Student topics

Our research is seeking to answer the question: 'How can we support human interaction with big data?'We want to integrate the outstanding capabilities of humans in terms of visual information exploration with the enormous processing power of computers. These elements have the capacity to form a powerful knowledge discovery environment. This research will use datasets from the Queensland Government and the QUT Ecoacoustic research group over multiple years. Other big datasets, such as Amazon’s product review dataset, could also be …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Computer Science

Developing “light controllable product selectivity switches” is of great interest in cross-coupling reactions based chemical synthesis. On an environmentally friendly plasmonic metal nano-particle surface, light irradiation can change the reactants adsorption on the surface, and thus change the relative ratio of the reactants for reaction. Different wavelengths contribute to tune this selectivity more accurately in a molecular level.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science

Meta-heuristics are powerful search algorithms for solving intractable optimization problems. There are many population based approaches, like genetic algorithms, evolutionary algorithms, particle swarm, etc. but most of these have a static population size.Viruses arise and attack populations periodically. They typically appear when populations become abundant. Viruses infect population members, and often reduce the number of individuals. Viruses create spaces for more individuals and balance competition.The concept of viruses may be mimicked and could be a useful optimization paradigm.

Study level

Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering

Network flow is impeded by the arcs present in the network and their associated length/weighting. Arcs can be added or removed to debottleneck the network. But which ones? At what cost?

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Bayesian inference is a popular statistical framework for estimating the parameters of statistical models based on data. However, Bayesian methods are well known to be computationally intensive. This fact inhibits the scalability of Bayesian analysis for real-world applications involving complex stochastic models. Such models are common in the fields of biology and ecology.Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods are a promising class of techniques for dealing with the scalability challenge. These approaches use hierarchies of approximations to optimise the trade-off between …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Expansive soil/active soil has wide applications in geotechnical engineering and other engineering disciplines due to its desirable special properties - for example, low permeability and swelling pressure under saturated condition. But these materials are highly susceptible to experiencing huge volume change and even damage due to moisture content reduction. However, the underlying mechanism of this phenomenon is still not clear for geotechnical engineers. Therefore, there is no optimum solution available to solve the problem.In this project, a special modelling approach …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science

Soot formation occurs via a complex network of chemical reactions leading from simple gases to macromolecular aggregates. Despite being central to our understanding of extreme environments ranging from engines, to bushfires and interstellar clouds, the critical steps and intermediates in these reactions are poorly described.This project will deploy advanced mass spectrometry and laser-based methods to generate, isolate and interrogate gas phase free radical intermediates and elucidate their role in molecular weight growth processes.Through these chemical insights, advanced computational models will …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science

Bromine and iodine are suspected to be responsible for most of the halogen-induced ozone loss in the stratosphere but are not currently included in atmospheric models due to a paucity of knowledge of the gas-phase chemistry and photochemistry of their anions and radicals.This project will develop and deploy advanced mass spectrometry and laser spectroscopy techniques to enable precision measurements of the reactions and photo- reactions of gas-phase iodide and bromide anions and their oxides.These state-of-the-art measurements of reaction kinetics and …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science

High fidelity mathematical models of biological phenomena are often complex and can require long computational runtimes which can make computational inference for parameter estimation intractable.  In this project we will overcome this challenge by working with computationally simple low fidelity models and build a simple statistical model of the discrepancy between the high and low fidelity models.  This approach provides the best of both worlds: we obtain high accuracy predictions using a computationally cheap model surrogate.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Branching processes are stochastic mathematical models used to study a range of biological processes, including tissue growth and disease transmission.This project will implement a simple stochastic branching process to generate simulations of biological growth, and then consider differential equation-based description of the stochastic model.Using computation we will compare the two models, and use phase plane and perturbation analysis to analyze the resulting traveling wave solutions.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

As the world transitions from fossil fuels to biomass based fuels there is a corresponding drive to create new technologies to enable this situation to come to fruition.Biofuels represent one option in terms of mitigating the impacts of global warming.The conversion of biomass to biofuels typically requires a catalyst. Many different materials have been investigated, with zeolites showing considerable promise.However, zeolite catalysts can be expensive and thus there is a challenge to create new catalysts which are low cost.This project …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering

The concept of creating molecular electronic devices has resulted in the development and rapid advance of the field of supramolecular chemistry.In this project we are particularly interested in how we can use simple building blocks to self-assemble into complex, functional structures both in solution and at the solution:surface interface.These types of structures have shown great promise in applications such as catalysis, sensing, drug delivery and even in the development of molecular machines.AimsThis project aims to:design, synthesise and characterise complex metallo-supramolecular …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science