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 725 matching student topics
Displaying 169–180 of 725 results
Modelling the osteoid: A quantitative experimental–mathematical platform for osteocyte network formation and transport
Project Reference: #4MPQC-NATP3Preferred Project Start: Late 2026/Early 2027How does a newly formed bone matrix develop into a mineralised tissue containing a functional osteocyte network, and how does this transformation affect the movement of nutrients and signals?During bone formation, osteoblasts produce a soft, initially unmineralised extracellular matrix known as osteoid. Some osteoblasts gradually become embedded within this matrix and transition into osteocytes, extending dendritic processes that connect them into an intricate three-dimensional network. As the osteoid matures and mineralises, its architecture, …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
A 3D mechanosensing platform for senescent osteocytes in aging bone
Project Reference: #3MPQC-NATP2Preferred Start: Late 2026/Early 2027How do our bones sense movement, and why does this ability decline as we age?Osteocytes are specialised cells embedded throughout bone that detect mechanical forces generated during movement and exercise. They form an interconnected cellular network that helps coordinate the continuous renewal and repair of bone.With age, some osteocytes become senescent: damaged cells that remain within the tissue but no longer function normally. Their accumulation may disrupt how bone senses mechanical loading and contribute …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Engineering 3D osteocyte–tumour microenvironments to study bone metastasis and therapeutic response
Project Reference: #2MPQC-HuECM1Preferred Project Start: Late 2026/Early 2027How do cancer cells communicate with bone cells, and can we recreate these interactions in the laboratory to improve therapy testing?When cancer spreads to bone, tumour cells enter a highly specialised microenvironment containing multiple cell types and a complex extracellular matrix. Osteocytes are embedded throughout this matrix and form an interconnected cellular network that senses and regulates changes within bone. However, their contribution to cancer progression and treatment response remains poorly understood.Conventional two-dimensional …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Understanding cellular-spatial interplay between osteocyte networks and their environment using bioengineered 3D bone models
Project Reference: #1MPQC-NATP1Preferred Project Start: ImmediateHow do bone-forming cells communicate to build and maintain a functional bone matrix?Osteoblasts produce new bone extracellular matrix, while osteocytes become embedded within this matrix and form an interconnected network that helps regulate bone formation, adaptation and remodelling. Although these cells work closely together in the body, their interactions are difficult to reproduce and investigate using conventional two-dimensional cell culture.Bone-cell behaviour is strongly influenced by the surrounding microenvironment, including its composition, mechanical properties, mineral content, …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Identifying AI-amenable tasks in the patient care workflow and matching enabling AI technologies
Contemporary patient care is delivered through complex, multi-step workflows that span triage, assessment, diagnosis, documentation, care coordination, treatment, and follow-up. Many steps in these workflows are repetitive, cognitively burdensome, or prone to delays and errors, and a substantial share of clinicians' time is consumed by tasks that require limited clinical judgement, such as documentation, information retrieval, and administrative coordination. Persistent workforce shortages, rising demand, and clinician burnout have intensified interest in whether some of these tasks can be safely delegated …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Public Health and Social Work
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Data Science
Occupant-in-the-loop: VR as pre-occupancy evaluation tools for climate adaptive design practices
Ongoing global warming, compounded by local overheating in cities and buildings, poses growing risks to occupant health, comfort, and well-being. Conventional design approaches rely heavily on predictive simulation, where occupant preferences and adaptive responses are typically simplified through assumptions based on average populations. This overlooks substantial individual differences in perception and behaviour, contributing to persistent gaps between predicted and actual building performance beyond simply energy performance. Although virtual reality (VR) is increasingly recognised as a promising tool for pre-occupancy evaluation …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Architecture and Built Environment
Signal processing with small BOM
Signal processing applications in RADAR, electronic surveillance, and communications systems are regularly developed and deployed on *field programmable gate arrays* (FPGA).FPGAs are common because of their strong computational performance and flexibility.This performance and flexibility comes at a cost.The cost of commonly used FPGA such as Xilinx's Zynq and Ultrascale SoCs range between several hundreds to several tens of thousands of dollars.Complete systems deployed with these chips range from several thousands to several hundreds of thousands of dollars.Such cost is often …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Affordable underwater acoustic communications
Communication is an enabling technology for underwater systems such as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), sensor networks, and diver support equipment. These systems cannot use radio frequency (RF) links, because radio waves are heavily absorbed by water, and poor visibility rules out optical links. Only acoustic communication is suitable. The underwater acoustic channel is bandwidth-limited, slow, and degraded by multipath, Doppler, and noise, making underwater modems a demanding signal processing and embedded systems problem.Commercial underwater modems exist but are expensive and …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
mmWave radar interface and signal processing system
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar systems are widely used in applications such as automotive sensing, robotics, and industrial automation for object detection, range estimation, and velocity measurement.In this project, students will design and implement a complete interface to a commercial mmWave radar module using either an FPGA platform or an NVIDIA Jetson embedded system. The project will include low-level hardware/software interfacing as well as basic radar signal processing to extract meaningful information from the radar data.
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Testing AI-generated judicial personas
This project explores the growing use of artificial intelligence in the legal profession to create “personas” of judges. These systems are trained on past decisions, legal reasoning, and perceived judicial attitudes to simulate how a judge might respond to a case. Lawyers can then use these simulated responses to test arguments and refine litigation strategy.The project examines how these tools work in practice, what assumptions they rely on, and how accurate or useful they truly are. It also considers broader …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Business and Law
- School
- School of Law
VRES: The High Court and the legal treatment of blockchain in the Block Earner case
This project examines the High Court of Australia’s decision in ASIC v Web3 Ventures Pty Ltd (Block Earner)—one of the first times the High Court has directly engaged with blockchain-based financial products. In June 2026, the Court unanimously held that Block Earner’s fixed-yield crypto product was a financial product requiring a licence, confirming that existing financial services laws apply to digital assets.This decision raises important questions about how the law understands blockchain technology. The Court emphasised that financial regulation is …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Business and Law
- School
- School of Law
VRES: Blockchain as an archive fairy tale.
This project explores how blockchain is understood as a new kind of archive. Blockchain is often described as a system that creates trust through secure, unchangeable records. However, this claim is shaped by broader stories and expectations about technology. These stories form what we call the cultural imaginary—a mix of hope and fear that influences how people understand and regulate new technologies.On one hand, blockchain promises transparency and certainty. On the other, it raises concerns about misuse, control, and misinformation. …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Business and Law
- School
- School of Law
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