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 34 matching student topics
Displaying 13–24 of 34 results
Computational drug repurposing for neuropsychiatric disease
While hundreds of robust genetic associations have been found for neuropsychiatric disease (such as schizophrenia, major depression, and anxiety) understanding the exact molecular mechanisms leading to disease onset and progression remains challenging. Inherited (i.e. genetic) risk factors for many neuropsychiatric diseases converge on genes that are co-ordinately expressed (co-expressed) in a disease-relevant tissue (e.g. brain). The study of how genetic risk factors affect co-expressed genes (i.e. gene co-expression analysis) has the potential to uncover new biological processes underlying disease onset. …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Determining the theapeutic efficiency of epigenetic drugs in ovarian cancer
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
Weakly nonlinear water waves in the complex plane
Weakly nonlinear waves are described by dispersive pdes, such as the famous Korteweg–De Vries (KdV) equation. These models have applications to a variety of phenomena in physics, including the propagation of water waves, but they are also interesting from a mathematical perspective because they can have special properties.While the KdV equation and its variants are well-studied in the literature, a new approach is to attempt to learn about wave propagation by investigating solution behaviour in complex plane. For example, there …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
Information retrieval and coding methods for large scale bioinformatics
Advances in sequencing technologies over the past two decades have led to an explosion in the availability of genomic sequence data and an increasingly urgent need for scalable clustering and search facilities. One approach is to encode sequences as binary vectors in a high-dimensional space, simplifying the comparison and allowing it to be computed very rapidly using bit-level operations.Coupled with these ideas is the need to provide clustering methods and efficient indexing and lookup in response to search queries. One …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Unified def-site and use-site security policies for component-based software systems
Securing the information manipulated by computer systems, such as privacy and integrity in social software, is a challenge. Traditional methods to impose limits on the information disclosure, such as access control lists, firewalls, and cryptography, provide no guarantees about information propagation. For instance, cryptography provides no guarantees about the confidentiality of the data are given once it is decrypted.Information flow control (IFC) is the problem of ensuring secure information flow according to specified policies within computer systems. Modern applications are …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
Security analysis of open-source software
Several open-source projects drive modern-day IT applications. However, some open-source projects get compromised by malicious attackers, who include malware to the code to compromise the security of the application users.This project will investigate approaches for securing the open-source software.
- Study level
- Honours, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
Big data analysis to aid ecological research
We're looking for multiple students to help us answer the question: 'How can we utilise information technology to aid ecological research?'Sensor networks bring ecologists and pattern recognition researchers together to make some applications possible. These applications include assessing risks from potential bird collisions, unobtrusive observations (where the presence of humans changes some animal behaviours) and studying spatial and temporal variation in biological processes.With a significant amount of data being collected from these applications, processing and mining this data is challenging. …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
Enabling effective novice-expert interactions: co-designing immersive systems for complex remote data analysis
This student research topic focuses on exploring and developing immersive systems that facilitate interactions between novice and expert users in the context of complex remote data analysis. The goal is to design and prototype innovative solutions that enhance the collaboration, learning, and training aspects of data analysis tasks.The research will involve investigating various immersive technologies and their potential application in bridging the gap between novice and expert users, enabling effective knowledge transfer and skill acquisition.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
Time-series analysis of 2D diffraction patterns for Synchrotron rock physics
The interaction between deformation, fluid flow, chemical reactions, and heat flow in rocks constitutes a research frontier in the Earth Sciences. In addition to fundamental academic interest in this subject, there are many applied industrial problems, which require a sound understanding of this coupling. Examples include: the long-term sequestration of carbon dioxide in rocks, the energy-efficient processing of future-mineral resources, the design of unconventional geothermal-energy operations, and the prediction of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.The advisory team pioneered new methods for …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Metagenomic analysis of bacterial contamination screening pooled platelets
Bacterial sepsis is second only to ABO incompatibility as a cause of death from transfusion. Bacterial contamination of platelets is recognised as the most significant residual infectious risk of transfusion in developed countries. Bacterial Contamination Screening (BCS) has been required for testing of pooled and apheresis platelets manufactured by the Blood Service since April 2008. International microbiological culture studies suggest that the incidence of bacterial contamination ranges from 1:3000 to 1:1000 units of apheresis platelets and 1 in 600 to …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
AI-Based Data Analysis on Multiple Imaging Modalities
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality globally. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is estimated CVD takes 17.9 million lives every year. In Australian, the statistical data from the Australia Heart Foundation shows CVD is a major cause of death in Australia. It occupies 26% of all deaths, responsible for an average 118 deaths every day. Four of the main types of CVD are coronary heart disease, strokes and transient ischaemic attack, peripheral …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Investigation of genetic factors that contribute to concussion and its outcomes
The health outcomes from traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) and concussion depend on the nature of the injury, but response also varies greatly between individuals, suggesting that genetic factors may play a role. In particular, due to effects of head trauma on balances of ions, neurotransmitters and energy use in the brain, there is suggestion that variation in the genes that encode proteins involved in these pathways, e.g. ion channels, may affect the risk of, as well as response to a …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
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