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 18 matching student topics
Displaying 1–12 of 18 results
Designing a DIY Internet of Things (IOT) kit for ambient nature learning
We’re interested in exploring how to make affordable Internet of Things (IOT) devices that enable learning about nature through sound. This project aims to make an open-source DIY kit of a technology that enables ambient listening and learning about vocal species (e.g. bird or frog calls) in the home, as well as the sharing of nature data.We can supply prototypes and user requirements. We require someone with experience or a strong interest in designing for the Internet of Things to …
- Study level
- Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Infrared signatures and spectral decomposition: Identifying and analysing accreting supermassive black holes
This project aims to explore the identification and properties of accreting supermassive black holes, commonly known as active galactic nuclei (AGN), by cross-matching the FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey (ZFOURGE) with the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data. Using WISE infrared colors to pinpoint AGNs and comparing these findings with results from the spectral energy distribution (SED) decomposition on ZFOURGE data, you will enhance AGN identification techniques and deepen our understanding of their physical characteristics. This comparative approach will improve our …
- Study level
- Vacation research experience scheme
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
Manipulation in nature
Grasping/manipulating in rainforest, farmland or shrubland environments pose a new challenge for existing techniques. This project will investigate how they manipulate where there may be tree branches, foliage, or other natural obstacles in the way.This project would explore existing and emerging techniques such as optimisation, neural radiance fields (NeRFs), deep learning and reinforcement learning and equipment, including depth cameras, LiDAR, event cameras, and light field cameras.Does the manipulator have to re-arrange the environment to manipulate the point of interest?Or does …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Multi-modal sentiment analysis
In deep learning models, language models and word embedding methods have become popular to understand the context of text data. Popular language models such as BERT have limitations in terms of the token length. There exist some corpora that have longer text with an average of 1000 tokens. Additionally, these corpora are text-heavy and only include some images.In our prior works, we have developed several multi-modality models on social media datasets.
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Artificial Intelligence for collaborative and intelligent user interfaces
This project seeks to leverage recent advances in machine vision and natural language processing algorithms to support the design and development of knowledge-driven applications that support communication and collaborations with their users.One particular area where this will be investigated is in workplaces for supported employment, that is employment opportunities for people with intellectual disability. One of the questions to address is how machines could respond to what a user shows them in order to assist with decision making in a …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Computer Science
Exploding shallow marine volcanoes: how does pumice from the vent differ from pumice making a raft?
More than 21,000 km of submarine volcanoes front subduction zones, many of which lie in shallow water close to inhabited areas. Eruptions at these volcanoes can be explosive and may have significant impacts on nearby communities (as witnessed this year with the January 15 eruption of the Hunga Tonga Hunga hapa'ai volcano in Tonga), or generate pumice rafts that prolong impact at remote locations (as experienced in Japan in late 2021 following the Fukutoku Oka-no-Ba eruption). For the first time, …
- Study level
- Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Centre for the Environment
Exploding shallow marine volcanoes: investigating the petrology of the 2019 pumice raft-producing eruption from Volcano 0403-091, Tonga
More than 21,000 km of submarine volcanoes front subduction zones, many of which lie in shallow water close to inhabited areas. Eruptions at these volcanoes can be explosive and may have significant impacts on nearby communities, or generate pumice rafts that prolong impact at remote locations. For the first time, samples of a shallow marine explosive eruption have been collected from the buoyant pumice raft and from the seafloor at the vent of Volcano 0403-091, Tonga.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Centre for the Environment
Natural disaster (landslide, earthquake) mitigation using remote sensing, geophysics, and site monitoring
Extreme weather events can exacerbate slope and dam stability issues. Risk mitigation, stabilisation works, and engineered solutions to slope or dam failure require detailed site and subsurface characterisation – generally undertaken after a failure, but often resulting in unacceptable delays to remediation, impacting communities, transport, and water resources.This project will develop pre-emptive risk mitigation measures for at-risk sites, utilising remote sensing, geophysical, and monitoring approaches.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Curvature dependence of reaction-diffusion wave front speed with nonlinear diffusion.
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, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Robust feature selection and correspondence for visual control of robots
Stable correspondence-free image-based visual servoing is a challenging and important problem.In classical image-based visual controllers, explicit feature correspondence (matching) to some desired arrangement (configuration) is required before a control input is obtained. Instead, this project will investigate variable feature correspondence and robust feature selection to simultaneously solve visual servoing problem, removing any feature tracking requirement or additional image processing.Also involving Prof Jason Ford.Example of recent past work
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Towards Synthetic protein-structures based on precision macromolecules: can we beat nature in designing catalysts?
Up for a challenge? In this project you can explore if you can beat nature in making catalytic systems! Over billions of years, nature has perfected the design and synthesis of high molecular weight precision macromolecules, which are able to execute a specific function in a complex biological environment such as proteins.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Resolving uncertainty in decisions to improve agri-food system outcomes for people and nature
Despite efforts to monitor and manage declining species and ecosystems around the world, biodiversity is still not routinely included in mainstream decision-making and continues to decline at the highest rate in human history. Added to this is the problem that both natural and agri-food systems are complex networks that are continually changing due to human and natural disturbances, with climate change likely to increase the impacts of extreme events like drought, fire and economic shocks on these networks.Because of large …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Biology and Environmental Science
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Centre for the Environment
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