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 84 matching student topics
Displaying 61–72 of 84 results
Interaction design for enhanced science communication and citizen science
Science communication is typically done by scientists, but interaction designers and artists have the capacity to create for people's engagement. Technology and design for active engagement, such as embodied interaction design, can leverage people's understanding and engage them in more effective and sustainable behaviours. For example, invasive mosquitoes are one area of citizen science that poses significant risk to our environment and health in SEQ yet is little understood by the general population. Mosquito borne disease is a major killer …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
Investigating DNA repair mechanisms in aging adult stem cells
When we age the DNA repair systems of our cells become down regulated. This results in reduced DNA repair capacity, enhanced rates of mutation load and may lead to the development of chronic aging-associated diseases including osteoporosis, Alzheimer's and cancer(1). So it is no surprise that genome instability and stem cell exhaustion, which also strongly correlates with the accumulation of DNA damage, are considered hallmarks of aging(2).However, we still lack a clear understanding on how the decrease in DNA repair …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
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
Tracking small bones for robotic surgery
Robotic knee surgery can perform femoral and tibial resection. Currently it is not possible to use robotic technology for patella preparation; to do so will require miniaturisation of tracking, effective clamping of the patella and controlled use of a saw. This project will aim to develop the technology for any small bone resection with a robot, taking the patella as a test case.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
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
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
Digital publics
Digital and social media platforms provide new opportunities for public communication, and the formation of distinct publics and communities around shared interests and identities. Such publics may engage in political debate, popular media fandom, science communication, vernacular creativity, and other activities; but they may also be affected by, or actively engage in promoting, mis- and disinformation and other problematic content. Their activities are also shaped by the features and affordances of the platforms they use, from Facebook and Twitter to …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Communication
- Research centre(s)
- Digital Media Research Centre
The role of complex singularities in geometric flows
A popular topic in differential geometry involves studying the singularity structure of geometric flows. The most well-known example is mean curvature flow. In this example, surfaces evolve according to a flow rule that relates the speed of the surface to its curvature. Certain surfaces will evolve until singularities occur in finite time, and these singularities can be studied using similarity solutions and asymptotic analysis.In this project, a different perspective is applied to these problems, namely the use of complex variable …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
Identifying individuals at high risk of Alzheimer’s disease
Dementia is the greatest cause of disability in Australians over the age of 65 years. In the absence of a significant medical breakthrough, more than $6.4 million Australians will be diagnosed with dementia in the next 40 years. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease (AD), accounting for 60-80% of cases. The pathogenic process of AD begins decades prior to the clinical onset, so it is likely that treatments need to begin early in the disease process to …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Designing smart visual technologies with people with intellectual disability
This area of research is seeking to understand how the meaning of images can be computed and used in the design of intelligent interfaces which can be used by and support people with cognitive disability (intellectual disability, dementia, brain injury), in their homes, their daily lives, or their work.The visual interactions of interest to this research may be embedded in a variety of technologies, including:assistive technologies (e.g. AAC)assistive robots (social robots and humanoid robots)conversational technologies (e.g. voice assistants)tangible technologies (e.g. …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
5G and IoT smart ontology learning
This project aims to investigate privacy preservation protocols in a 5G integrated IoT environment through an analysis of the depth of smart-device use in common smart domains. 5G’s addition to IoT-based smart devices will be effectively deployed and utilised by a large majority of individual and organisation-based users. The knowledge-based ontology and tools developed in the project will help form the new privacy preservation mechanisms that are required for the 5G enabled environment.The development of an ontology for 5G enabled …
- Study level
- PhD, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Lignocellulose-derived innovative nanomaterials for enhancing (bio)polymer composites
Lignocellulosic biomass, such as sugarcane bagasse and rice husk, is an abundant and low-cost bioresource for producing nanomaterials such as nanocellulose, lignin nanoparticles, and nanosilica. This PhD project aims to develop cost-effective biomass processing strategies to produce innovative nanomaterials with tunable properties from lignocellulosic biomass, enhancing the performance of (bio)polymer composites in different applications.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy
Characterising a DNA repair protein as an anti-cancer therapeutic target and diagnostic marker in brain cancer
Cancer is the single biggest clinical problem facing the world and will account for half of all global deaths by 2030. Even though there have been significant advances in immunotherapy, we are still unable to cure most cancers. New therapeutic targets, individualised to patient needs, must be identified and validated in order to improve cancer outcomes.Brain cancer causes more deaths in people under the age of 40 than any other cancer and more deaths in children than any other disease. …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health
Contact us
If you have questions about the best options for you, the application process, your research topic, finding a supervisor or anything else, get in touch with us today.