Sep 9 2009
Eleven Monash researchers have been awarded a total of $7,854,900 in the first ever round of Australian Research Council Future Fellowships to further research in their fields.
The Australian Government created the new ARC Future Fellowships to encourage research in areas of national critical importance by providing Australia's outstanding researchers with the incentives so that their research continues to be conducted on Australian soil and to attract international researchers to Australia to support the Commonwealth Government's innovation agenda.
"Monash has performed well in the first round of this new scheme," said Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Cornish. "This result confirms that Monash researchers are tackling issues that are of great importance to our nation."
Future Fellowships were awarded to researchers from the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Business and Economics, the Faculty of Engineering, the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences and the Faculty of Science.
Successful projects were extremely varied and included examples such as, investigating how to develop ultra-clean fuel from brown coal, developing forecasting methods to determine stock market volatility and exploring the origins of our universe.
The following existing Monash researchers were awarded ARC Future Fellowships for the following projects:
- Associate Professor, Stuart Batten, Faculty of Science, Building Advanced Materials from the Bottom Up
- Dr Jacqueline Broad, Faculty of Arts, Mary Astell: An Historical-Intellectual Role Model for Women in Philosophy
- Dr Duncan Galloway, Faculty of Science, High-energy probes of dense matter and distorted spacetime
- Dr Christopher Hutchinson, Faculty of Engineering, Dynamically responding metals: a new generation of engineering alloys
- Associate Professor, Gael Martin, Faculty of Business and Economics, A Bayesian State Space Methodology for Forecasting Stock Market Volatility and Associated Time-varying Risk Premia
- Dr Ranjith Pathegama Gamage, Faculty of Engineering, An assessment of carbon dioxide storage capacity of water bearing sedimentary basins
- Dr Jeremy Smith, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Masterminding Reproduction: Kisspeptin and RFamide-Related Peptide
- Dr Bjorn Winther-Jensen, Faculty of Engineering, Electro-Catalytic Conjugated Polymers
- Dr L Zhang, Faculty of Science, Generation of Ultra-Clean Fuel from Victorian Brown Coal and Its Oxygen-Enriched Combustion Characteristics
The following international researchers will come to Monash to take up their appointments as Future Fellows:
- Dr A Mazumdar, Faculty of Science, Origins of our Universe
- Dr J Zhang, Faculty of Science, Three Dimensional Anti-biofouling Conducting Polymer Hydrogel Electrodes for Biosensor and Biofuel cell Applications
"I congratulate all ARC Future Fellows at Monash University and those about to join us for their hard work and vision and I look forward to the outcomes that this generous funding from the ARC will assist in facilitating," said Professor Cornish.