adelaide, Brisbane and Rockhampton campuses, in what is a very competitive and prestigious ARC grant process. 

The successful CQUniversity projects are:

CQUniversity researchers Dr Charli Sargent, Associate Professor Gregory Roach and Professor Drew Dawson have been granted $310,000 over four years to study how sleep can be used strategically to cope with night work.

Dr Charli Sargent, Professor Drew Dawson and Assoc Prof Greg Roach

Providing beneficial strains of friendly gut bacteria at the time of hatching could improve poultry health and performance. That's according to CQUniversity's Dr Dana Stanley who has gained $360,000 over the next three years in a competitive bid to the Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) process of the Australian Research Council.

CQUniversity researcher Dr Anjum Naweed will seek to develop a train driving risk model that includes human factors such as teamwork as well as technical considerations. He will do so thanks to a successful competitive bid for $373,536 over three years, from the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) program of the Australian Research Council.

Helping computers learn better to classify what they see at a glance has many real-world applications such as document analysis, robotics and medical diagnosis. That's the goal of CQUniversity researcher Professor Brijesh Verma who has gained $275,000 over the next three years, thanks to a competitive bid to the Discovery Project program of the Australian Research Council.

Meanwhile in related news,  CQUniversity is involved in a major Australian Research Council grant team enabling power networks to cope with more roof-top solar generation. Professor Peter Wolfs, Adjunct Laureate Professor Qing-Long Han and Adjunct Associate Professor Fuwen Yang are all involved in the $330,000 project to be hosted by Griffith University, thanks to an ARC Discovery Project grant.

These are highly competitive, national grants, and they do not come easily, so well done to all those who were not just successful in gaining grants but so to those who developed submissions - a great deal of hard work goes into this so everyone should be congratulated. 

Now here are some stats on how CQUniversity stacked up against other institutions: 

Discovery Projects

- Two successful research proposals funded – more than any other RUN university (with the exception of UNE, who also got two).

- $587,600 in overall funding – the second highest among the RUN Universities.

- A 25% success rate (the highest of any Queensland University, and the fourth best result in the sector).

Early Career Research Award

- Two successful research proposals funded – more than any other RUN university.

- $733,536 in overall funding – almost double the amount of the next closest RUN university.

- A 33.3 percent success rate (once again the highest in Queensland AND the highest in the sector! The next closest university was the University of Adelaide at 25.5%).

Overall CQUni was the highest achieving RUN group university in this round and one of the best performers in Queensland. In fact pound-for-pound I think we performed better than the majority of universities out there. 

CQUniversity is emerging as a great Australian university because of the terrific outcomes being delivered right across the University. Today we have seen resounding evidence of this in our research results. 

Congratulations again to everyone involved, I am incredibly proud!

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