Microbial junk food: developing synthetic platforms for plastic degradation. This project aims to establish the genetic basis of polyethelene biodegradation (PED) by microbes from the gut microbiome of plastic-eating caterpillars. It will transform the active microbial PED genes into carefully designed synthetic microbes for efficient, safe and large-scale PED. The project will combine innovative functional microbial genetic tools and synthetic biology techniques with solid biochemistry and bioi ....Microbial junk food: developing synthetic platforms for plastic degradation. This project aims to establish the genetic basis of polyethelene biodegradation (PED) by microbes from the gut microbiome of plastic-eating caterpillars. It will transform the active microbial PED genes into carefully designed synthetic microbes for efficient, safe and large-scale PED. The project will combine innovative functional microbial genetic tools and synthetic biology techniques with solid biochemistry and bioinformatics to produce translatable synthetic platforms containing key genes optimised for efficient PE waste removal. The outcomes will have the potential to transform the relative ineffective and expensive current methods for PE disposal into flexible, cost-effective and sustainable solutions applicable to multiple sectors.Read moreRead less
Preventing mining disasters: reducing the risk of tailings dam failure. This project aims to improve safety of tailings storage facilities (TSFs). Mineral processing produces waste called tailings, being mixtures of water and soil-sized particles. Tailings are stored on sites contained by embankments made from soil or a coarse component of tailings. Sections of the TSFs are partially saturated, have high concentrations of fine particles and physically change with age. Their resistance to earthqu ....Preventing mining disasters: reducing the risk of tailings dam failure. This project aims to improve safety of tailings storage facilities (TSFs). Mineral processing produces waste called tailings, being mixtures of water and soil-sized particles. Tailings are stored on sites contained by embankments made from soil or a coarse component of tailings. Sections of the TSFs are partially saturated, have high concentrations of fine particles and physically change with age. Their resistance to earthquake loading and liquefaction, and strength post-earthquake, arising from these properties are poorly understood and can not be quantified reliably so will be addressed here. Anticipated outcomes will be updated industry guidelines for the design and management of TSFs. Mines will benefit and failures will be prevented.Read moreRead less
Atomically thin membranes to transform chemical separations. Energy-efficient chemical separation is at the heart of modern resource and manufacturing industries, central to a prosperous and sustainable Australia. This project aims to develop next generation membrane technologies to transform chemical separations by employing recent breakthrough in materials discovery and nanofluidics. Expected outcomes include new fundamental understandings on sub-continuum transport physics and new atomically ....Atomically thin membranes to transform chemical separations. Energy-efficient chemical separation is at the heart of modern resource and manufacturing industries, central to a prosperous and sustainable Australia. This project aims to develop next generation membrane technologies to transform chemical separations by employing recent breakthrough in materials discovery and nanofluidics. Expected outcomes include new fundamental understandings on sub-continuum transport physics and new atomically thin membranes that enable energy-efficient separations for processing challenging streams beyond water purification. This project aims to position Australia at the forefront of sustainable separation technology and make the local resource and manufacturing industries more sustainable and globally competitive.Read moreRead less
Het-Crete: High-Grade Chemical-Treated Heterogeneous Recycled Concrete. Of over 20 million tons of mixed construction and demolition waste generated annually, only 5% is recycled and less than 1% is adopted for low-grade construction activities. This innovative research aims to solve Australia’s mixed construction and demolition waste disposal problem and lower its greenhouse-gas emissions at the same time. The research develops Het-Gregate with novel chemical admixtures and greenhouse-gas emiss ....Het-Crete: High-Grade Chemical-Treated Heterogeneous Recycled Concrete. Of over 20 million tons of mixed construction and demolition waste generated annually, only 5% is recycled and less than 1% is adopted for low-grade construction activities. This innovative research aims to solve Australia’s mixed construction and demolition waste disposal problem and lower its greenhouse-gas emissions at the same time. The research develops Het-Gregate with novel chemical admixtures and greenhouse-gas emissions to create Het-Crete, with new mixing techniques for its an optimal performance high-grade concrete. Life-cycle analyses will be conducted to generate Het-Crete specifications for the industry. This will significantly elevate Australia’s world standing in recycled concrete research.Read moreRead less
Next generation real-time trajectory mining for travel and transportation decision support. Mining human and vehicle trajectories in real time will enable a suite of next-generation applications such as traffic overload prediction, real-time event detection and route recommendation. This project will develop novel techniques for immediate mining of massive volumes of trajectory data as it is being continuously generated.
Harnessing microbial respiration for pollutant degradation and natural gas production. This project seeks to exploit compounds produced naturally by microorganisms to develop a marketable green technology for environmental restoration and clean energy generation in Australia and abroad. Metropolitan and regional communities will benefit from improved environmental and human health and the economy will benefit from global application.
Accelerating clean automotive innovation: fundamental insights into alternative fuel combustion. To achieve the maximum efficiency from alternatively fuelled engines, better understanding and predictive models are needed for the major limiting factor in spark-ignition engine efficiency: knock. The project will address this gap, thereby accelerating development of better engines and strengthening national capacity in clean engine technology.
Taming Large-Volume Dynamic Graphs in the Cloud. This project aims to develop efficient and scalable algorithms to process large-volume dynamic graphs in the cloud. The project expects to address key challenges and lay theoretical foundations in large-volume dynamic graph processing, which plays an important role in developing general-purpose, real-time structural search engines. Expected outcomes of this project include theoretical foundations and scalable algorithms to process big graphs that ....Taming Large-Volume Dynamic Graphs in the Cloud. This project aims to develop efficient and scalable algorithms to process large-volume dynamic graphs in the cloud. The project expects to address key challenges and lay theoretical foundations in large-volume dynamic graph processing, which plays an important role in developing general-purpose, real-time structural search engines. Expected outcomes of this project include theoretical foundations and scalable algorithms to process big graphs that evolve rapidly over time. These enable users to monitor and analyse structural information in large dynamic networks in real time. The project expects to open up a new research direction for graph processing to enrich frontier technologies and benefit many key applications in Australia.Read moreRead less
Efficient and Scalable Processing of Dynamic Heterogeneous Graphs . This project aims to develop efficient and scalable algorithms to process large-scale dynamic heterogeneous graphs where graph nodes and edges are of multiple types and the graph structure updates dynamically. Key challenges are expected to be addressed including complex structure, high speed, and large volume of dynamic heterogeneous graphs. The anticipated outcomes include novel computing paradigms, algorithms, indexing, incre ....Efficient and Scalable Processing of Dynamic Heterogeneous Graphs . This project aims to develop efficient and scalable algorithms to process large-scale dynamic heterogeneous graphs where graph nodes and edges are of multiple types and the graph structure updates dynamically. Key challenges are expected to be addressed including complex structure, high speed, and large volume of dynamic heterogeneous graphs. The anticipated outcomes include novel computing paradigms, algorithms, indexing, incremental computation, distributed algorithms as well as a system prototype to demonstrate the practical value. Success of this project will open up a new research direction to enrich frontier technologies and benefit many key applications in Australia including cybersecurity, e-commerce, health and social networks.Read moreRead less
Efficient Management of Things for the Future World Wide Web. The future World Wide Web will connect billions of physical objects, which will offer exciting capabilities to change the world and improve the quality of human lives, just as what the Web has done in the past 20 years. Effectively and efficiently managing things is one inevitable challenge in this new era and is much more complicated than managing traditional Web documents. This project aims to focus on this key problem and develop n ....Efficient Management of Things for the Future World Wide Web. The future World Wide Web will connect billions of physical objects, which will offer exciting capabilities to change the world and improve the quality of human lives, just as what the Web has done in the past 20 years. Effectively and efficiently managing things is one inevitable challenge in this new era and is much more complicated than managing traditional Web documents. This project aims to focus on this key problem and develop novel techniques for linking resource-constrained things to the Web, searching them using a new search engine, as well as discovering latent relationships among things for advanced management tasks such as things recommendation and composition.Read moreRead less