Pair bonding: is it all in the brain? This project aims to understand the interaction between classic pair bonding neural circuits, parasites, and the immune system in sleepy lizards. Social bonds are a cornerstone of human societies, especially true of the pair bond and this project expects to generate knowledge to help understand why healthy adult pair bonds are the single best predictor of longevity in humans. The expected outcomes of this project are to reveal the mechanistic basis of pair b ....Pair bonding: is it all in the brain? This project aims to understand the interaction between classic pair bonding neural circuits, parasites, and the immune system in sleepy lizards. Social bonds are a cornerstone of human societies, especially true of the pair bond and this project expects to generate knowledge to help understand why healthy adult pair bonds are the single best predictor of longevity in humans. The expected outcomes of this project are to reveal the mechanistic basis of pair bonding by identifying the brain regions, cell types and neurochemicals that promote pair bonding behaviour — for the first time in a wild animal. This project should provide significant benefits by increasing our knowledge of how pair bonds promote wellness.Read moreRead less
Coevolution of sundew bugs and sundews. This project aims to conduct a study of insect-plant interactions to determine if insects and plants coevolve or if they diversify by other evolutionary processes. Insect-plant coevolution is a hotly contested field in evolutionary biology. In Australia, a remarkable interaction exists between carnivorous plants and a group of bugs that steal the plant’s prey. This system offers a great opportunity to test competing coevolutionary theories through a combin ....Coevolution of sundew bugs and sundews. This project aims to conduct a study of insect-plant interactions to determine if insects and plants coevolve or if they diversify by other evolutionary processes. Insect-plant coevolution is a hotly contested field in evolutionary biology. In Australia, a remarkable interaction exists between carnivorous plants and a group of bugs that steal the plant’s prey. This system offers a great opportunity to test competing coevolutionary theories through a combination of historical and ecological approaches. The project expects to showcase the evolution and uniqueness of Australia’s native biota.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220100265
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$417,000.00
Summary
A closed-loop human–agent learning framework to enhance decision making. This project aims to design a foundational human–agent learning framework to augment the decision making process, using reinforcement and closed-loop mechanisms to enable symbiosis between a human and an artificial-intelligence agent. It envisages significant new technologies to promote controllability and efficient and safe exploration of an environment for decision actions – drastically boosting learning effectiveness and ....A closed-loop human–agent learning framework to enhance decision making. This project aims to design a foundational human–agent learning framework to augment the decision making process, using reinforcement and closed-loop mechanisms to enable symbiosis between a human and an artificial-intelligence agent. It envisages significant new technologies to promote controllability and efficient and safe exploration of an environment for decision actions – drastically boosting learning effectiveness and interpretability in decision making. Expected outcomes will benefit national cybersecurity by improving our understanding of vulnerabilities and threats involving decision actions, and by ensuring that human feedback and evaluations can help prevent catastrophic events in explorations of dynamic and complex environments.Read moreRead less
Can parasites cause host population divergence? . Parasites have been proposed to be drivers of population divergence, and ultimately speciation, yet the dynamics of this process are not well understood. This project will utilise new genomic techniques, novel hybrid zone analyses, and data on mate choice, to investigate the hypothesis that parasites drive population divergence through an interaction with immune response genes in the sleepy lizard Tiliqua rugosa. This species provides an unpreced ....Can parasites cause host population divergence? . Parasites have been proposed to be drivers of population divergence, and ultimately speciation, yet the dynamics of this process are not well understood. This project will utilise new genomic techniques, novel hybrid zone analyses, and data on mate choice, to investigate the hypothesis that parasites drive population divergence through an interaction with immune response genes in the sleepy lizard Tiliqua rugosa. This species provides an unprecedented system, backed by 37 years of long term host-parasite and behavioural data, and recent genetic analyses. This project intends to produce significant data to allow an examination of the early stages of host-parasite evolution in action, providing novel insights into the speciation process. Read moreRead less
Learning to Reason in Reinforcement Learning. Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) uses deep neural networks to represent and learn optimal decision-making policies for intelligent agents in complex environments. However, most RL approaches require millions of episodes to converge to good policies, making it difficult for RL to be applied in real-world scenarios taking significant resources. This project aims to equip RL with capabilities such as counterfactual reasoning and outcome anticipation to ....Learning to Reason in Reinforcement Learning. Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) uses deep neural networks to represent and learn optimal decision-making policies for intelligent agents in complex environments. However, most RL approaches require millions of episodes to converge to good policies, making it difficult for RL to be applied in real-world scenarios taking significant resources. This project aims to equip RL with capabilities such as counterfactual reasoning and outcome anticipation to significantly reduce the number of interactions required, improve generalisation, and provide the agent with the capability to consider the cause-effects. These improvements would narrow the gap between AI and human capabilities and broaden the adoption of RL in real-world applications.Read moreRead less
ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. Our vision is for Australian children to be healthy, educated and connected. This Centre will integrate child health, education, and digital and social connectedness, innovating across disciplines to meet Australia’s ongoing challenges of supporting young children growing up in a rapidly changing digital age. The Centre’s world-leading team investigates children’s digital practices through three interconnected research programs supported by a longi ....ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. Our vision is for Australian children to be healthy, educated and connected. This Centre will integrate child health, education, and digital and social connectedness, innovating across disciplines to meet Australia’s ongoing challenges of supporting young children growing up in a rapidly changing digital age. The Centre’s world-leading team investigates children’s digital practices through three interconnected research programs supported by a longitudinal family cohort study and children’s technology laboratories. The Centre will address tensions in a contested field to inform government and non-government policy, technology innovation, and develop programs and guidelines for children, families, educators and technology developers. Read moreRead less
Parametric VR: An Interactive Virtual Reality System for Parametric Design. This project aims to create a new and intuitive set of user interactions for Virtual Reality (VR) to support parametric designers in architecture and design. Parametric tools are an emerging design technology dominating contemporary practices, yet their interfaces are on traditional desktop computers while VR is only employed to visualise the geometric models produced by the end design. This project will generate Paramet ....Parametric VR: An Interactive Virtual Reality System for Parametric Design. This project aims to create a new and intuitive set of user interactions for Virtual Reality (VR) to support parametric designers in architecture and design. Parametric tools are an emerging design technology dominating contemporary practices, yet their interfaces are on traditional desktop computers while VR is only employed to visualise the geometric models produced by the end design. This project will generate Parametric VR, a system of VR tools to support parametric design. Key outcomes include software tools and demonstrators to support parametric algorithms and processes in VR. This will have significant benefits for design industries, allowing designers to directly edit parametric design entirely in VR across the project lifecycle.Read moreRead less
Remote presence for guidance on physical tasks. This project aims to transform remote collaboration on physical tasks. Current systems for remote collaboration on physical tasks are not as effective as working face-to-face. This could be overcome by sharing non-verbal cues, designing systems to account for cultural issues, and using a new model of communication. This project will develop theories and interaction methods for remote guidance based on natural non-verbal communication cues and cultu ....Remote presence for guidance on physical tasks. This project aims to transform remote collaboration on physical tasks. Current systems for remote collaboration on physical tasks are not as effective as working face-to-face. This could be overcome by sharing non-verbal cues, designing systems to account for cultural issues, and using a new model of communication. This project will develop theories and interaction methods for remote guidance based on natural non-verbal communication cues and cultural issues. This project is expected to benefit industries with widely distributed multi-cultural workforces such as mining, defence and medicine.Read moreRead less
Industrial Transformation Training Centres - Grant ID: IC210100019
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$4,583,816.00
Summary
ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing. The ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing aims to address issues identified by older adults as essential for quality of life. With our industry partners, we aim to train the next generation of researchers to understand, detect and improve psychosocial factors that support mental activity, physical health and social connectedness, and embrace advances in artificial intelligence, digital-enriched environments and adaptive workplaces to deliver effective dig ....ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing. The ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing aims to address issues identified by older adults as essential for quality of life. With our industry partners, we aim to train the next generation of researchers to understand, detect and improve psychosocial factors that support mental activity, physical health and social connectedness, and embrace advances in artificial intelligence, digital-enriched environments and adaptive workplaces to deliver effective digital solutions. By developing new capacity and capability to drive the digital transformation of industries supporting our ageing population, our Centre seeks to deliver economic and social benefits that enable Australians to live enriched, healthy and independent lives as they age.Read moreRead less
Immersive analytics: interactive data analysis using surfaces and spaces. This project aims to explore the potential for new immersive display and interaction technologies to greatly enhance the field of visual data analytics. Humans struggle to understand the masses of complex data they now accumulate. Visual data analytics offers a solution. The project expects to provide practical and theoretical frameworks for immersive data analysis and valuable intellectual property on the first practical ....Immersive analytics: interactive data analysis using surfaces and spaces. This project aims to explore the potential for new immersive display and interaction technologies to greatly enhance the field of visual data analytics. Humans struggle to understand the masses of complex data they now accumulate. Visual data analytics offers a solution. The project expects to provide practical and theoretical frameworks for immersive data analysis and valuable intellectual property on the first practical tools for immersive data analytics. This will provide significant benefits, such as allowing those across government and industry to make more informed decisions from data.Read moreRead less