Four QUT researchers have been named as Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellows, sharing in $87.8 million in funding announced today by Federal Minister for Education Dan Tehan.
Professor Ben White, from QUT’s Australian Centre for Health Law Research Law (ACHLR), will receive $932,498 to investigate enhancing end-of-life care through a new and holistic regulatory framework, with current regulations complex and fragmented and causing distress to patients, families and health professionals.
The project’s aim is to help provide better palliative care, more patient involvement in decisions, reduced patient-doctor conflict and a more efficient health system.
From extensive research, Professor White and ACHLR colleague Professor Lindy Willmott developed and this year launched the free End of Life Law for Clinicians training program to help medical professionals better understand this changing area of law and deal with situations when they encounter them.
Dr Robyn Araujo’s $730,432 ARC Future Fellowship aims to develop a novel mathematical framework for analysing the way living cells process and interpret diverse signals from interacting proteins, and a novel methodology for validating mathematical models against experimental data.
Enhanced understanding of cellular communication has potential application in a range of areas, including overcoming the problem of drug resistance.
Dr Araujo, from QUT’s Science and Engineering Faculty, last year published research in the journal Nature Communications on the ability of a network of proteins within a cell to reset itself after being exposed to a new stimulus.
Dr Laurianne Sitbon, also from the Science and Engineering Faculty, will research how computers can understand and facilitate communication through pictures between people, and from person to machine, to provide communication tools for people with disabilities who might otherwise be excluded and isolated.
Dr Sitbon will receive $908,000 to design, with community input, an audio-visual accessible search tool, pictorial communication device, and visual inclusive social network.
A grant of $907,000 to QUT Adjunct Associate Professor Katia (Kateryna) Bazaka will further her study of plasma – an ionised gas – and how to harness its unique set of properties for a range of applications.
Dr Bazaka, a researcher with QUT’s Institute for Future Environments and also Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, was recently honoured with a Queensland Young Tall Poppy Science Award.
Through modelling and experiments, her ARC Future Fellowship project will examine how to control interaction between plasma and surfaces to minimise surface wear, increasing the efficiency and extending the life of Hall-effect thrusters, a type of engine used to move satellites in space.
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