QUT offers a diverse range of student topics for Honours, Masters and PhD study. Search to find a topic that interests you or propose your own research topic to a prospective QUT supervisor. You may also ask a prospective supervisor to help you identify or refine a research topic.
Found 210 matching student topics
Displaying 73–84 of 210 results
Mean exit time calculations in complicated geometries
Calculating the duration of time required for a diffusive process to end is a classical problem in mathematics, engineering, biology and economics. The concept of mean exit time is widely used to study transport phenomena in biology, such as calculating the duration of time required for a protein created in a cell nucleus to reach the cell membrane. While many exact calculations of mean exit time are known for simple geometries and homogeneous media, exact solutions are rare for complicated …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
Hearing colour and seeing sound – switchable optoacoustic imaging agents
Optoacoustic imaging is a relatively new medical imaging technique. It utilises laser light to excite an imaging agent, which in turn converts this light energy into heat. This heat is dissipated as a sound wave, which can be detected with an ultrasound receiver. This technique aims to overcome the minimal penetration depth of fluorescence imaging, and the lack of molecular specificity of ultrasound.In this project we are aiming to develop and synthesize intelligent imaging agents for optoacoustics, which are able …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
High performance energy storage materials and devices
Energy storage devices, such as supercapacitors, play an increasingly important role in our daily life as a reliable energy supplier. Supercapacitors are a type of energy storage system that possess merits of rapid energy storage and release (high power density) with a cycling lifetime of ten thousand or more. Nevertheless the energy density of conventional electrochemical capacitor is quite low.This project aims to enhance the energy density of supercapacitors without compromising their power density through innovative designing and synthesising electrode …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Centre for Clean Energy Technologies and Practices
Advanced materials for perovskite solar cells
Solar cells using metal halides perovskite materials to absorb light is one of the most important scientific discoveries. These cells have the potential to provide cost-effective solar electricity in the future. In the last decades, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) demonstrated unprecedented progress towards this goal. This technology holds the world record for energy conversion efficiency and is comparable to commercial crystalline silicon, but at a much lower cost.Currently their instability and use of hazardous solvents and toxic lead are key …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Low cost, long life metal-ion capacitors and supercapacitors for renewable energy storage
Australia boasts rich wind and solar energy resources. To avoid fluctuations placing severe burden on the power grids, a reliable and efficient battery storage is required.The present technology based on lithium-ion batteries suffers from high manufacturing cost, poor safety and short life-span.A new kind of storage devices, metal-ion capacitors (MICs), are expected to overcome the storage and the charging speed of the traditional batteries in the near future, opening new avenues for renewable energy resources. The basic structure of MICs …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Separating nonlinear optical effects in optical limiters
Optical limiting uses a medium’s nonlinear response to allow light at low intensities to be transmitted, but restricts transmission at high intensities so as to safeguard sensitive detectors including the eye. A popular nonlinear process used in optical limiters is two photon absorption where two high intensity light photons are simultaneously absorbed thereby reducing the light transmission through the medium. Unfortunately, in gold nanoparticle optical limiters a second nonlinear process can arise – saturated absorption which leads to an increase …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Developing predictive models, methods and analytics for complex sports data
A 3-year strategic partnership on sports data science between the Centre for Data Science (CDS), the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and the Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS) was launched in the past few months. With a drive towards data informed decision making across the high performance sports network nationally, a number of collaborative, interdisciplinary research and scholarship opportunities ranging from VRES, to honours, masters and PhD have developed.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Virtual leaves: from data to surfaces and the steps in-between
Like all industries, agriculture is benefiting from the data and computing revolution. Using hand-held scanners, CT scanners, or other technologies, we can acquire data sets that represent real leaves of agricultural crops, e.g. wheat. Using this data, and performing many intermediate steps, we can build virtual leaf surfaces that can be used in computer models to perform simulations of droplet impactions, spreading, evaporation, and other phenomena of interest to the industry.This project concerns the 'many intermediate steps', for which there …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Mathematical modelling of ecosystem feedbacks and value-of-information theory
Ecosystems respond to gradual change in unexpected ways. Feedback processes between different parts of an environment can perpetuate ecosystem collapse, leading to potentially irreversible biodiversity loss. However, it is unclear if greater knowledge of feedbacks will ultimately change environmental decisions.The project aims to identify when feedbacks matter for environmental decisions, by generating new methods that predict the economic benefit of knowing more about feedbacks. Combining ecological modelling and value-of-information theory, the outcomes of these novel methods will provide significant and …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Centre for the Environment
Addressing security challenges for the industrial internet of things
With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0, there is a trend for applying these services and applications to a large-scale industrial area. The IoT paradigm has changed the way of interactions with the things that surround us. In essence, the IoT promises ubiquitous connection to the Internet, turning common objects into connected devices. It is predicted that there will be 50 billion connected devices at the end of the year 2022.Over the last few years, …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
Optimal ecosystem management in rapidly changing systems
Delays in acting in collapsing ecosystems can be catastrophic. With every passing year, the chances that the ecosystem has progressed past some point of no return increases. Yet the research and development needed to develop a new technology can take a long time. Balance between these two dynamic processes is needed to determine the optimal length and effort for developing new technologies. This project will develop a method for finding the optimal schedule for developing technological readiness, social acceptability, a …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Centre for the Environment
Hierarchical visualisation of large social networks
Networks have been extensively used to capture social interactions, by representing individuals as nodes and their relationships as edges.Such networks have been used to model the spread of epidemics. A few nodes are 'infected', and over time they gradually infect their neighbours on the network, who in turn infect their neighbours, etc. This type of model can then be used to simulate different intervention strategies aimed at containing outbreaks.However, an important limitation is the difficulty to visualise these networks when …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
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