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 542 matching student topics
Displaying 1–12 of 542 results
Women returning to construction after career interruptions
The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is known to have a fast-paced and demanding working environment. Companies operate in a competitive market with tight project deadlines. The stringent work environment is perceived as one of the main barriers in career progression for women and can be challenging for women to return to work after career interruptions.This project focuses on three big questions:What are the types of career interruption?What motivates women to return to work in the AEC sector?Do these “return-to-work” policies/work practices work?
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Architecture and Built Environment
Predicting good sleep using computer science: Can we use machine learning to find out 'what's the best bed?'
In the Westernised world a person typically spends one third of their life in bed, with more time spent sleeping in a bed than in any other single activity. Sleep amount and quality of sleep have a direct impact on mood, behaviour, motor skills and overall quality of life. Yet, despite how important restful sleep is for the body to maintain good health, there is a comparatively small amount of studies evaluating key multi-factorial determinants of restful sleep in non-pathological, …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Journey mapping student experiences in engineering education
This research topic explores the use of journey mapping as a research and design methodology to better understand, analyse and improve student experiences in engineering education. The project investigates how students navigate key stages and touchpoints across the academic lifecycle including transition into university, curriculum progression, assessment, engagement, wellbeing and career development. By systematically mapping these journeys, the research aims to reveal patterns, barriers, and opportunities that shape student engagement, experience and success.Situated at the intersection of engineering education research, …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Educator capability development and recognition in engineering education
This research topic examines educator capability development and recognition in engineering education, with a particular focus on the misalignment between the skills increasingly required of educators and the ways those skills are formally recognised and rewarded in higher education.Building on contemporary scholarship in engineering education and academic career development, the project explores how expectations around teaching quality, digital capability, assessment design, and evidence‑based practice have expanded—while promotion, workload, and recognition frameworks have not always kept pace.The research aims to inform …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
Emerging technologies and data-driven learning in engineering education
This research topic explores the use of emerging technologies and data‑driven approaches to enhance learning and teaching in engineering education. The project investigates how diverse educational data sets can be leveraged to support evidence‑based decision making across multiple levels of the institution—from individual educators and course teams to faculty leaders and senior executives. The work sits at the intersection of engineering education, learning analytics, and strategic use of educational data to improve student engagement, experience, and success.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Engineering Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell for the treatment of cancer
Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells are genetically modified immune cells that can recognise and kill cancer cells. They do so through the CAR, which recognises specific antigens expressed on cancer cells. CAR T cell therapy has emerged as an effective form of cancer immunotherapy in certain types of blood cancers and are now approved for use in patients. However, CAR T cell therapy can only benefit a very small proportion of cancer patients at present because it is very …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Engineering bioartificial extracellular tumour microenvironments for Osteosarcoma personalised precision oncology
Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common malignant bone tumour affecting children and adolescents. Importantly, clinical outcomes have not improved for decades, and bone tumours remain to be a leading cause of cancer-related death in adolescents.By identifying ideal treatment approaches for each individual patient, precision oncology has the potential to significantly improve these outcomes. Yet, its widespread application is hindered by a lack of biomaterials that support the reproducible and robust generation of patient-derived osteosarcoma organoids in vitro.Therefore, this project will …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Engineering the prostate tumour microenvironment in organ-on-a-chip systems
Prostate cancer remains one of the leading causes of global death. The tumour microenvironment (TME) including blood vessels, immune cells, fibroblasts, and the extracellular matrix (ECM) possesses disease-specific biophysical and biological factors that are difficult to recapitulate using conventional in vitro cell culture models.The absence of these factors, however, causes cells to display abnormal morphologies, polarisation, proliferation, and drug responses, thereby limiting the ability to translate research findings from traditional cell culture into clinical practice.Recent advances in organ-on-a-chip technology enable …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Engineering response to climate emergency with zero carbon footprint for building construction by 2030 using circular economy principles
We as engineers can make a contribution to address the current climate emergency.The Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council report (2016) found that if Australia's built environment sector reaches zero carbon emissions for the operation of residential and commercial buildings by 2050, it could contribute 28% to the country's 2030 emissions reduction target and save up to AU$20 billion.In this project we will consider the application of the circular economy, which is based on the principles of designing out waste and …
- Study level
- PhD, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Centre for a Waste-Free World
Modelling of electrochemical CO2 capture and conversion
Renewable electricity is remarkably cheap, and is only going to get cheaper. However, existing state-of-the-art CO2 capture and conversion processes use thermal energy (typically generated by burning natural gas). This modelling project will investigate electrochemical techniques for capturing CO2 from air (direct air capture) and converting it to useful chemicals and materials.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
Transport big data analytics: Imputing missing data
The missing data problem is often unavoidable for real-world data collection systems because of a variety of factors, such as sensor malfunctioning, maintenance work, transmission errors, and so on. Filling in missing information in a dataset is an important requirement for many machine-learning algorithms that require a complete dataset as input. Data imputation algorithms aim at filling the missing information in a dataset. Many missing data imputation techniques exist in the literature, with applications demonstrated on various types of datasets. …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Developing a precision oncology workflow for Osteosarcoma treatment
Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common malignant bone tumour that primarily affects children and adolescents. With approximately 400 diagnosed cases/year in Australia, OS has the lowest survival rate of all solid cancers and is the leading cause of cancer-related death in Queensland adolescents. Unfortunately, 3 in 4 patients will not survive longer than five years following diagnosis with metastatic OS. Clinical “one size fits all” treatment strategies results in highly variable and unacceptably poor patient responses. Shockingly, both the OS …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
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