QUT has accounted for half of the six Fulbright scholarships awarded to Queenslanders this year.
A total of 25 Australian scholars were named at the Fulbright's 60th anniversary presentation dinner in Melbourne on March 18.
•Sarah Holland-Batt, a poet, critic and QUT lecturer in creative writing and literary studies, will use her two-year scholarship to study for a Master of Fine Arts in poetry at New York University.
•QUT PhD mathematics student Craig Costello will spend 12 months at the University of California undertaking research into maths-based security techniques for computers and other telecommunication devices.
•Dr Hilary Hughes, a lecturer with QUT's Faculty of Education, will spend four months as a scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado, Denver, developing an inclusive approach to online learning for students from varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
The Fulbright program is the largest educational scholarship of its kind, created by US Senator J William Fulbright and the US Government in 1946, and aimed at promoting mutual understanding through educational exchange between the US and 155 countries.
Poet Sarah Holland-Batt
Sarah Holland-Batt is an award-winning poet, critic and QUT lecturer in creative writing and literary studies.
Her debut collection, Aria, was awarded the Australian Capital Territory Judith Wright Prize, the FAW Anne Elder Award, the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the Dorothy Hewett Fellowship. The collection was also shortlisted in both the New South Wales and Queensland Premiers' Literary Awards.
During her Fulbright, Ms Holland-Batt will write a book-length sequence of lyric poems, Quartet, reworking Dante's account of Paolo and Francesca in the Inferno into a series of interwoven dramatic monologues.
She is one of two winners of the Postgraduate Alumni (WG Walker) Alumni Scholarship, which is granted to the highest ranked Australian postgraduate applicant and funded through donations by Fulbright Alumni.
Ms Holland-Batt, who grew up at Southport, on the Gold Coast, is currently in Rome on an Australia Council literature residency.
She said she discovered poetry at the age of 15 when she read TS Eliot's The Waste Land.
"Although at that stage I didn't understand much of the poem's meaning, I fell in love with it and have read and written poetry ever since," she said.
Mathematician Craig Costello
QUT PhD student Craig Costello will spend 12 months at the University of California researching the development of mathematical algorithms as security techniques for computers, banking systems, mobile phones and other telecommunication devices.
Mr Costello, the winner of the 2010 Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship in Technology and Communications sponsored by Telstra, graduated from QUT in 2007 with a Bachelor of Applied Science in mathematics with first class honours.
Mr Costello, of the Gold Coast, will work at the University of California on using mathematical algorithms, or functions, called "pairings" to improve digital security through encryption.
Mr Costello said encryption was used, for example, when someone connected to an internet bank account.
"Before any of your information such as your bank account details and passwords is sent to the bank over the internet, which is an openly visible insecure channel, the information needs to be scrambled and dispersed in such a way that a hacker who sees the information can't decipher it," he explained.
"We encrypt the information and then the bank uses its key to decrypt it."
Mr Costello said "pairings" had previously been considered too slow for practical use in cryptography on even super computers.
"Basically my research is trying to speed up the computation of the complex mathematical functions so that they are practically computable and can be used in the real world," he said.
Mr Costello said his US research would benefit banks, national security agencies, telecommunication companies or "anyone who needs to keep their digital communications secure".
In his spare time, he is involved in a personal project on the Gold Coast to provide gifted maths students with the same opportunities he has had - particularly those not exposed to higher order extra-curricular mathematics.
Education lecturer Hilary Hughes
Dr Hilary Hughes, a lecturer in teacher-librarianship with QUT's Faculty of Education, will spend four months as a scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado, Denver, to further the academic success of international and disadvantaged students.
Dr Hughes, of Upper Kedron on Brisbane's northside, said her Fulbright scholarship had sprung from her PhD research into how international students at QUT and another Queensland university use online information to learn.
She had concluded that rather than the university catering for different cultural groups separately, an inclusive approach would benefit all students, domestic and international.
She said international students often felt disoriented on arriving at a new university but many domestic students felt exactly the same way.
"We need to recognise all their different needs and provide enough varied responses so that people's needs will be met, and in a way that people won't be embarrassed to go and ask for help," Dr Hughes said.
She said her research at QUT, which boasts 210 nationalities, had found, for example, that some overseas students were reluctant to borrow library books because they thought the sign "loans" meant they had to go into debt to do so.
She said Denver also had a lot of international students, as well as a large Latino population and many disadvantaged students.
"In Denver I will be working with academics and librarians to develop innovative curriculum, teaching methods and learning resources," Dr Hughes said.
Dr Hughes, who has previous experience as an accredited Spanish-English translator, will also teach in the university's ethnic studies program.
For longer Fulbright scholar profiles go to: www.fulbright.com.au
Media contact: QUT media officer Elizabeth Allen on 07 3138 4494 or e1.allen@qut.edu.au
** High res photos of the three QUT Fulbright scholars are available
