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 556 matching student topics
Displaying 421–432 of 556 results
Development of a multiplexed gut micro-bioreactor for functional screening of gut microbiome
The human microbiome refers to the collection of micro-organisms that are living symbiotically in the human body (defined as the “microbiota”), their genetic material as well as the surrounding environmental habitat.It is now appreciated that the microbiome plays an important role in human health and diseases. Various disease states have been linked to dysregulation of the gut microbiota, including neurodegenerative, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The composition of the gut microbiome can also affect responses to therapies, most notably in cancer …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Centre for Microbiome Research
Development of a 3D Printed Nasal Model to Study Viral-Airway Interactions
As airway infections become pandemic worldwide, airway models to investigate pathogen infection mechanism and nasal drug delivery is now increasingly important. However, current airway models cannot mimic the triad coupling of human nasal anatomical geometries, aerosol flow and biological responses (e.g. infection and inflammation) from the nasal epithelium.Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models are used for simulating pathological airflow patterns resulting from anatomical structural changes of the nasal cavities, but they cannot measure phenotypic or functional alterations in the nasal epithelium …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Wound care in regional/rural Queensland
Barriers to health care for regional/rural residents often relate to the limited availability of local health services and resources and the distance needed to seek suitable specialised services. Wounds experienced in rural and regional areas are often dependent upon the types of employment available, recreational pursuits and risk-taking behaviours.The prevalence of non-communicable lifestyle related risk factors (such as obesity and poor nutrition) and the propensity for an ageing population in rural and regional areas, positions this population group as one …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Nursing
Examining approaches to mitigating customer aggression and abuse
The pace of change associated with modern businesses (Grewal et al., 2017; Grewal et al., 2020), and the introduction of new technologies has created heightened level of stress (technostress) and aggression (Chen et al., 2019). Adding to these stressors, COVID-19, which has forced businesses to adapt their processes and customer service interface (Ahmed et al., 2021; Jiang and Stylos, 2021; Roggeveen and Sethuraman, 2020). Research now finding that continued lockdowns, social distancing, and political rancour, all adding increased levels of …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Business and Law
- School
- School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations
Understanding how self-image and compassionate goals affect well-being in a social media context
There is increasing concern about the negative impact of social media use on well-being. To understand its impact, we need to move beyond simple conceptualisations of social media use and utilise strong research methods to understand the role that psychological processes play in producing positive and negative impacts. There is preliminary evidence that interpersonal goals play an important role in predicting how people use and experience social media. Self-image goals involve trying to convey a desirable image of oneself to …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Psychology and Counselling
The Emotional Face
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
Human Emotional Learning: Likes, Dislikes and Fear
There is currently broad agreement that likes and dislikes, including strong emotional responses such as fear and anxiety, are learned. However, little is known about the manner in which different forms of emotional learning interact or about how emotional learning once acquired can be modified, reduced or eliminated. In particular in the context of fear learning this is problematic as fear memories once acquired seem difficult to change and likely to return even after successful extinction – a phenomenon known …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Psychology and Counselling
Every side job starts with an idea: Exploring motivations for the ‘side hustle’
Almost 1 million Australians have lost their jobs and countless micro and small businesses have folded as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time the pandemic has propelled innovation and new venture creation and given rise the ‘side hustle’, taking on an extra job for money. Side-hustles, supplemental income-generating work performed alongside full-time jobs, are increasingly common (Sessions, Nahrgang, Vaulont, Williams & Bartels, 2021).Technology has in part empowered and enabled people to market their skills and products …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Business and Law
- School
- School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations
Small business resilience in times of economic uncertainty: Examining retailers and regional businesses
Regional Australia is undergoing significant structural, economic, social, and environmental change which is impacting the viability of small businesses (Regional Australia Institute, 2018). Regional small retail businesses, estimated to contribute $21.9bn to local economies (Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, 2019) are particularly susceptible to economic shocks, have lower survival rates, more volatile revenues and are generally less resilient than larger business (Barraket, Eversole, Luke & Barth, 2019).Disruptive external events such as the acceleration of e-retailing, COVID-19 travel restrictions, …
- 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
Exploring how entrepreneurs use social media to influence users' emotions and achieve virality
Social media has become an integral part of our lives – we click, like and share posts with our personal and professional networks each day. The concept of sharing is activated by psychological stimulation, be it emotional or physical (Tellis et al., 2019). But why are certain types of online content more viral than others?Achieving ‘virality’ is not random and isn’t just about creating engaging content. Instead there are mechanics that are planned to achieve this type of ‘social currency’. …
- 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
Understanding capsular polysaccharide diversity is key to next generation therapies for multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii infections
Bacteriophage therapy is an attractive innovative treatment for infections caused by extensively drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, for which there are few effective antibiotic treatments remaining.Capsular polysaccharide (CPS) is a primary receptor for lytic bacteriophage, thus knowledge of the chemical structures of CPS produced by the species underpins the identification of suitable phage for therapeutic cocktails.As many phage depolymerases cleave a specific CPS linkage formed by either a glycosyltransferase or polymerase enzyme, characterisation of these proteins are essential.However, these remain largely …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Immunology and Infection Control
Building metallo-supramolecular cages for sensing and catalytic applications
The concept of creating molecular electronic devices has resulted in the development and rapid advance of the field of supramolecular chemistry.In this project we are particularly interested in how we can use simple building blocks to self-assemble into complex, functional structures both in solution and at the solution:surface interface.These types of structures have shown great promise in applications such as catalysis, sensing, drug delivery and even in the development of molecular machines.AimsThis project aims to:design, synthesise and characterise complex metallo-supramolecular …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
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