Student topics

The molecular process that leads to multiple mRNA transcripts being produced from the same segment of DNA (aka gene) is known as alternative splicing (AS). This is a common form of regulation in higher eukaryotes, enabling the production of novel protein isoforms, which in turn are known to have a big impact on phenotype. Understanding the regulatory factors involved in AS, including epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation, will offer key insights into important biological phenomena (health disease, behaviour, production). …

Study level

PhD

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Biology and Environmental Science

Ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cause of death from cancer in women, with a five-year survival rate of less than 45 per cent. However, there is emerging research that shows the benefits of exercise therapy during recovery following certain cancer treatments, and how exercise can improve and extend the lives of women with ovarian cancer.This project is a collaboration exploring these health and survival outcomes in ovarian and other gynaecological cancers, and in particular how new diagnostic testing …

Study level

Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Biomedical Sciences

Because cancer and many diseases arise from a combination of genetic propensity and the response of cells to external factors mediated through changes to the expression of key genes, it is important to understand epigenetic regulation. The epigenome is crucial to the changes of gene expression and there is now strong evidence that epigenetic alterations are key drivers of cancer progression. However, very few drugs targeting epigenetic modifiers have been successful, in part due to the lack of effective means …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Biomedical Sciences

In solid tumours, hypoxia occurs as a result of limitation on oxygen diffusion in avascular primary tumours or their metastases. Persistent hypoxia, significantly reduces the efficacy of radiation and chemotherapy and lead to poor outcomes. This is mainly due to increase in pro-survival genes that suppress apoptosis, enhance tumour angiogenesis, the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, invasiveness and metastasis. Much of tumour hypoxia research has been centred on examining the transcriptional targets of hypoxia inducible factors (HIFs).HypothesisEpigenetic changes mediate the effect of hypoxia …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Biomedical Sciences

Epigenetic and metabolic pathways in cancer cells are highly interconnected. Epigenetic landscape in cancer cells is modified by oncogene-driven metabolic changes. Metabolites modulate the activities of epigenetic modifying enzymes to regulate the expression of specific genes. Conversely, epigenetic deregulation that occurs in cancer affect the expression of metabolic genes, thereby altering the metabolome. These changes all coordinately enhance cancer cell proliferation, metastasis and therapy resistance.The overall aim of the project is to understand the link between the activity of epigenetic …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Biomedical Sciences

The Australian Census collects data every ten years to reflect who we are as a nation. But the data collected by the Census only tells part of our story.Indigenous people lived in Australia for thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers, accumulating a wealth of knowledge about Australia's land, climate, flora and fauna. Researchers have only begun tapping this knowledge as the basis for modern scientific research.This project will combine machine learning and text-analytics tools to develop a …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Driving growth and employment in the rapidly evolving Indigenous business sector is a key priority of Australia’s national and state governments. An important growth strategy for firms is internationalisation through, for example, exporting, international strategic alliances or even foreign direct investment. Yet we know relatively little about the growth of Indigenous businesses through international business.This project will answer questions including:How do Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses internationalise?Is their approach to international growth like that of other small and medium …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations

Research centre(s)

Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research

Epithelial Cells (ECs) constitute the border between the host immune system and an environment teeming with inhaled antigens. Work from us and others has highlighted that ECs have the ability to express the antigen processing and presentation machinery, Major Histocompatibility Complex class II (MHC II) that is important in initiating immune responses. MHC II expression and function on mucosal epithelial cells, is not well understood.Whilst MHC II is expressed by ECs, and is altered with inflammation, there is a paucity …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Biomedical Sciences

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples suffer disproportionally from diet-related conditions in Australia. Much current research is deficit based, however this body of work aims to be strengths based. Research projects could include, but are not limited to:a descriptive/explorative of food literacy among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people using an assets based framework exploring positive deviants.a food sovereignty project to describe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander foodways. This could be applied to a particular nation group. It could be …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences

Potential projects under the topic of Language and Literacy include:Enhancing critical reading beyond the classroom with migrant and refugee-background youthCritical digital literacy and communication - how digital platforms have affected and will continue to affect literacy and communication practices in educationThe affect and affordances of algorithms on online literacy practicesHow can Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teacher aides or support workers assist teachers with Indigenous Language learning in the classroom?

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

School

School of Teacher Education and Leadership

Tina Cockburn is interested in supervising PhD students in the area of patient safety law — focusing on medical litigation and compensation for medical negligence, communication of information to patients (including consent and post treatment open disclosure), regulation of health care professionals and the regulation of innovative medical treatment and new technologies.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Law

Research centre(s)

Australian Centre for Health Law Research

This project seeks to leverage recent advances in machine vision and natural language processing algorithms to support the design and development of knowledge-driven applications that support communication and collaborations with their users.One particular area where this will be investigated is in workplaces for supported employment, that is employment opportunities for people with intellectual disability. One of the questions to address is how machines could respond to what a user shows them in order to assist with decision making in a …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Computer Science