Student topics

The Statistical and Genomic Epidemiology Laboratory (SGEL) studies the role of genetics in the development and mechanism of human traits, with particular emphasis on migraine, and the specific goal of identifying genetic risk factors and detecting common genetic links with other disorders, in particular depression, endometriosis, and epilepsy.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Biomedical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health

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

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

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

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

Ultimately, the proper development of a plant and its ability to adapt to its environment is the result of how plants’ genes are expressed and interact with each other. Hence, it is of extreme importance to understand the mechanisms used by plants to regulate gene expression.Modification of the expression pattern of a gene is particularly important in modern biology. By changing the expression levels of a gene, it is possible to learn about its function, increase the production of a …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Biology and Environmental Science

Research centre(s)

Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy

Chronic wet cough is among the commonest symptoms of chronic lung disease. In Australia, the most common cause of childhood chronic wet cough is protracted bacterial bronchitis (PBB), a clinical entity we first described. It has now been shown to be a precursor to bronchiectasis, which causes substantial morbidity and mortality, especially from acute respiratory exacerbations. Lung inflammation in children with persistent chronic wet cough is an important driver of ongoing and progressive tissue damage, leading to bronchiectasis, highlighting the …

Study level

PhD

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Public Health and Social Work

Research centre(s)

Centre for Healthcare Transformation
Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation

Faces are a rich source of social information communicating social categories like sex, age or ethnicity of a person, but also a person’s emotional state via facial expressions of emotion. The current research investigates how cues available on a face (social category cues, attractiveness, trustworthiness) or what we know about a person affect the manner in which we process emotional expressions.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Health

School

School of Psychology and Counselling

Design relies on prototyping methods to help envisage future design concepts and elicit feedback from potential users. A key challenge the design of human-robot interaction (HRI) with collaborative robots is the current lack of prototyping tools, techniques, and materials. Without good prototyping tools, it is difficult to move beyond existing solutions and develop new ways of interacting with robots that make them more accessible and easier for people to use.This project will develop a robot collaboration prototyping toolkit that combines …

Study level

PhD

Faculty

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

School

School of Design

Research centre(s)

Design Lab

Complex manufacturing environments characterised by high value and high product mix manufacturing processes pose challenges to Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC). Allowing people to see what robots are ‘thinking’ will allow workers to efficiently collaborate with co-located robotic partners. A tighter integration of work routines requires improved approaches to support awareness in human-robotic co-working spaces. There is a need for solutions that also let people see what the robot is intending to do so that they can also efficiently adjust their actions …

Study level

PhD

Faculty

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

School

School of Design

Research centre(s)

Design Lab

Programming robots to carry out desired tasks is difficult and time-consuming. This PhD project focuses on collaborative and instructional dialogue agents to help human operators program robot tasks.In this collaborative scenario, a human operator converses with an AI agent to explain the steps that are to be performed, using high-level references and abstractions that make sense to the human, as opposed to simple verbal instructions corresponding to rudimentary robot movements. The AI agent must interpret the high-level instructions and translate …

Study level

PhD

School

School of Design

Research centre(s)

Design Lab

We're seeking a motivated student to join the multidisciplinary project that brings together computer vision and deep learning field with pollen aerobiology. This is a fully funded PhD program for a three-year period starting in 2024. It's part of the project funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Program—Digitally-Integrated Smart Sensing of Diverse Airborne Grass Pollen Sources. The successful candidate will be primarily based in the Allergy Research Group at QUT's Kelvin Grove campus.Grass pollen is the main outdoor allergen …

Study level

PhD

School

School of Biomedical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Robotics
Centre for Immunology and Infection Control