Student topics

Power oscillation Damper (POD) in South QLD are used to provide sufficient damping to inter-area mode of oscillations (electro-mechanical modes). These oscillatory modes often change their characteristics due to changes in load dynamics and the inherent transmission system topology.While the interconnections between generators and transmission lines have not changed over the recent years, there is a significant change in the embedded load dynamics. With high penetration of rooftop PV (including PV distributed at LV and MV level), in South QLD, …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

School

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

Classical fracture mechanics accurately predicts the failure strength of samples with sharp flaws such as pre-existing cracks. However, to predict the failure of porous materials we need to develop an understanding of how stresses are concentrated around smooth flaws in the material such as rounded pores, and how these stress concentrations contribute to failure.Finite fracture mechanics combines the energy criterion for failure from classical fracture mechanics with a stress criterion from macroscopic failure theory. The coupled criterion has by now …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are a key energy storage component in various electrical and electronic systems such as mobile phones, electric vehicles and grid storage. A properly designed battery management system (BMS) is crucial to guarantee the safety, reliability, and optimal performance of the battery as well as to interconnect the battery systems with each other and external systems through communication channels. However, security threats of the Li-ion battery systems are often overlooked by BMS developers in the design phase. The …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

Research centre(s)

Centre for Clean Energy Technologies and Practices

Genomic sequencing has changed radically since the first public sequencing projects more than 25 years ago. The original human genome project cost more than two billion dollars; sequencing a human genome now costs as little as a thousand, and we may sequence whole viruses and bacteria as a matter of routine.The challenge now lies in rapidly analysing these genomes as they appear, and understanding quickly whether there is anything interesting in the new sequence to warrant further inquiry. This project …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Computer Science

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Successive revolutions in sequencing technology over the past two decades have led to an explosion in the availability of genomic data. Analysing biological datasets and identifying relationships within them is challenging - some of the process can be automated but interactive exploration offers a number of advantages, and supports serendipitous discovery.This project looks at visual analytics and sonification - the use of sound and musical encodings - to enhance our understanding of biological networks.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Computer Science

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

In the age of Big Data, machine learning methods, and modern statistics the adage "all models are wrong but some are useful" has never been so true. This project will investigate data science approaches where more than one model makes sense for the data. Is it better to choose a single model or is there something to be gained from multiple models?This project will look at variable selection methods, penalised regression, Bayesian model averaging and conformal prediction. The research has …

Study level

Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease, particularly at the cellular level. Cells within a single cancerous tumour undergo vastly different rates of proliferation based on their location and specific genetic mutations. Capturing this stochasticity in cell behaviour and its effect on tumour growth is challenging with a deterministic system, e.g. ordinary differential equations, however, is possible with an agent-based model (ABM). In an ABM, cells are modelled as individual agents that have a probability of proliferation and movement in each …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

Protection of structures has become a priority for saving lives and preventing structural collapses caused by increased natural or man-made disasters. Most injuries and mortalities in these disasters are caused due to fragmentation of structures, and therefore, structural protection through systems that can absorb more energy and effectively contain the fragments (debris) are needed. Additive manufacturing (such as 3D printing) can be used to develop special geometries called auxetic geometries and composites using sustainable bioplastics which can absorb shock energy …

Study level

Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research centre(s)

Centre for Materials Science

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane bound packages of information constantly being released by all living cells, including bacteria. There are many types and sizes of EVs. Each EV type contains its own distinctive cargo consisting of characteristic DNA, RNA, and proteins. We are just beginning to understand the many roles of EVs to maintain the health of the cell producing the EVs, and to communicate with other cell types that take up the EVs produced by neighbouring cells. Since EVs …

Study level

Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Reaction-diffusion waves describe the progression in space of wildfires, species invasions, epidemic spread, and biological tissue growth. When diffusion is linear, these waves are known to advance at a rate that strongly depends on the curvature of the wave fronts. How nonlinear diffusion affects the curvature dependence of the progression rate of these wavefronts remains unknown.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Biomedical Technologies

Bone is a dynamic tissue that optimises its shape to the mechanical loads that it carries. Bone mass is accrued where loads are high, and reduced where loads are low. This adaptation of bone tissue to mechanical loads is well-known and observed in many instances. However, what serves as a reference mechanical state in this shape optimisation remains largely unknown.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Biomedical Technologies

High fidelity mathematical models of biological phenomena are often complex and can require long computational runtimes which can make computational inference for parameter estimation intractable.  In this project we will overcome this challenge by working with computationally simple low fidelity models and build a simple statistical model of the discrepancy between the high and low fidelity models.  This approach provides the best of both worlds: we obtain high accuracy predictions using a computationally cheap model surrogate.

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science