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 19 matching student topics
Displaying 1–12 of 19 results
Sustainable high performance biocomposites from lignocellulosic biomass for building and automotive applications
Lignocellulosic biomass, such as sugarcane bagasse, is primarily composed of three biopolymers: cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. The combination of these components makes lignocellulosic biomass a natural biocomposite material. This PhD project aims to develop innovative biomass processing strategies to convert lignocellulosic biomass into customized biocomposites for building and automotive 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
Synthesis of hard carbon from lignin for sodium ion battery anode applications
Lignin is one of the three major components of lignocellulosic biomass, such as sugarcane bagasse and woody biomass. It is renewable, low-cost, and rich in carbon, making it an ideal precursor for the production of sustainable carbon materials. This PhD project aims to develop high-performance, lignin-derived hard carbon for use in sodium-ion battery anodes.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy
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
Designing Inclusive Sports Technology for Broader Participation in Physical and Digital Sporting Environments
Sport and active participation play a critical role in physical health, social inclusion, wellbeing, and community connection. However, many people continue to face significant barriers to participation, including people with disabilities, and individuals experiencing mobility, sensory, cognitive, social, or economic constraint. Emerging sports technologies present new opportunities to broaden access and participation, yet many products, services, and systems remain designed for narrow user groups and performance contexts.This PhD project will investigate how sports technologies can be designed to support more …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
- Research centre(s)
- QUT Design Lab
Design Lab
Designing perception: Investigating gender perception in designed objects through practice-based research
Perceptions of gender are not limited to people; they extend to objects, products, and environments through subtle interactions between form, language, and cultural context. The inclusion and arrangement of specific aesthetic attributes are a primary driver of perceived object gender, interacting with various factors, including cultural and personal individual identity. This creates an opportunity to reframe the question of “object gender” through a design research lens.This PhD project seeks to explore object gender through practice-based design research. It leverages user …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
- Research centre(s)
- QUT Design Lab
Design Lab
Designing infrastructure for AVs in rural and remote Australia: built environment futures
As automated vehicles (AVs) begin to operate beyond controlled industrial environments and into the complex realities of rural and remote public roads, existing infrastructure must evolve to support their safe, reliable, and socially accepted deployment. From road geometry and signage to connectivity, rest stops and ecosystem interfaces, the built environment will play a critical role in enabling AV integration. However, rural infrastructure is often underfunded, poorly maintained, or not designed with automation in mind. Working within the ARC Training Centre …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Future Mobility/CARRSQ
Design Lab
Designing Robotic Intention Visualisation
This project is part of the Human Robot Interaction program in the Australian Cobotics Centre, an ARC Training Centre for Collaborative Robotics in Advanced Manufacturing.People effectively coordinate (co-located) teamwork through various social approaches that make team members aware of what they are doing or intend to do. Collaborative robots (cobots) are being introduced to the workplace to enable tight integration of human and robotic work activities, such as assisting human workers with repetitive or strenuous physical tasks. But robots may …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
Designing micromobility for equitable and responsible use
Shared electric micromobility (e.g., e-bike, e-scooter) schemes are common in Australian cities, and all over the world. Despite their rapid growth in recent years, there are many challenges faced by operators and local jurisdictions. This includes Illegal and antisocial behaviours, inconveniences caused by vehicle placement, inequitable access, and narrow rider demographics (i.e., gendered activity with predominantly young male users).Electric micromobility is positioned as an important transport modality as urban populations expand and there is increasing strain placed on existing transport …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
- Research centre(s)
-
Design Lab
Designing for individuals: Leveraging advanced manufacturing for customised products
Today’s advanced manufacturing technologies offer a unique opportunity for moving away from mass production towards mass customisation in consumer products. This presents a prospect for creative practitioners to examine their role and how their expertise align with these technologies, allowing for design innovation to drive mass customisation and establishing industrial designers as a critical stakeholder within this paradigm shift in production.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
Designing smart cities for more-than-human futures
Cities are changing across the globe. Climate change, rapid urbanisation, pandemics, as well as innovations in technologies such as blockchain, AI and IoT are all impacting urban space. One response to such changes has been to make cities ecologically sustainable and 'smart'. The 'eco smart city', for instance, uses networked sensing, cloud and mobile computing to optimise, control, and regulate urban processes and resources. From real-time bus information, autonomous electric vehicles, smart parking, and smart street lighting, such initiatives are …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
- Research centre(s)
-
Design Lab
Designing future magnetic materials
Low-dimensional and atomically-thin magnets host a myriad of exotic magnetic states. As such, they are excellent candidates for memory and logic devices in future technologies.However, the atomic structures needed to realise these states are still not well understood.For this reason, theoretical investigations of the electronic and magnetic properties of these materials are crucial to engineer functional magnetic materials in the future.
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
Designing smart visual technologies with people with intellectual disability
This research is part of a Future Fellowship project funded by the Australian Research Council. You will join a team of researchers and research students in the school of computer science, with expertise in the disciplines of human computer interactions and data science.In broad terms, the project 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 intellectual disability.The visual interactions …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
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