Eight QUT researchers have been awarded $3,550,041 in ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards. They are:
Dr Rebecca Byrne, from the QUT Centre for Children’s Health Research, has received $450,556 for her project, Understanding the combined influence of parental and educator feeding practices on self-regulation of children attending early childhood education and care.
The project aims to observe healthy young children over 12 months and describe the impact of care-giver practices on child self-regulation, eating behaviour and dietary intake.
“The study will investigate whether children who experience consistent and responsive feeding practices at home and in early childhood education have higher levels of self-regulation, optimal eating behaviour and diet quality,” Dr Byrne said.
Dr Daicong Da, from QUT from the School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering, is the recipient of $439,012 for his project, Data-driven Design for 3D Printed Materials with Tailored Fracture Response which aims to develop a design system that optimizes local materials and architectures for different structures with desired fracture response.
“This study will open a new and promising research field in mechanics and data-driven science that deals with intractable, inverse problems in broad engineering fields. Economic, high-performance, and customized 3D printed structural materials will be generated to benefit national corporations and enterprises and meet the high-end industry needs,” Dr Da said.
Dr Hope Johnson, from QUT School of Law, received $450,853 for her project Regulating the future of protein which aims to determine how Australia could produce more protein sustainably to meet the country's needs.
This project combines a mix of empirical and legal analysis to understand the range of expectations, opportunities and risks involved in alternative protein, such as those that imitate meat and dairy, and their regulation.
“The outcome will include a new approach to regulating food and new pathways for stakeholder engagement in regulation,” Dr Johnson said.
Dr Ariadna Matamoros Fernandez, from QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre, has been awarded $400,000 for the project Taking humour seriously for online safety which aims to better understand the dynamics of harmful humour online and its effects on women’s wellbeing.
“The anticipated outcome includes workable principles for better content moderation processes that reduce harm without restricting healthy expression, as well as evidence-based contributions to debates on online safety regulation,” Dr Matamoros-Fernández said.
Associate Professor Janice Rieger, from QUT’s School of Architecture and Built Environment, has received $459,468 for her project Co-creating Cultures of Inclusion: Redefining Access to Cultural Heritage.
This project is a response to an identified injustice: access to cultural heritage is still very limited for people with disability.
“The study aims to create an innovative, co-design model of practice through an ecological framework and inclusive multi-sensorial explorations that can be translated and adopted by national, state, university, and regional museums and galleries across Australia and globally,” Professor Rieger said.
Dr Jessa Rogers, from QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre, has been awarded $436,968 for her project Improving the Outcomes of Indigenous Boarding School Graduates to develop best-practice guidelines for the Australian boarding school industry in collaboration with international experts and world-leading Indigenous boarding schools to inform evidence-based Indigenous education policy to address the challenge of Indigenous schooling away from home.
“The project will use a novel Indigenous research method, photoyarn, to amplify the voices of Indigenous participants using digital co-research processes,” Dr Rogers said.
Dr TJ Thomson, from QUT School of Communication, has received $454,386 for the project Addressing the Crisis of Local Visual News in Regional and Remote Australia which will measure the volume and quality of visual content on regional news platforms in eight areas of Australia.
The aim is to enhance relationships between journalists and communities, build stronger regional news ecosystems and more representative local visual news.
“The outcome will boost academic understanding of an understudied area, help regional Australia see itself in the journalism produced in its region and provide commercial benefits to news providers,” Dr Thomson said.
Dr Penny Williams, from QUT School of Business and Law, has been awarded $458,798 for her project Automated People Management: When algorithms manage employees which aims to explain the impact of technologies that automate people management (APM), an invisible set of managerial and industrial practices reshaping work and employment relations.
The project aims to reveal where and how APM is occurring in Australia and its effects on managers and workers.
“This research will inform emerging policy for the responsible adoption of AI and digital technologies in workplaces,” Dr Williams said.
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