Research Awards and Prizes
Every year, we honour and celebrate the remarkable accomplishments within our research community through two levels of research awards and prizes: the Vice-Chancellor's Research Awards and Prizes and RMIT Research Awards and Prizes.
These esteemed awards are offered across two categories – Research Excellence and Research Engagement and Impact – which showcase the best of our research community. Our Research Awards and Prizes program places a distinct emphasis on recognizing outstanding achievements in research excellence, as well as in research engagement and impact.
Summary:
The RMIT research community honoured in these awards includes research teams, early career researchers, senior and mid-career researchers, HDR candidates and HDR supervisors, all of whom have significantly contributed to advancing research within and outside of the academy.
Nominations for the 2023 RMIT Research Awards open August 29, 2023.
Tuesday 29 August 2023 3:00pm
Monday 2 October 2023 12:00pm (Date extended)
November 2023
Monday 20 November 2023
Quarter One 2024
The following table lists the award categories, award names, monetary prize, and eligible academic cohort.
| Award name | Prize | Individuals or Teams | Eligible academic cohort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence | $10,000 | Either | Open, mid-career researcher, early career researchers, research teams |
| Vice-Chancellor’s Award in Graduate Research Supervision | $10,000 | Individual | HDR Supervisors |
| Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Research Excellence (HDR) | $3,000 | Individual | Recent HDR graduates |
| RMIT Award for Research Excellence | $3,000 | Both | Open, mid-career researcher, early career researchers, research teams |
| RMIT Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Leadership | $3,000 | Individual | HDR Supervisors |
| RMIT Prize for Research Excellence (HDR) | $1,500 | Individual | Recent HDR graduates |
| Award name | Prize | Individuals or Teams | Eligible academic cohort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Engagement and Impact | $10,000 | Either | Open, mid-career researcher, early career researchers, research teams |
| Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Research Engagement and Impact (HDR) | $3,000 | Individual | Current HDR candidates |
| RMIT Award for Research Engagement and Impact | $3,000 | Either | Open, mid-career researcher, early career researchers, research teams |
| RMIT Award for Impact – Industry Engagement in Graduate Research | $3,000 | Either | Individual or team of HDR Supervisors |
| RMIT Award for Research Engagement and Impact (HDR) | $1,500 | Individual | Current HDR candidates |
All Research Awards and Prizes are by nomination only (with the nominee’s consent). Individuals or teams are nominated by someone else via the online form. The online form is completed and submitted with the contribution of the nominator and the nominee.
A complete nomination consists of the following:
Selection of research award recipients is by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation based on the recommendations of the Research Awards Panel. The Research Awards Panel (“the Panel”) is a subcommittee of the DVC Research & Innovation Executive Committee.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Research Awards and Prizes will comprise:
The RMIT Research Awards and Prizes will comprise:
The Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence recognises an individual researcher who has achieved the highest level of excellence in their research activity for the preceding five years regardless of their career stage. The purpose of this Award is to recognise and encourage outstanding researchers with proven international reputations undertaking research of significant importance in its field, and who have made a significant contribution in advancing knowledge and research outcomes.
The RMIT Award for Research Excellence (Open) recognises an individual researcher who has achieved the highest level of excellence in their research activity for the preceding five years regardless of their career stage. The purpose of this Award is to recognise and encourage outstanding researchers with proven international reputations undertaking research that is of significant importance in its field and who have made a significant contribution in advancing knowledge and research outcomes.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Research Excellence (Team) recognises a team of RMIT researchers who have collectively demonstrated excellence in their research activity. The purpose of this award is to recognise and encourage outstanding teams of researchers undertaking research that is of major importance in its field and who have made a significant contribution in advancing knowledge and research outcomes.
The RMIT Award for Research Excellence (Team) recognises a team of RMIT researchers who have collectively demonstrated excellence in their research activity. The purpose of this Award is to recognise and encourage outstanding teams of researchers undertaking research that is of major importance in its field and who have made a significant contribution in advancing knowledge and research outcomes.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence (Mid-Career Researcher) recognises an individual Mid-Career Researcher (MCR) who has achieved the highest level of excellence in their research activity. The purpose of this Award is to recognise and encourage outstanding researchers with proven international reputations undertaking research that is of significant importance in its field and who have made a significant contribution in advancing knowledge and research outcomes.
The RMIT Award for Research Excellence (Mid-Career Researcher) recognises an individual Mid-Career Researcher (MCR) who has achieved the highest level of excellence in their research activity. The purpose of this Award is to recognise and encourage outstanding researchers with proven international reputations undertaking research that is of significant importance in its field and who have made a significant contribution in advancing knowledge and research outcomes.
In addition to the general eligibility, those eligible for nomination are MCR academics who are between 5 to 15 years’ research experience since the award of a PhD or equivalent qualification at the time of the nomination closing date or longer if combined with periods of significant career interruption (see RMIT’s Achievement Relative to Opportunity Policy).
The Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence (Early Career Researcher) recognises an individual early career academic (ECR) who has achieved the highest level of excellence in their research activity for the preceding three years. The purpose of this Award is to recognise and encourage outstanding researchers undertaking research that is of significant importance in its field and who have made a significant contribution in advancing knowledge and research outcomes.
The RMIT Award for Research Excellence – Early Career Researcher (ECR) recognises an RMIT early career academic who has achieved the highest level of excellence in their research activity for the preceding three years. The purpose of this Award is to recognise and encourage outstanding researchers undertaking research that is of significant importance in its field and who have made a significant contribution in advancing knowledge and research outcomes.
In addition to the general eligibility, those eligible for nomination are ECR academics who have been awarded a PhD or equivalent qualification for a period of less than or equal to 5 years at the time of their nomination or longer if combined with periods of significant career interruption (see RMIT’s Achievement Relative to Opportunity Policy
The Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Supervision recognises an individual who demonstrates a track record of successful HDR candidate outcomes and engagement in high quality supervisory practice and research supervision leadership.
The recipient of this Award is nominated by RMIT for the Australian Council of Graduate Research Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Supervision the following year.
In addition to the General Eligibility, this Award is open to all eligible academic staff who meet the following:
The RMIT Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Supervision recognises an individual who demonstrates a track record of successful HDR candidate outcomes and engagement in high quality supervisory practice and research supervision leadership.
The recipient of this Award is nominated by RMIT for the Australian Council of Graduate Research Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Leadership the following year.
In addition to the General Eligibility, this Award is open to all eligible academic staff who meet the following:
The Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Research Excellence (Higher Degree by Research) recognises an outstanding Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidate who has achieved the highest levels of excellence in research during the completion of their degree.
The RMIT Award for Research Excellence (Higher Degree by Research) recognises an outstanding Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidate who has achieved the highest levels of excellence in research during the completion of their degree.
Nominees for the Vice-Chancellor Prize for Research Excellence (HDR) and the RMIT Prize for Research Excellence (HDR) must have completed their RMIT HDR degree between the beginning of the preceding calendar year and the award's nomination deadline (i.e., January 1, 2022 - September 22, 2023).
The Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Engagement and Impact (Open) recognises an individual researcher whose research, over the past five years, has achieved or shown the potential to achieve considerable research engagement and impact outside the academic community. The definition of impact for this Award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to society, the arts and culture, national security, manufacturing, public policy or services, design, health, the environment and biodiversity, the economy, quality of life, or in other spheres beyond contributions to academia.
The RMIT Award for Research Engagement and Impact recognises an individual researcher whose research, over the past five years, has either realised or shown the potential to realise significant research engagement and impact outside the academic community. The definition of impact for this award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to society, the arts and culture, national security, manufacturing, public policy or services, design, health, the environment and biodiversity, the economy, quality of life, or in other spheres beyond contributions to academia.
The Vice Chancellor’s Award for Research Engagement and Impact (Team) recognises and encourages outstanding research teams whose research has achieved considerable research engagement and impact outside the academic community. The definition of impact for this Award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to society, the arts and culture, national security, manufacturing, public policy or services, design, health, the environment and biodiversity, the economy, quality of life, or in other spheres beyond contributions to academia.
The RMIT Award for Research Engagement and Impact (Team) recognises and encourages outstanding research teams whose research has either realised or shown the potential to realise significant research engagement and impact outside the academic community. definition of impact for this award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to the economy, society, culture, national security, public policy or services, health, the environment, or quality of life, beyond contributions to academia.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Engagement and Impact Mid-Career Researcher (MCR) recognises an individual Mid-Career Researcher whose research has achieved considerable research engagement and impact outside the academic community in the preceding five years. The definition of impact for this Award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to society, the arts and culture, national security, manufacturing, public policy or services, design, health, the environment and biodiversity, the economy, quality of life, or in other spheres beyond contributions to academia.
The RMIT Award for Research Engagement and Impact (Mid-Career Researcher) recognises an individual Mid-Career Researcher (MCR) whose research has achieved considerable research engagement and impact outside the academic community in the preceding five years. The definition of impact for this award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to society, the arts and culture, national security, manufacturing, public policy or services, design, health, the environment and biodiversity, the economy, quality of life, or in other spheres beyond contributions to academia.
In addition to the general eligibility, those eligible for nomination are MCR academics who are between 5 to 15 years’ research experience since the award of a PhD or equivalent qualification at the time of the nomination closing date or longer if combined with periods of significant career interruption (see RMIT’s Achievement Relative to Opportunity Policy).
The Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Engagement and Impact Early Career Researcher (ECR) recognises an individual ECR researcher whose research has achieved considerable research engagement and impact outside the academic community in the preceding three years. The definition of impact for this award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to society, the arts and culture, national security, manufacturing, public policy or services, design, health, the environment and biodiversity, the economy, quality of life, or in other spheres beyond contributions to academia.
The RMIT Award for Research Engagement and Impact (Early Career Researcher) recognises an individual early career researcher (ECR) whose research has shown potential research engagement and impact outside the academic community in the preceding three years. The definition of impact for this award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to society, the arts and culture, national security, manufacturing, public policy or services, design, health, the environment and biodiversity, the economy, quality of life, or in other spheres beyond contributions to academia.
In addition to the general eligibility, those eligible for nomination are ECR researchers who have been awarded a PhD or equivalent qualification for a period of less than or equal to 5 years at the time of their nomination or longer if combined with periods of significant career interruption (see RMIT’s Achievement Relative to Opportunity Policy).
The RMIT Award for Industry Engagement in Graduate Research recognises an HDR coordinator, supervisor or team of supervisors who have initiated or supported innovative and transformational engagement between higher degree research candidates and industry partners.
The recipient(s) of this award are nominated by RMIT for the Australian Council of Graduate Research Award for Promoting Industry Engagement in Graduate Research the following year.
In addition to the General Eligibility, this Award is open to all eligible academic staff who meet the following:
The Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Research Engagement and Impact (Higher Degree by Research) is awarded to a Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidate who can demonstrate the potential for significant research engagement and impact of their research outside the academic community. The definition of impact for this Award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to society, the arts and culture, national security, manufacturing, public policy or services, design, health, the environment and biodiversity, the economy, quality of life, or in other spheres beyond contributions to academia.
The RMIT Prize for Research Engagement and Impact (Higher Degree by Research) is awarded to a Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidate who can demonstrate the potential for significant research engagement and impact of their research outside the academic community. The definition of impact for this award includes the demonstrable contribution that research makes to society, the arts and culture, national security, manufacturing, public policy or services, design, health, the environment and biodiversity, the economy, quality of life, or in other spheres beyond contributions to academia.
Nominees for the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Research Engagement and Impact (HDR) and RMIT Prize for Research Engagement and Impact (HDR) must be current RMIT University HDR candidates who have completed their Confirmation of Candidature and have not yet graduated by the award’s deadline.
Nominations for the 2023 RMIT Research Awards are open between August 29, 2023 and October 2, 2023.
Ensure you leave plenty of time to meet submission requirements such as Statements of Support and Endorsements.
Visit our SharePoint for further information (RMIT Staff/Student log in required); or
Get in touch with us at reward.recognition.research@rmit.edu.au.
Distinguished Professor Suresh, a renowned scientist in Physical Sciences and Engineering, received this award for his pivotal role in mentoring over 68 PhD students. His guidance has led to high employment rates for his graduates in top industries, prestigious academic institutions, and entrepreneurship. Professor Bhargava's HDR supervision goes beyond theory, emphasizing real-world skills. His leadership in HDR mentoring is demonstrated through various programs, aligning with RMIT's core values of nurturing the next generation of scientists.
Dr Mahyar Khorasani was chosen for his potential to make a significant impact through his research and active engagement in the realm of 3D printing techniques for manufacturing components in the transportation sector. Dr Khorasani is actively collaborating with both industry and academic partners to establish connections aimed at generating positive economic and societal results, with a strong emphasis on expediting the translation of research findings into practical applications and commercial ventures.
Furthermore, Dr Khorasani has showcased his research excellence by securing substantial grant income and earning notable distinctions, further underscoring his expertise and contributions in this field.
Dr Ylias Sabri was selected for his demonstration of research impact and engagement and his skill in translating research findings into practical applications. Dr Sabri's research in pollution control and waste management has made significant contributions to economic sustainability effects. His outstanding collaborative initiatives with industry partner have resulted in numerous Cooperative Research Centre projects.
In addition, Dr Sabri has demonstrated research excellence through a robust publication history, a strong record of supervising higher degree research (HDR) candidates, and several distinctions. His demonstration of RMIT's core values is evident in his commitment to promoting diversity and equity as well as sustainability within his supervision of HDR students and his research teams.
Prof Roland Snooks was selected for his excellent demonstration of international cross-disciplinary engagement and impact while making notable and novel contributions in his field. Prof Snooks has built RMIT Architecture’s Tectonic Formation Lab into a vibrant, innovative, and high-quality research environment that is recognised as a world leader in age-based, generative architectural design and architectural additive manufacturing. He has also demonstrated research excellence through exhibitions and distinctions in his field.
Prof Snooks also demonstrated his dedication to RMIT's core values, particularly in terms of impact and inclusion. This commitment is reflected in his emphasis on amplifying Indigenous perspectives in his design processes, further illustrating his dedication to making a meaningful impact.
Professor Daniel Featherstone and team received this award in recognition of their significant research impact and active engagement in their pioneering work on "Mapping the Digital Gap." This innovative and interdisciplinary study effectively addressed the lack of longitudinal digital inclusion data in remote First Nations communities throughout Australia.
Professor Featherstone and his team demonstrated their research engagement with First Nations communities, as well as with industry and government stakeholders. Their research not only possesses strong potential to generate long term meaningful impact but also aligns with RMIT's core values and research strategies, which emphasize the pursuit of Knowledge with Action with Impact and Inclusion at heart.
Dr Kate Wang’s contribution to RMIT core values is commendable in Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access within the CALD and the aged care community. Dr Wang was selected for her demonstration of research excellence through impressive research and a strong publication record with 10 publications as first-author with strong citations. She is currently leading several multidisciplinary research studies at a national and international scale and is the lead chief investigator of an international collaborative study to examine how social factors impact medicine use in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Dr Wang excels in mentoring and supervision as well as leading and collaborating in multidisciplinary research teams.
Dr Hannah Badland was chosen due to her continuous, exceptional work in applied research, which strongly aligns with RMIT's values concerning inclusion, equity, and diversity. Her remarkable influence on how the built environment relates to health, well-being, and social disparities is well-documented, and her active involvement with both national and international organizations and government bodies is evident, emphasizing her commitment to making a significant impact. She has showcased her research excellence with numerous citations in her field and has earned various research awards and distinctions.
Professor Chun-Qing Li was chosen for his remarkable demonstration of research excellence and his substantial contribution to RMIT's core values. His research expertise is evidenced by his impressive track record of receiving ARC and government grants, authoring over 400 publications, and being ranked as in the top 2% of scientists in the world.
Professor Li also showcases his capacity to make a substantial impact through his applied engineering work on the Metro Tunnel and pioneering research in carbon-neutral infrastructure, an area of significant importance on both national and international levels. His contributions align with RMIT's core values, particularly in terms of diversity and inclusion, as he exhibits exemplary leadership behaviours that foster an environment encompassing individuals from diverse backgrounds and maintain a gender-balanced representation among students and staff in his research endeavours.
Professor Matthew Warren and Team Gender Dimensions within the Australian Cyber Security Sector were chosen due to their clear demonstration of research excellence, their ability to collaborate across disciplines and colleges, and their recognition at Australia's premier security industry conference. Their report, along with its recommendations, has revealed both present and future potential to address the obstacles impeding women's representation in the Australian cyber security sector.
The team's research and report are in harmony with RMIT's core values of inclusion and impact, reflecting the institution's commitment to fostering an inclusive environment and making a meaningful difference in the field of cyber security.
Ms Kelsie Nabben has been selected for demonstrating research engagement and impact (HDR) in the social implications of emerging technologies. Her research has attracted significant attention from industry leaders who recognize the practical application of her work in shaping technology governance frameworks relevant to their sectors.
Ms. Nabben has actively encouraged interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation at the confluence of economics, engineering, law, and online communities. Her efforts have resulted in 15 publications during her candidature, along with presentations at prominent industry conferences.
In embodying RMIT's core values and aligning with the institution's "Knowledge with Action" emphasis on interdisciplinarity and external partnerships, Ms. Nabben stands as an exemplar of RMIT’s commitment to making a real-world impact through research.
Dr Bartholomeus JA van Bueren has been recognized for his research excellence in the field of Regional Circular Economy, with six journal publications stemming from his PhD thesis, four of which were published in high-impact Q1 journals. This achievement set a noteworthy record at the Graduate School of Business and Law.
During his fieldwork in Lismore, Dr van Bueren had a significant research impact by creating a flood-resistant building with community involvement, collaborating with various universities, and gaining media attention following Lismore's devastating floods. These endeavours underscore Dr van Bueren's dedication to RMIT's core values and the university's "Knowledge with Action" mission, particularly in the context of sustainability and inclusion.
Amanda was selected for this award for her contributions to advancing the public health discipline, specifically in the context of the built environment and its impacts on child health and development. Her doctoral research was recognised for her geospatial methods and she has published several papers in high quality journals. Amanda's research has also shown impact in federal government policy concerning child mental health. Her commitment to RMIT core values in social equity and inclusion was demonstrated in her research practices by ensuring children with disabilities were included in her work.
The panel selected A/Prof Angel Zhong for this award of her pioneering finance research that has contributed to new knowledge and innovations. Her research excellence is underscored through an impressive history of publications in leading journals along with external funding and acknowledgements for her research contributions. Furthermore, Angel has shown research impact through her work to improve financial literacy and safeguard financial wellbeing in the community demonstrated through her media and broad community engagement. Angel has demonstrated her commitment to RMIT core values as a successful graduate supervisor as well as being an active member of the RMIT Women Researcher’s Network.
The panel selected Dr Annette Kroen for this award for her outstanding engagement with local government and industry in transport and development in Australia growth area suburbs. Her interdisciplinary research has made a significant impact has been incorporated the Precinct Structure Planning guidelines and the National Growth Areas Alliance. As the Acting Deputy Director of the Centre for Urban Research, Dr Kroen has actively contributed to engaging with early career and HDR students. She has been responsible for coordinating research projects and internal centre activities to foster knowledge sharing and collaboration. Her work aligns well with the research priorities of RMIT’s Knowledge with Action.
Dr Chamila Gunasekara was selected for this award in recognition of the potential industry impact of his research in in construction materials and sustainability in the construction sector. His efforts have resulted in tangible benefits for end-users by cultivating partnerships, transdisciplinary research and impact-focused research training. Through his work at TREMS (Transformation of reclaimed waste into engineered materials and solutions), Dr Gunasekara has worked to establish 36 research projects with government and industry entities. Dr Gunasekara has made contributions to RMIT core values and RMIT research objectives by leading interdisciplinary research teams that bridge academia and industry while focusing on diversity and gender equity when providing opportunities for higher degree by research students.
A/Prof Charles Anderson has been honoured in recognition of his outstanding Graduate Research Leadership contributions that span multiple colleges through his involvement in the RMIT Practice Research Symposium. Charles’ contributions to the development of HDR policies and strategies across RMIT campuses have impacted the entire PRS program in Australia, Asia and Europe. For over 20 years, Charles has played a significant role in Creative Practice Research and the PRS by developing candidate-supervisor workshops, working collectively to develop the new HDR Core Curriculum in DSC and a series of talks focusing on principles of Responsible Practice in Research and Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Moreover, his commitment to inclusivity is evident in his interactions with HDR students, colleagues, and RMIT alumni.
Clarice was selected as the recipient for this award for her practice-based PhD research that has tremendous potential for research impact in reimagining fashion futures towards a just transition and the adoption of a circular economy model. Clarice’s research engagement via an accessible open platform featuring sustainable toolkits recently garnered an Australian Good Design Award in the Fashion Impact category. Additionally, Clarice’s research has yielded three publications in Q1 journals and led to presentations at industry events and conferences. Her outstanding contributions have also been complemented by her leadership role within her college, where she served as the HDR representative for the School of Fashion and Textiles, embodying RMIT's core values of inclusivity.
A/Prof Erika Gonzalez Garcia and the Translation and Interpreting (T&I) team received this award for their exceptional research impact and commitment to multicultural inclusion in translation and interpretation. Notably, their projects, such as the City of Melbourne's multilingual LGBTIQ+ terminology bank (rainbowterminology.org) and the NHMRC-funded MINDSET project addressing interpreter challenges in diagnosing dementia patients, have made a lasting impact on Culturally and Linguistically Diverse communities. The T&I team's exceptional stakeholder engagement extends to industry, Commonwealth, state, and city governments, and they have maintained a strong social media presence through rainbowterminology on Instagram. Furthermore, the T&I team actively participates in public debates and contributes to public policy discussions, aligning their work with RMIT's IDEA framework for inclusive design through engagement with Australia’s multicultural communities.
Dr Gemma Hamilton was selected for her excellent track record across research excellence, engagement, and potential impact in the area of criminology and forensic psychology. She was also selected given her demonstration of the RMIT core value of inclusion as her research demonstrates an intersectional and inclusive approach. Dr Hamilton is a recent DECRA recipient for her project “Sexual offence interviewing: Towards victim-survivor well-being and justice.” Her work on family violence, sexual assault, policing, and investigative interviewing is timely work and her research has been well received by both the research community and social partners.
Dr. Hai Dong received this award in recognition of his outstanding leadership in promoting industry engagement initiatives to HDR candidates. These initiatives have effectively facilitated the involvement of HDR candidates with RMIT's industry partners in fields such as blockchain technology, FinTech, and cryptocurrencies. Dr. Dong’s dedication to enhancing employability is evident through his collaborative research efforts with the CloudTech Group, his involvement in an ANZ Digital Finance CRC PhD project, and his recent achievement in securing a Cooperative Research Centre Project in collaboration with the Novatti Group. These endeavours create valuable opportunities for HDR candidates to engage with industry partners and address real-world research challenges. Furthermore, Dr. Dong has actively supported HDR students by helping them maximize their participation in industry events through networking and providing mentorship.
Dr Hannah Badland was selected for the Research Excellence Open award due to her impressive research track record and impact in the national disability sector. Her applied research relating to the built environment, health and social disparities strongly aligns with RMIT's values concerning inclusion, equity, and diversity. Dr Badlands’ active involvement with both national and international organizations and government bodies is evident in her ‘Contextualising Liveability in Bangkok’ research program, emphasising her commitment to making significant research impacts. She has showcased her research excellence with numerous citations in her field and has earned various research awards and distinctions including being awarded the 2022 Scopus Australia and New Zealand Outstanding Research of Excellence in Women.
The BI Team is awarded the RMIT Award for Research Engagement and Impact for their engagement and social impact in digital transformation and supply chain management in Vietnam. The team’s approach to achieving impact through their research includes innovative practice, education, and cultivating an environment where scientific contributions are esteemed throughout Vietnamese society. The team’s contributions to the transformation of Vietnam’s digital transformation and supply chain management objectives include editing 7 books and contributing to 30 book chapters on these topics. The team has contributed to 377 news articles, generating 2.3 million views, and have fostered a strong relationship with government, industry, and communities in the process - resulting in 41 research grants.
Associate Professor Jonathan Tran received the RMIT Award for Industry Engagement in Graduate Research for advancing student outcomes through numerous industry partnerships, international exchange, and exposure to real-life industry projects. Jonathan’s approach to mentorship sets students up for success – whether in a research career, or a pathway to industry careers. This is demonstrated through several research collaborations he has initiated with industry partners Thales and Replas that have provided invaluable scholarship and industry experience to his HDR candidates. A/Prof Tran has demonstrated core values by engaging HDR candidates and his own research in impactful applied research for example around innovative waste solutions.
The Aeromedical Stroke Unit Team received the RMIT Award for Research Excellence (Team) for their interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and industry partnerships in developing mobile infrastructure for stroke diagnostics. The team have worked closely with the Australian Stroke Alliance since 2017 where they were sought out by stroke physicians at the Melbourne Brain Centre to comprise the underlying interdisciplinary team for the Australian Stroke Alliance. This team was originally funded by a speculative A$1million phase 1 MRFF grant and was later funded in phase 2 with an additional A$48million. The team worked closely with device partners to develop an aeromedical platform and CT scanning infrastructure forming the RMIT node of the alliance and securing close to A$2M in research contracts. This project aims to make healthcare and treatment more accessible to Australians irrespective of their location in Australia.
Kieran Hegarty, PhD candidate in the School of Global Urban and Social Studies, was selected for this award in recognition of his research into the changing role of public libraries in an era of digital and social media. This interdisciplinary research project not only makes significant contributions to knowledge, but also informs practice change within the library and information profession. Kieran has embedded himself within a practice setting to engage with working professionals and better understand their perspectives. His work has been recognised internationally, with publications in Q1 journals, and research fellowships in Austria (the prestigious Digital Humanism Junior Fellowship) and Denmark in 2022.
Associate Professor Lauren Gurrieri was selected for this award for her significant impact and agenda track record, in particular her work to promote gender equality in advertising. Partnering with the ShEqual action coalition and funded by the Victorian Government, she has influenced industry practices, policy, and public awareness. Her framework for gender equality in advertising shaped the industry's code of ethics, and the creation of industry resources and training programs has changed industry practice. Lauren’s engagement with the community through media and social media campaigns has demystified ad analysis and stereotypes
Dr. Lisanne Adam was selected for this award by the Panel due to her significant global impact and engagement focusing on the preservation of the right to a fair trial throughout all aspects of criminal proceedings. Her active participation within and beyond the academic sphere, particularly her engagement with the media and social issues, has shaped public conversations and cultivated partnerships for enduring contributions to legal fields like wrongful convictions and the analysis of encryption laws. Still in the early stages of her research career, Dr. Adam has contributed publications to esteemed law journals, both of class A and B, and has been acknowledged for her expertise through speaking engagements at conferences and the reception of other prestigious awards.
Dr Mahshid Sadeghpour was chosen for this award in recognition of her excellent research outputs and development of the first ever privacy-preserving retinal recognition system and retinal dataset. Her excellent contributions to the research community have been recognised with the Young Scientist Research Prize by the Royal Society of Victoria in recognition of PhD research contributions. Dr Sadeghpour’s retinal recognition system has also reached the proof-of-concept stage with promising potential for research impact. Dr Sadeghpour also exemplifies RMIT core values by mentoring undergraduate students in the field of biometrics and cybersecurity research and leadership involvement in HDR student societies.
Dr Nic Bao was selected because of his strong track record of research excellence. He has an outstanding research trajectory particularly for a recent graduate with over 40 articles published in a diverse range of journals and research outputs. He has considerable engagement and impact in architectural design and design technology with a focus on advanced architecture. Dr Bao has been recognised nationally and internationally for his work in computational architectural design and robotic fabrication.
Prof Sefa Awaworyi Churchill was chosen by the Panel for this award for demonstrating exceptional research excellence in the area of energy economics, gender equality and human capital development. Prof Churchill has published extensively in leading journals, developed a strong cohort of HDR candidates and has been a chief investigator on national and international grants. Prof Churchill has been recognised as one of seven global field leaders to collaborate on addressing issues relating to climate change and sustainable futures. Sefa has demonstrated RMIT core values by providing mentorship to junior staff at the RMIT Centre for International Development while also influencing global policy on grand challenges such as promoting child wellbeing and inclusive growth for marginalised children.
Prof Stefan Kasapis was selected for this award for potential research impact in engineering advanced techno and bio-functionality for sustainability and food security. Prof Kasapis' interdisciplinary research is in alignment with RMIT's Strategy Knowledge with Action, which emphasizes research translation and commercialization, and has resulted in nine patent applications in the food industry.
He has engaged with industry notably with Sanitarium Health to improve nutritional profiles of food products. The panel was also impressed with Prof Kasapis’ excellent HDR supervision track record and emphasis on diversity and inclusion as well as strong publication record in top journals.
Robert is the inaugural Professor of Biofabrication and Tissue Engineering at RMIT, holds an adjunct honorary appointment as Head of Research at the Department of Neuroscience, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne and has supervised 16 PhD and 14 post graduate students to completion.
Robert received his PhD in 1996 on mitochondrial polymorphisms in human disease and has 131 peer-reviewed publications. His team pioneered first generation gene editing technologies as part of a worldwide consortium and were among the first to carry out in vivo gene editing of the dystrophin mutation in muscle of the mdx mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Robert’s research into autologous regenerative cell therapies for neuromuscular diseases has directly contributed to the establishment of the Melbourne Neuromuscular Research Institute-SVHM and National Muscular Dystrophy Research Centre-Howard Florey/Murdoch Institutes and three major multi-centre programs (Bionic Technologies Australia; ARC Centre for Electromaterials Science, ACES I and II), where he held scientific, executive and governing board responsibilities.
Mahyar is an internationally recognised additive manufacturing (3D printing) research leader, who has completed a PhD and five fellowships in 3D printing for different industries such as Airbus, Boeing and Ford in Australia, the Netherlands and Germany.
He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at RMIT and a key researcher on a collaborative project between Ford Motor Company and RMIT, where he is developing first-in-world simulation techniques for multi jet fusion-based additive manufacturing.
Laura is a sessional teacher at RMIT, and an interdisciplinary researcher concerned with the intersection of markets, inequality and violence against women, with a particular expertise in online forms of the sex trade including the evolving pornography market. Laura has presented her work on the pornography market, digital platforms, and women’s inequality to diverse international audiences, across the fields of business, consumer culture, and public policy.
Since completing her PhD, Laura has been able to apply her academic, industry and community engagement experience to her work at the eSafety Commission, where she develops research, policy, and strategic partnerships in the prevention of technology-facilitated abuse and violence against women online.
Annan is Professor at RMIT, obtaining his PhD degree in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Newcastle in 2011. His major research area includes advanced laboratory testing and constitutive/numerical modelling of multi-phase porous media such as unsaturated soils. He has published over 250 journal papers and has supervised 11 HDRs to their successful completions at RMIT.
He was the RMIT University Research Committee Board Member and the RMIT ERA Advisor for several research areas and is now the HDR manager for Civil Engineering – managing one of the largest HDR programs in RMIT with more than 140 HDRs. In addition, he serves as the Vice President for the International Society of Environmental Geotechnology (2020-2025) and holds editorial roles for seven highly reputed international journals.
Kate is currently the Associate Dean (Higher Degrees by Research) in the School of Engineering.
She has been fortunate enough to work on several high impact projects such as the bionic eye, personalised orthopaedic implants, epilepsy solutions and now in collaboration with the Australian Stroke Alliance she is developing a new LiteCT for the detection and treatment of stroke in remote communities.
Since joining RMIT in 2020 as a lecturer, Communication Design, Nicola has worked in collaborative partnership with First Nations creatives, community schools and design organisations. These participatory research projects have fostered social and cultural wellbeing.
Her work has created significant impact within Australia’s design industry, culturally safe employment opportunities for First Nations artists, and a major milestone for protecting Indigenous cultural and intellectual property within design and digital spaces. Nicola continues to build on her international reputation for working in ethical and meaningful ways alongside First Nations creatives and communities.
Sara is a doctoral candidate in the field of gender, business and human rights at the RMIT School of Management. Her research focuses on gender in global production networks, with an emphasis on women workers in the garment industry.
She has also presented insightful data and participant-level stories about the situation for garment workers in Myanmar at several national and international conferences, and her work has been recognised in media outlets such as the New York Times.
The Intelligent Informatics and Control (I2C) Research Group focuses on all aspects of intelligent data-driven modelling, control and optimisation in complex network environments, and their applications in industries such as energy, automotive, manufacturing, sociology and biology.
The research group has developed the state-of-the-art fundamental theory of engineering network systems. The theory has significant applications in safeguarding critical infrastructures such as smart grids and transport systems.
The research group has also developed innovative technologies to model and control renewable-rich smart grids. These technologies are critical in a smooth transition to clean energy, while keeping the reliability and security of the electricity supply under control. The team has delivered impactful applied research with direct benefit to society and industry.
Associate Professor Rebecca Yang has supervised 20 HDR candidates to date and has jointly published 49 papers in high-ranking journals, conferences and industry reports. Rebecca is a Student Chapter Advisor on the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction, providing a support network for postgraduate students sharing research experiences.
Rebecca led the RMIT student chapter in securing funding to explore HDR employability in collaboration with four universities and improved the global disciplinary HDR network. She also has developed and delivered a stakeholder management module as one of four project management training programs to about 200 HDRs across RMIT since 2019.
Associate Professor Brad Haylock is a designer, publisher, academic and coordinator of the School of Design's Higher Degrees by Research program.
Brad's research spans typography, publishing, and the sociology of critique. He has led numerous government- and industry-funded research projects and is the founding editor of Surpllus (an independent, para-academic imprint that focuses on critical and speculative practices across art, design, and theory). Brad is also the chair of the RMIT Practice Research Symposium in Australia.
Associate Professor Gillian Vesty, Deputy Dean L&T AISSC, CoBL strives for impactful research fostered by strong industry network connections. Striving to address wicked problems through innovative research designs, Gillian engages her students on research projects that expose challenging industry problems and generate research artefacts that encourage continued experimentation.
Gillian has guided her PhD students toward social impact research that address health and wellbeing challenges, such as resource constraints in the healthcare industry and in public hospitals where costs have burgeoned due to the pandemic or dealing with wellbeing literacy in the workplace. Taking a value-based healthcare perspective, her students have considered the emerging trends and the way different countries deal with preventative health to reduce the burden on society. Supported by industry partners, Gillian has ensured her HDR student research provides them with agile ways of working and job-ready skills that are recognised by employers.
For her academic career HDR students Gillian recognises that an important part of their research journey is the development of simulated artefacts in the form of serious games, that provide innovative vehicles to foster continued debate, provide educational insights and hybridised expertise along with a powerful vehicle for ongoing experimental research.
Dr Brett C. Johnson is a solid-state physicist recognised for his work on defects in semiconductors for applications in quantum technologies. His research focuses on the integration and read-out of two-level quantum systems in practical devices for quantum sensing and quantum computation.
Dr Johnson’s leadership in this field is evidenced by the publication of over 130 articles in top-ranking journals, plenary and invited presentations at various international conferences, and as a committee member for a number of prominent international conferences. He has developed strong international collaborations and attracted significant external funding to develop quantum technologies in Australia further.
Professor Daniel X. Harris is an ARC Future Fellow, previously ARC DECRA fellow, previously RMIT Principal Research Fellow, the Associate Dean, Research & Innovation, in the School of Education, and the founder and co-lead of the Creative Agency research lab. Daniel is the first and only transgender professor at RMIT University and their transdisciplinary creative research and scholarship reflects their intersectional approach.
Their research focuses upon matters of social justice, led by attention to creativity in education, gender, ethnic and sexuality inequalities, and mental health and wellbeing. They recently completed an RMIT VC Principal Research Fellowship (2021).
The urgent need for research excellence across these intersectional areas—particularly the role of creativity to transform social change through public pedagogy, activism, and creative education, is evidenced by the international uptake of Harris’ work and the growing call for more creative approaches to education and mental health research, and across community/industry partnerships, especially in the East Asian/Pacific region.
Associate Professor Mahdi Jalili, a former Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, is recognised nationally and internationally for his pioneering work in network science, machine learning and their applications in sustainable energy systems. Mahdi is a Fellow of Engineers Australia and a Senior Member of IEEE.
His research in network science, energy analytics and machine learning applications was extensively published and received over 5,700 citations with an h-index of 45. Since joining RMIT in 2014, Mahdi has received over $10M in research funding (including four ARC projects). He is currently leading a significant project ($5.197M in funding from the Victorian Government) to establish the first electric vehicle living laboratory in the southern hemisphere in the CBD Campus.
Dr McKay's research focuses on ensuring developments in information technology to make information access and spread fairer, more equitable, and more socially beneficial.
Dana is currently working on three major projects, including an investigation of online information in view of change; the role of technology in intimate partner violence (using technology as part of a pattern of abuse); and developing online systems for browsing information such as books, videos and news.
Dr John Doyle’s emerging research practice uses architectural design tools to explore innovative models for urban design. More recently, his research has focused on rapid urbanisation in megacities throughout Asia.
Working with colleagues in the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University and a network of architects, designers and artists from the region, his work has led to a critical reappraisal of urban density in Asia. This research has developed a series of high-density urban models to address the challenges related to climate change, equity, affordability, and food security. These models use emerging digital design tools to create alternative urban scenarios, and methods of city-making that continue to contribute to the multidisciplinary domain of urban research.
Dr Saima Ahmad’s research focuses on cultivating bullying-free, healthy and sustainable work cultures for employees and workers to thrive. She has made prominent contributions to knowledge in these fields by framing new models to build positive and sustainable work environments.
Ahmad makes a strong commitment to RMIT’s research environment through her active involvement in the HDR program at the College of Business and Law, Business and Human Rights Centre, and by bringing new partnerships and collaborations to RMIT. Her work is internationally influential, with more than 874 citations to her work in Google Scholar and more than fifteen thousand reads via ResearchGate alone.
As an RMIT ECR, she has co-authored 15 peer-reviewed articles in the last three years. She received the Emerald Literati award for outstanding paper in 2019. Saima serves on the editorial board of the European Management Journal and the advisory committee of the Australasian Business Ethics Network.
Dr Sumaiya's research explores the optical and electrical properties of phase change oxide thin-films for optoelectronic and electronic applications. She has successfully fabricated prototypes using the unique properties of phase change oxides and clever device engineering techniques. The multi-functionality of the devices she designed provides a significant technological advance using novel concepts, which contribute to improving integration density, speed, and energy efficiency in future electronics.
For her outstanding research, her work has been published in several top-tier journals and won several awards and prizes, including the Young Scientist Research Prize 2021 (2nd place in the Physical Science category) by the Royal Society of Victoria.
Dr Erik L'Heureux Faia is a Dean's Chair Associate Professor at the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS). A fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a tenured professor, Erik has taught and mentored students for more than 18 years. He is currently the Master of Architecture (Design) program director, teaching a new generation of architects to be committed to the complexities of architecture situated in the hot air of the equator.
Through his creative design practice, Erik specialises in designing for the dense equatorial city, using simple monolithic forms and delicate veils to calibrate buildings, interiors, and experiences to the equatorial climate in delightful and surprising ways. At NUS, he has led the transformation of the home of the Department of Architecture with the adaptive reuse of two 1970s buildings, creating pedagogical lessons in built form that link environmental and energy performance with design excellence.
Dr Nameer Al Khafaf completed his PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, researching energy analytics to improve network operation and support decision-making. This timely research is a significant step in moving towards a decarbonised economy as an immediate action to prevent further global harm and damage from climate change inaction.
In addition to the social impact and industry benefits, Nameer has successfully contributed to policy on a government-funded project, covered by the Herald Sun. He published papers in leading academic journals such as IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics and Renewable Energy, as well as several other Q1-indexed journals and conference papers.
The Civil Engineering Research Team works with industries and government organisations to provide innovative solutions to address urgent problems related to waste materials and sustainability.
The team has developed several novel techniques and created demonstrable impacts, such as repurposing a wide range of waste materials for civil engineering applications, diverting waste materials from landfills, converting waste to resources (binders and aggregates), creating eco-efficient and low-carbon-footprint materials from waste, applying cutting-edge tools to resolve environmental issues, and adding value to waste.
The team’s outstanding research works have received exceptional media coverage, over 1700 coverage by News portals, including mainstream media and over 50 live radio programs in Australia and overseas.
Dr Jimeno is RMIT Principal Research Fellow with expertise in natural language processing and machine learning applied to the biomedical domain. Working with Telstra Health and local start-up Opyl, Jimeno has contributed to and led the research of a dashboard that allows residential aged care personnel to identify the areas of deficiency among the residents in residential aged care. This research allows for better placement of resources and decisions in residential aged care.
In collaboration with Opyl, Dr Yepes has been leading research on automatically determining characteristics of successful clinical trials, potentially greatly accelerating the safe development and release of new drugs to the public. This issue could have a significant impact and benefit public health and safety.
Anna Hickey-Moody is recognized internationally for designing innovative processes of research that assist vulnerable communities. She has developed new models of research co-design that enrich the lives of young members of disadvantaged communities.
Engagement with community across Australia and England has been at the centre of her prestigious ARC Future Fellowship research design. This process involved working closely with industry, particularly with public schools, community service providers, religious institutions, and charities.
Her Future Fellowship involved co-design with over 500 research participants in hard-to-reach communities. She engaged 13 cities in 6 cities in qualitative research, including ground-breaking forms of arts-based content creation. Her research outcomes have been taken up at federal level in developing Australian government anti-racism initiatives and distributed through publications and popular public art exhibitions in London, Manchester, Melbourne, and Adelaide. Anna is now developing new models for widening university participation through her ARC Linkage, where she is working with five industry partners to build pathways to further education and employment for youth.
Aiden Warren’s research in the area of international relations has made a significant policy impact in addressing global security threats pertaining to nuclear proliferation, US-China-Australian relations, the Indo-Pacific region, and issues relating to cyber, artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous weapons.
As Fulbright Scholar in Australia-United States Alliance Studies and recipient of the Category 1 grant: Department of Defence, Strategy, Policy and Industry Group: ‘Assessing the Implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in a Trilateral Context,’ the quality and translative impact of his research has created ‘impact through collaboration’ and actions towards ‘solving global public policy problems.’
Warren has established himself as a global leader and prominent University interlocutor to Washington DC. He has a sustained translation of research to develop evidence-based solutions to real-world problems and has ensured the knowledge created by his research is clear and accessible, such that it has been embraced and applied by government end-users (U.S. Departments of State and Defense, Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (DFAT), Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet) to achieve beneficial societal outcomes. This has paved the way for policy development and improvements in practice in terms of providing guardrails and governance mechanisms towards addressing key global security threats.
Dr Aaron Lane is a legal scholar and expert on blockchain technology's legal and economic implications. Aaron's conceptual and applied research has been leveraged to inform policy makers about the regulation of blockchain and crypto assets in Australia and internationally and has attracted great media coverage. His empirical research is currently being leveraged to provide doctrinal and practical insights to the legal profession and law enforcement community of cryptocurrency practitioners.
Dr Lane serves on the editorial board of Frontiers in Blockchain, is a member of the Digital Commerce Committee of the Law Council of Australia and was recently appointed to the Blockchain Expert Group of Business at OECD.
Dr Matthew Riley’s practice research encompasses experimental and speculative design, art practice and critical forms of play and has been recognised in exhibitions, conferences, symposia and events in Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland Portugal, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, France, Japan and Austria.
Matthew's urban and non-urban public projects have been situated in municipalities and sites across Melbourne, exploring how creative interventions shape places, communities and spaces.
He is currently a member of the Future Play Lab and lecturer in the Master of Animation, Games and Interactivity program at RMIT University.
Dr Tabinda Sarwar’s research focuses on detecting and predicting health deterioration in residents of aged care facilities.The current methods of monitoring aged care home residents involve time-intensive assessments; hence it is crucial to timely identify poor health conditions in order to develop care and intervention plans to minimize the health risks.
Dr Sarwar's data-driven solution for tracking the health status of the residents is considered for Telstra Health's Resident Manager tool, which is utilised by over 350 facilities all over Australia.
Vuong is a recipient of the exchange PhD student scholarship, working for the H2020- MSCA-RISE project, and the best postgraduate student paper award at the 10th Australian Congress on Applied Mechanics 2021 Conference, organised by Engineering Australia.
During his candidature, Vuong developed a novel virtual computational framework for 3D concrete printing modelling and demonstrated the ability to combine 3D printing technology and recycled plastic to offer sustainable construction solutions.
His publications are in the top 1% of civil engineering journals.
Uyen Nguyen is an animator, designer and educator whose creative research practice develops sound-based works, public art, interactive installations, experimental games and urban play interventions.
As a PhD candidate in the School of Design, Uyen is researching how play can be harnessed as a design strategy for interaction with sound. Collaborating with leading artists, software developers, game makers, creative producers, research partners and cultural organisations, her gallery-based and site-specific works have been shared in national and international venues, events and exhibitions including Science Museum Oklahoma (USA), Kajaani University of Applied Sciences (Finland), Digital Games Research Association (Japan), Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (UK), St Pölten University of Applied Science (Austria), TarraWarra Museum of Art (Aus), Experimenta Life Forms (Aus)and Playable City Melbourne (Aus).
Her socially engaged practice has been shared with diverse community and professional networks and partners, disseminating expertise to public audiences through invited workshops, publications, interviews and presentations. Uyen’s research has impact and relevance for sonic interaction design, community and civic renewal, public space, social well-being, urban planning, place-making and creative technologies. Uyen is a lecturer in the Master of Animation, Games and Interactivity (RMIT), a member of the Future Play Lab and works in the collective YomeciPlay.
Dr Anwar explored policy texts, interviews and field observations to develop an innovative analytical approach entitled postcolonial Islamic governmentality. Javed's PhD research has made significant contributions to the field of gender equality and education, especially for young female learners in Pakistan.
Professor Christian Doerig is a recognised leader in the field of malaria kinomics, pioneering the study of cell signalling in the most virulent of the parasites causing human malaria. Christian’s research outcomes are being used globally as the basis for drug discovery.
Christian is currently serving as "Directeur de Recherches" at the French government biomedical research agency INSERM, Honorary Professor of the University of Glasgow and Adjunct Professor at Monash University.
He has a highly successful track record in coordinating large international research consortia, including several EU-funded international consortia in malaria research, involving partners in Europe, India, and Africa. One of his current research interests involves the host cell signalling response to intracellular pathogens like malaria parasites and the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus.
Professor Doerig’s group showed in 2011 that malaria parasites hijack signalling pathways of the red blood cells they parasitise. Dr Jack Adderley, a post-doctoral fellow in the Doerig group, has now revealed the full extent of this take-over of the red blood cell by the parasite (Adderley et al, Nature Communications 2020), and Ms Tayla Williamson, a PhD student in the group, is looking at the effects of some of the host-targeting drugs on the parasite.
Dr Zhang’s is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, RMIT Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, and a Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering.
Her research is at the forefront of the field of biomimetic nanotechnology and nanomaterials, especially in biomimetic membranes and nano-devices for efficient separation, controlled release, and energy conversion.
Dr Zhang’s publication record has been prolific, including in top-tiered journals, over the last four years , co-authoring 55 high-quality and highly cited publications (H-index of 27) and registering two patent applications. She has also delivered more than 10 invited talks and been invited as a reviewer for over 20 international journals.
Her research excellence has been nationally and internationally recognised by several competitive fellowships, awards, and grants, including the 2021 IAAM Young Scientist Medal and international recognition as the 2020 Class of Influential Researchers by Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
Dr Baoyue Zhang is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Engineering and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET). Zhang completed her PhD from RMIT University, making considerable advances in the field of novel sensing material development and applications.
Her research has demonstrated a facile, low-cost way of achieving ultralow-concentration biomolecule sensing capability using plasmonic two-dimensional (2D) materials. This strategy has been successfully expanded to provide a pathway for early cancer diagnosis technology.
Baoyue’s outstanding research performance includes the publication of over 36 research articles in high profile journals with a citation of 1100+ and an h-index of 19.
Dr Zhang has been very active in industry engagement for research project commercialisation, dedicating herself to achieving research-based technology translation.
Professor David Forrest is the Higher Degree by Research (HDR) Coordinator in the School of Art and has previously undertaken that role in the School of Education. In the past, he also served as HDR Director for the College of Design and Social Context.
Forrest has made an invaluable contribution to Higher Degree Research, with his extraordinary track record of over 50 timely Masters and PhD completions.
He has produced six books on doctoral research in the arts and education, highlighting his scholarship in the field of doctoral education and offers an exemplary model to other RMIT supervisors.
Professor Alan Wong is recognised in Australia, the USA and around the world as a leading researcher in the field of early fault detection technology and as a successful technology start-up CEO driving significant changes in the power industry.
He successfully developed a commercially viable product called Early Fault Detection (EFD) and introduced it to the market in 2013. The core IP of the EFD technology was created by Professor Wong in one of his ARC Discovery projects and is patented by RMIT University.
EFD technology is now a multi-award-winning product that identifies fire-risk situations in power networks before they progress to complete failures. The patented EFD has successfully detected more than 20 failing high-voltage conductors in Victoria, New South Wales and California and was included in the 2020-2022 Utility Wildfire Mitigation Plans in California USA as part of the wildfire mitigation technology.
Dr Jenny Kennedy has established herself as a leading digital media scholar whose high impact research speaks to public and industry concerns. Her work on smart home technologies, for example, has drawn attention from international news media, including The New York Times, industry leaders such as Google, and advocacy groups such as Women in Voice.
Jenny’s research charts shifts in digital technology practices against the context of rapid decision-making. Her work in this area has a strong focus on digital inclusion issues and the impacts of digital transformation on the domestic fabric of homes and everyday life.
Musharavati Ephraim Munyanyi is a PhD candidate in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing. He has significant experience working with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government ministries, and various research institutions, including the United Nations, the Ministry of Finance (Zimbabwe), and RedR Australia. Notably, Musharavati’s appointment to contribute to the United Nations Human Development Report lends support to the important and policy-relevant work he is doing.
Musharavati’s research is multi-disciplinary and focuses on Applied Economics. He has an extensive track record in publishing his work in leading journals such as the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization, Energy Economics, and Journal of Business Research. His research publications have contributed to answering questions on how to: reduce energy poverty and obesity, improve homeownership rates, narrow gender gaps in health outcomes, enhance the efficacy of foreign aid at the subnational level, and increase the adoption of clean energy, among others.
Professors Feeny, Posso and Churchill have made substantial contributions to research on child well-being in lower-income countries. Specifically, they have excelled in their research examining child labour, child sponsorship and child health, cutting across many of the Sustainable Development Goals. This is evidenced by their numerous publications in A and A* journals as well as through the awarding of over $1 million in external research funding from United Nations agencies, government departments and international NGOs. By collecting new primary data and using innovative research techniques on secondary data, their research has led to evidence-based policy recommendations that international development organisations have adopted.
Professor Alemayehu Molla is acknowledged as a leader in ensuring RMIT’s HDR policies and strategies are successfully implemented. As Director of the Doctoral Training Centre at the College of Business and Law (COBL), Professor Molla introduced a range of initiatives to enable a strong and supportive intellectual community for HDR candidates, such as, Best Milestone Paper Award, Change of Supervision Protocol, Doctoral Training Seminars, and Curriculum Revitalisation to enhance the quality of HDR training and provide a transformative experience for candidates and staff.
Molla led the five-year HDR program review and subsequent enhancement plan. As the Deputy Head of School Research and Innovation (July 2015 to June 2017), he led initiatives to integrate candidates into the School’s culture. He also provides excellent mentorship and support for HDR supervisors, committed to ensuring learning and development opportunities and excellent academic standards.
Associate Professor Richardson has been dedicated to supporting HDR candidates and their supervisors for more than 10 years. She has worked together with HDR candidates, supervisors, and the School of Graduate Research to shape policy and enhance the candidates’ experience throughout their candidature at the School, College and University levels.
She instigated the PhD graduation in May (originally part of the Honorary Awards Ceremony) and advocated for HDR candidates to be treated more similarly to staff than to undergraduate students, as HDR candidates produce a significant proportion of the data that is published in internationally peer-reviewed journals that enhance the reputation of RMIT University internationally.
Soumitri collaborates with researchers at Alfred Health to improve health outcomes by activating patients’ ability to access products and services. His work focuses on developing solutions that can be commercialised , that are aimed at improving the quality of life for people with chronic, and complex conditions and keep them out of hospital. The capacity development ecology purpose built for this project provides researchers and PhD candidates clear and deliberate access to a targeted community of practice. Within the context of chronic medical management, the vision of this project breaks new ground by taking the hospital and clinicians into the homes of the patients. The two crucial impact statements informing this work are: a desire to produce outcomes that have a capacity to be commercialised at scale to reach a low-SES demographic in the global south; and secondly, to be globally focused thus independent of local health funding priorities.
Associate Professor Annan Zhou has made seminal contributions to the understanding and modelling of the complex hydromechanical behaviour of unsaturated soils. He has established a new modelling framework to tackle the most fundamental issues such as strength, deformation, and soil-water interaction for unsaturated soils, subjected to complex mechanical loads (like construction and excavation) and environmental loads (like flood/draught, heat/cold wave, and sea-level rise). Based on the novel constitutive modelling framework and robust numerical techniques, he has developed advanced numerical tools for better design and assessment of infrastructure involving unsaturated soils in Australia and worldwide.
Dr Sarah Foster leads a program of applied, multidisciplinary, policy-relevant research designed to influence policy and practice to create healthier built environments. Her research examines the impact of apartment design standards on residents’ health and wellbeing.
As an RMIT V-C Research Fellow, she developed a comprehensive data platform combining policy-specific apartment/building design metrics with a survey of residents and neighbourhood liveability measures. This rich dataset underpins her recent successful ARC Discovery Project and prestigious Future Fellowship, which form a research program designed to inform the content and detail of apartment design policies and the planning of apartment precincts. Sarah’s commitment to excellence is evidenced by the quality of her publications in esteemed journals, including four Web of Science ‘highly cited’ papers; category 1 grant income; extensive connections with policymakers, professional bodies, and health advocates; and the uptake of her research in policy and planning and health advocacy.
Dr Chandrapala’s most recent research has focused on developing approaches to reducing acid whey, a major waste stream generated through the production of Greek yoghurt and soft cheeses. She has developed advanced membrane technologies to selectively remove unwanted acid and calcium from dairy production waste. The outcomes of her research have attracted considerable interest from local and international food companies seeking to minimise waste and environmental impact, such as Saputo, Arla and Fonterra. Her close collaborations with the Dairy industry led to the translation of her research into real practices within the dairy sector.
She is recognised both locally and internationally in the field of Food Technology with an h-index of 27 with over 2.5k total citations. She has published 93 publications, out of which more than 95% are within Q1 journals. In addition to her research contributions, she has successfully graduated multiple PhD students at RMIT, each with at least four publications.
Dr Marco De Sisto is an early career lecturer in the School of Management and a member of the Centre for People, Organisation and Work (CPOW). His research interests concern the inter-relationship between Human Resource (HR) management principles and the decision-making processes of Top Management Teams in unstable or extreme environments.
Harnessing a variety of theories such as collective leadership, signalling theory, and social exchange theory, Dr De Sisto’s work explores how HR and emergency management approaches can work together to result in more effective mitigation and responses to disasters both within and beyond Australia.
Dr De Sisto’s research outputs have already had considerable academic impact. In the last three years, he has co-authored 11 peer-reviewed articles, attracted almost $600,000 in national and international funding, Beyond the academy. He has also published in the Australian Human Resource Institute (AHRI) magazine and been interviewed by SBS radio.
Dr Denver Linklater received her doctorate in March 2021 and is already credited with world-renowned expertise in the areas of nanofabrication, materials science, and biotechnology. Denver’s research on the design and development of antibacterial nanomaterials has created significant impact in the field of antibacterial surface modifications.
She has developed relationships with industry partners to commercialise her outputs and to realise the real-world impact that would significantly reduce the incidence of bacterial contamination in the medical implant, textiles, wearable electronics, and packaging industries and revolutionise the way we prevent microbial contamination of materials.
Denver’s research excellence is reflected by numerous awards, including Humboldt Research Fellowship, Victoria Fellowship, AINSE ANSTO French Embassy (SAAFE) Research Internship and high-quality publications in top-ranking journals such as Advanced Materials, Nature Reviewers Microbiology, PNAS, and ACS Nano. In addition to her strong relationships with industry, she has received grants totalling $200,000, since 2020.
Dr Angel Zhong is an award-winning RMIT finance researcher whose work attracts significant national and international media attention.. Her work to improve the financial literacy and wellbeing of Australians has seen her recognised as the finalist of the Women in Finance Awards 2021 in Australia (Thought leader category).
An aspiring academic with strong ties to industry, Angel specialises in the field of empirical asset pricing and investor behaviour in financial markets, which can influence the stability and security of markets globally, and her research has strong investment applications for investors.
She is an editorial board member of two prestigious field journals including Finance Research Letters and Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money. She is a successful recipient of grants in the area of measuring mispricing and sentiment in the Australian equity market.
Dr Pathum Chamikara Mahawaga Arachchige is a highly motivated researcher who is passionate about high-quality research. Chamikara investigated privacy in the context of big data analytics and machine learning, a fundamental component of cyber security that is at the front line in Australia's national interest.
His thesis looks at data privacy and data utility and proposes approaches to achieve a balance between them. Through scalable methods, the results help in conducting large-scale data analytics in a privacy-preserving manner. Chamikara produced multiple valuable privacy preservation mechanisms during his PhD. and published them in highly reputed journals.
Chamikara finished his PhD in 2021, with his papers already attracting more than 400 citations . For his valuable research work, he received the Research Achievement Award for outstanding research performance in the Academic Year 2020, School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University.
Currently, Chamikara works as a research fellow at CSIRO's Data61, Australia.
Dr Sarah Robson’s research investigated the relational systems intrinsic to Non-Objective Art. Not reliant upon the representation or subjective expression, a non-objective artwork creates a framework of interwoven relationships, both conceptual and somatic, to engender an aesthetic encounter. Dr Robson’s research specifically addressed Non-Objective Art’s immaterial qualities, capacity to accommodate paradox and implied impersonal rationalism, thereby challenging the reductive essentialism of a Western-centric critical perspective.
The inadequacy of spoken or written language to fully express the unique, experiential complexity of an artwork reinforces the agency and value of our aesthetic interactions and their relationship to lived experience. Understanding how Non-Objective Art can be reflective of and contribute to the day-to-day world is essential for asserting its ongoing human, societal and economic worth. Dr Robson’s research contributes to this understanding. Both of Dr Robson’s examiners identified the work as outstanding and excellent and marked on the report “recognition of outstanding work’.
Dr Mayumi Silva completed her PhD in the field of Food Science and Technology at RMIT University. Her PhD is focused on developing dairy-based primary and double emulsions using grapeseed oil as a carrier for functional ingredients with the use of ultrasound technology. Ultrasound is an emerging non-thermal technology that will be used in the dairy industry in the near future. This project provides economically and environmentally beneficial suggestions to the agri-food sector, and the novel findings relevant to the ultrasound-induced structural changes of milk proteins will enhance the existing knowledge in dairy and emulsion sciences.
Mayumi has published all her PhD research articles in Q1 indexed journals. She has published book chapters, review articles, magazine articles, and attended international conferences during her candidature. Mayumi has been recognized as one of the Australian global talent holders in the agri-food sector based on her exceptional and outstanding achievements during the PhD journey.
Meaningful inclusion of lived experience perspectives via designated workforce roles is an important factor in best practice mental health service delivery outcomes. It has been repeatedly highlighted as a key to achieving mental health reform both in Australia and internationally. However, this workforce is still emerging, often poorly understood and under supported. Over the last three years, Dr Louise Byrne and her research team at RMIT University: Dr Lena Wang, Ms Helena Roennfeldt and Dr Melissa Chapman, have completed a program of work to create the first state and national-level guidelines for effective employment and development of the lived experience workforce both within and beyond the mental health sector. These policy documents provide a roadmap for organisational and sector leaders across diverse settings to establish governance, policies, and practices that support sustainable and effective growth of the workforce.
Dr Spina is a computer scientist, who is passionate about applying data science, text analytics, and information retrieval techniques to interactive information access scenarios, including fact-checking and voice-enabled user interfaces.
The potential and impact of his research includes a patented method for automating the training of intelligent virtual assistants using a range of dynamic or generic data sets.
His cross-disciplinary collaboration with RMIT ABC Fact Check led to the establishment of RMIT FactLab, a research hub focused on the evaluation and development of novel information access technologies to assist fact-checking experts in debunking misinformation that is spread on the web and social media.
Dr Spina is the recipient of a prestigious ARC DECRA fellowship to design fairness-aware presentation strategies to access rich information such as fact-checked content via voice-enabled user interfaces. He is also an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.
Professor Judith Bessant, AM, in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, is an internationally recognised scholar in youth studies and political sociology. Her work offers conceptually novel, rigorous, historical approaches to youth studies, politics, media-technology, and sociology. Judith is widely published with many books, chapters, and journal articles to her name.
As a measure of national and international recognition, Professor Bessant was awarded an Order of Australia in 2017 ‘for significant service as a social scientist, advocate and academic specialising in youth studies’. As well as advising governments, business, and NGOs, she is also a member of numerous editorial boards and international research collaborations in the UK, Europe, the USA, North America, and South Africa.
Dr Monica Barratt’s internationally recognised research on psychoactive drug use and drug markets in contemporary digital societies has contributed to significant changes in policy at national and international levels. Australian coroners have invited Dr Barratt to provide evidence at inquests into drug-related deaths. Coroners and government inquiry committees have drawn from the evidence base Dr Barratt has built up to recommend that governments adopt more innovative policy responses to the increasingly prevalent issue of unpredictable drug markets, including drug checking and early warning systems.
Key international agencies, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, cite and repurpose Dr Barratt’s work on digitally mediated drug markets in their annual publications. Through regular invitations to provide expert commentary in the media and multiple invited panels and events, Dr Barratt’s research has led to increased awareness and understanding of the policies and practices that can reduce drug-related harms in the community.
Dr Asma Khalid is one of the pioneers in the field of diamond-silk optics and is recognised as an innovator for her applications in smart non-invasive biosensing. Asma has an emerging worldwide reputation in establishing new interdisciplinary collaborations between researchers in biomaterials, photonics, and engineering to address complex problems in biomedical research.
In 2017 Asma was awarded the RMIT Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and established a state-of-the-art Optical Silk Lab. Asma has subsequently devised smart silk wound dressings that are able to monitor for early signs of infection and healing progression in wounds. Asma’s work on these innovative silk dressings received significant attention from media, researchers, and clinicians across the country and worldwide. Asma is the current recipient of an IDEAS Grant from the National Health Medical and Research Council (NHMRC), committed to the development and testing of smart wound dressings for burns.
Dr Olga Kokshagina is an RMIT Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Graduate School of Business and Law. Olga’ s expertise falls in the areas of strategy, innovation, and technology, with her research connected to the digital transformation of legacy organisations. Olga has led collaborative projects across multiple industries in the fields of veracity, AI, digital health, and collaborative innovation. Olga's contribution to the field has been recognised through the award of European and nationally competitive grants and her research has led to publications in top management and design journals.
Olga has a track record in translating findings into practical outcomes including, contributing to two start-up creations, patents, trademarks, and the dissemination of articles. Her recent work on consequences of digital transformation received the best paper award at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in 2020, and her work on designing a collaborative research project with Callaghan Innovation New Zealand contributed to the establishment of Veracity lab in 2021. Olga is an appointed member of the French Digital Council (CNNUM).
Dr Jonathan Kolieb works in the field of international law. His research and engagement address the challenge of improving the corporate sector’s respect for international humanitarian and human rights law, especially in areas affected by armed conflict. In partnership with the Australian Red Cross, Jonathan’s work has forged new ground in the global business community’s awareness and understanding of international humanitarian law. His work has been instrumental in the development of innovative, practical guidance tools and training packages designed to assist businesses in embedding a greater appreciation of international humanitarian law into their corporate policies and operations.
Jonathan’s work contributed to the establishment of the Australian Red Cross’ ‘Business and International Humanitarian Law Hub’ and informed United Nations’ guidelines for businesses operating in conflict-affected areas.
As a PhD researcher at RMIT, Mehran Ghasemlou has an extraordinary track record of publications w more than45 papers published in prestigious research journals. He is amongst the most highly cited PhD researchers with an H-index of 25 (Google Scholar) with over 3,000 citations. This is a reflection of how innovative and revolutionary his research has been to date.
During his time at RMIT, he has focused on researching the development of packaging and materials engineered to mimic the self-cleaning properties of the lotus leaf. This work has the potential to significantly reduce the risk of contamination from packaging in food handling and medical settings while also reducing the impact packaging has on the environment, features which are highly sought after in the packaging industry.
He is now applying his expertise to develop the next generation of bioplastics and biobased materials, focusing on engineering new sustainable materials.
Ding Wen ‘Nic’ Bao is a Lecturer in Architecture at the School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University. He is a Registered Architect in Australia and the U.S., and UK RIBA Chartered Architect. Nic is completing his PhD at the Centre for Innovative Structures & Materials, School of Engineering and Tectonic Formation Lab, School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT. His research is truly interdisciplinary, exploring how buildings can be shaped and optimised through robotic fabrication in line with both architectural and structural design requirements.
He has published 18 articles during his PhD candidature. His work has been exhibited widely, including BoDW Hong Kong, Melbourne Design Week, IASS Expo Barcelona, Venice Biennale, Time + Architecture magazine and the permanent cover of Current Chinese Science. Recently Nic received the 2021 Young CAADRIA Award, 2020 RMIT Engineering Discipline HDR Impact Prize and two significant first prizes in national and international competitions on structural optimisation and additive manufacturing in 2020 and 2019.
Kevion is an international PhD student from the School of Science, STEM College. His research project focuses on harnessing the natural proteins in milk for health and antimicrobial purposes. He has also been involved in cross-collaborative projects with university wide-partners in computational structural biology, including evaluation of certain drugs and dietary compounds to potentially combat COVID-19.
Using state-of-the-art supercomputers in the National Computational Infrastructure, Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, and Swiss National Supercomputing Centre that are accessed via successful competitive resource applications, Kevion has worked productively and contributed to society as a scientist. He has published research articles in high-ranking journals in the area of food science, including Food Hydrocolloids and LWT.
Throughout his candidature, he has also actively participated in international and national conferences to share novel findings, knowledge, and prospective industrial applications to the wider community.
Professor Magdalena Plebanski (PhD, MBA, GradDipPsySt, BScHon) is recipient a prestigious NHMRC Senior Research Fellow LB award, and Head of the Translational Immunology and Nanotechnology Program in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at RMIT University. She is also the Biomedical and Health Innovation Enabling Capability Platform (BHI-ECP) Director. Since arriving from Oxford University in the UK 20 years ago, she has held continuous externalNHMRC and other competitive funding for her research. During her career she pioneered concepts on how parasites and cancer cells evade the immune system with research published consistently in top tier journals (Science, Nature, Lancet, Nature Medicine, Immunity amongst others), and international recognition such as the Howard Hughes International Scholar Award (USA). She has >180 full-length peer-reviewed papers, plus published abstracts and book chapters with >11,000 citations (Google Scholar) or >220 publications in total. Additionally, her fundamental insights into how nanoparticles interact with the immune system, led her to practically develop and commercialize nanovaccines and lung nanotherapeutics, with around 50 patents in 10 patent families, supporting the formation of multiple successful biotechnology companies nationally and internationally, in which she played diverse roles as inventor, Director, CSO and CEO. She currently leads research engaging industry partners and hospitals in human clinical trials to deliver much needed innovation in diagnostics, vaccines and immune therapies to vulnerable populations: older adults and women with ovarian cancer.
Dr Awaworyi Churchill’s inter-disciplinary research focuses on development, health, and energy economics. He has made outstanding contributions to these fields with publications in some of the most prestigious general interest economics and field journals. His contribution as a leader in the field of his research is evidenced by the publication of over 80 books, book chapters and articles in top-ranking journal outlets, and presentations at various international conferences across the US, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. He has also been the recipient of several prestigious academic research awards including an Endeavour Fellowship Award and Research Excellence Awards at the School, College and University levels at RMIT University. Awaworyi Churchill has a strong record for attracting external grants. He serves as managing guest editor for two prestigious field journals (Energy Economics and Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization) and is an editorial board member for the Sage Open Journal and the Journal of Economics, Race and Policy.
Shruti’s PhD work was focused on exploring new class of nanoscale electro-ionic devices based on smart and economic materials. Her work successfully produced prototypes for memory devices, and fundamental electronic component - transistor built with just metal and air. This work contributed in the advancement of efficient silicon-free nanoelectronic technology, with significant relevance to the international scientific community and industry.
Professor Dayanthi Nugegoda is an Ecotoxicologist, with 26 years of research on monitoring, minimising and remediating pollution in Australia. She has published 4 books, 4 book chapters, 160+ scientific papers and served on expert panels for Governments and Industry. She has graduated 28 HDR (23 PhD) candidates at RMIT (25 as Senior Supervisor) and currently supervises 13 (8 as Senior Supervisor). Her HDR have first authorship of many publications leading to recognition of RMIT as the premier University for HDR in ecotoxicology. Since 2017 she graduated 7 PhD candidates as Senior supervisor (2 as associate) and her team published 38 high quality papers. Dayanthi has sustained excellence in research supervision at RMIT, mentored junior supervisors and demonstrated leadership and commitment to diversity and inclusion in research training. Her passion is to guide young scientists in ecotoxicology to be future ambassadors and influence industry, governments and policy; ensuring sustainable development.
Dr Charles Hunt’s internationally recognised research on United Nations (UN) peace operations has contributed to significant changes in policy and praxis at a national and international level. His work on protecting civilians in conflict-affected societies has paved the way for improvements in practice including the production of a practical field handbook guiding Australian uniformed and civilian personnel during conflict and humanitarian crisis response operations. Dr Hunt’s expertise has significantly influenced the policy-making of multiple governments and contributed to major UN reform initiatives. His work provides a rigorous evidence base for end-users seeking to safeguard civilian life amid some of the deadliest conflicts around the world. Through regular invitations to provide expert commentary in the media, and multiple invited panels and events, Charles’ research has led to increased awareness and understanding of the policies and practices that improve the prospects for civilians caught up in conflict.
Research-based Collaborative leadership is how Associate Professor Shelley Marshall brings about change. Faced with a seemingly intractable stand-off between business and worker-rights groups in Thailand, Shelley led stakeholders in the Thai Ministry of Labour on a two-year action-research project. It built consensus about the need to enforce laws for Thailand’s most vulnerable workers. Today, labour inspectors around Thailand are assisting homeworkers using the tools Shelley co-designed with those stakeholders. Shelley has also been the driver behind the creation of a world-first network of academics and human rights organisations: the Australian Corporate Accountability Network. It empowers NGOs with much needed evidence and amplifies scholarly research. With over 100 members, ACAN is attaining a policy influence that would not have been possible without this alliance. She has guided RMIT interns to provide advice to ACAN members on human rights and climate change litigation. She now brings this collaborative spirit to RMIT’s new Business and Human Rights Centre.
Dr Syed Minhaj Saleem Kazmi has been a highly motivated and outstanding individual during his PhD research. His research focuses on the development of innovative materials and technologies for the recycling of different construction and industrial wastes into concrete without compromising the performance of concrete. His research work contributed to the development of novel rubberised concrete processing technology, a pioneering technology, for the efficient utilisation of rubber and construction and demolition wastes in concrete without strength deficiency.
Syed was awarded the RMIT School of Engineering HDR Impact Prize 2020, HDR Publication Prize 2019 and CSIRO On Prime performance bonus during his candidature. He has worked as an international exchange research student at Shenzhen University, China and presented his research at multiple international conferences and industry meetings. Syed has published 29 peer-reviewed articles in prestigious research journals/conferences during his candidature, and his work has been cited 425+ times by the academic community.
The Technology, Communication and Policy (TCP) Lab in the Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC) in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT was formed in 2017 and comprises seven staff members, led by Distinguished Professor Julian Thomas. The Lab’s work addresses urgent problems in technological, cultural and social change. The Lab draws on a range of disciplines and methods, and works extensively with partners across universities, government, and the non-government and industry sectors.
The Lab has made substantial contributions to:
Lab members have secured highly competitive ARC grants totalling almost $39 million, including a Centre of Excellence, three Future Fellowships, one DECRA, one LIEF project, three Linkage Projects, and three Discovery Projects. They have also secured industry funding totalling more than $1.05 million.
The team members are:
Dr Konrad Peszynski is a passionate and innovative supervisor who has supervised 20 HDR Candidates to date and has jointly published 25 papers in high-ranking journals, conferences and book chapters. As School HDR Coordinator between 2014 and 2018, Dr Peszynski was an active member of the University Graduate Research Committee (GRC) that oversaw the development and implementation of a range of important HDR policies. At the School level,
Dr Peszynski introduced new procedures such as the ‘expression of interest website’, supervision transparency and supervision/candidate quality control. Since implementing these initiatives, HDR candidate engagement and intellectual climate increased not only within the School but across the College of Business and Law, with some initiatives being adopted in other parts of RMIT University. Dr Peszynski was the recipient of the 2018 School of Business IT and Logistics Award for HDR Supervision and the 2018 College Award for Innovative Research Supervision (by School).
In her role as the Program Manager of the Higher Degrees by Research Program in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, Associate Professor Georgina Heydon has developed protocols and systems that have contributed substantially to excellent research training outcomes, as well as developing the new milestone procedures university-wide.
Georgina uses her exceptional leadership skills in managing a high number of complex and challenging candidatures whilst maintaining high standards and enhancing student engagement and the intellectual climate in the Higher Degrees by Research programs.
Professor Abbasi is a professor of Business Analytics and Decision Sciences. He started a long-term research collaboration with the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) in 2010. This collaboration has resulted in numerous industry projects, joint publications, industry reports, and PhD supported and funded projects. This relationship has provided opportunities for PhD students to work on practical problems in the blood supply chain area.
The work of his PhD students in the area of improving blood management has been recognised at national and international levels evidenced by winning the ‘Best PhD Project Award’ at the International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems (ICORES) and the ‘Best Paper Award’ at International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM/ASOR). He has co-authored several articles in leading journals with his PhD students.
Associate Professor Donald Wlodkowic, a former Australian Research Council Fellow and Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, is a pioneer of next-generation biomicrofluidic technologies for toxicology research on small aquatic model organisms as well as state-of-the-art innovations in digital video-based technologies for high-throughput analysis of animal behaviour. He is one of Australia’s leading experts in experimental behavioural neurotoxicology with interests spanning effects of industrial pollutants, neurotoxins and neuroactive drugs on central nervous systems.
A highly innovative emphasis of his research is focused on chemical modulation of innate behavioural and cognitive (learning and memory retrieval) functions as well as emerging strategies to develop and evaluate new neuroactive and neuroprotective drugs using alternative proxy biological models.
His publications have been cited over 4200 times with an h-index of 36. His close collaboration with industry led to a number of co-developed research projects, significant value creation and translation of research for diverse stakeholders.
Professor Ellie Rennie is known within and beyond academia for research on complex problems related to technology infrastructures. Engagement with communities and industry is a core part of her research methods and has helped her to achieve significant research impact. Over the past five years her research on digital inclusion has been used by policymakers and telecommunication companies to create better products and outcomes for people living in remote communities. She is now pioneering research into the social outcomes of emerging distributed technologies, investigating how these technologies influence cooperation, inclusion and accountability across different domains. Her research is advancing understanding of the capabilities of civil society organisations to undertake social innovation using media and communication technologies.
She commenced a prestigious ARC Future Fellowship in 2020.
Associate Professor Jeff Shimeta leads highly impactful, industry engaged, collaborative research across a wide range of marine environmental problems. He has long-standing research and funding relationships with Australian Defence Science & Technology, state environmental agencies, and water resource industries. His research spans impacts and management of marine invasive species, ecology of marine biofouling and development of technologies for reducing its impact on materials and infrastructure, impacts of chemical pollutants in aquatic habitats, and more.
The strategic-basic research in his group has led to new solutions in the sectors of environmental management and marine infrastructure and operations. Jeff brings a uniquely multidisciplinary approach to his research and his collaborations, which has facilitated his industry engagement and provides an inspiring model for his research students, who have excelled under his supervision. He has a sustained record of industry funding, high quality research outputs, and recognition as an expert in his field.
Dr Andy Boes is a photonics engineer who specialises in photonic integrated circuits and their use for analog photonic systems, such as sensors and signal processing.
Boes’ unique combination of imagination, methodical approach and unerring drive to succeed resulted in a PhD that was noted as ‘outstanding’ by his international examiners and resulted in more than 10 collaborative publications (including five as the first author) and nomination to a major team member in the ARC Centre CUDOS. He has collaborated successfully with an Australian SME Advanced Navigation, where he is exploring integrated optical circuit chips for optical gyroscopes aimed at inertial navigation systems that have enabled him to secure a major research grant (CRC-P round 9) with Advanced Navigation.
Andy is currently the team leader of the defence team at the Integrated Photonics and Applications Centre.
Dr Leah Heiss is an award‐winning RMIT designer, researcher and academic who works at the nexus of design, health and emerging Technologies. Her research focuses on designing wearable health technologies, services and experiences that aim to improve or save Lives. Her wearable technologies include jewellery to administer insulin, cardiac monitoring jewellery, swallowable devices to detect disease and emergency jewellery for times of medical crisis.
The Facett hearing aid, that Leah designed for Blamey Saunders hears won many awards including the 2018 Australian Good Design Award of the Year, the CSIRO Design Innovation Award and a Premier’s Design Award. Leah is currently working with RMIT Engineering researchers on the use of stretchable sensors for heart health, pre-diabetes and monitoring COVID-19 symptoms in aged care.
She is co-director of the RMIT Wearables and Sensing Network that brings together over 75 researchers from 12 RMIT Schools to collaborate and connect.
Dr Kate Nguyen is an exceptional early career researcher whose progress and innovation in construction has attracted $2.4 million in government funding over the past three years. Following the Discovery Early Career Researchers Award from the Australian Research Council and the 2019 Victoria Fellowship in Physical Sciences, she is RMIT's first winner of the prestigious L'OREAL-UNESCO Women in Science Fellowship award in 2020 for her research excellence.
Dr Nguyen's work has been recognised nationally thanks to her strong commitment to Engineers Australia and Standards Australia. She has developed international cooperation with the world's leading experts and attracted significant mainstream media attention. At the forefront of research into advanced building materials and technologies, one of her publications was ranked among the most cited articles in the leading journal Composites Part B: Engineering, while her work has already attracted more than 1,400 citations.
Dr Mohammad Saberian Boroujeni completed his PhD in the field of Civil and Infrastructure Engineering. Mohammad explored new types of sustainable pavements by using recycled waste materials, including construction and demolition wastes, crushed glass and crumb rubber. His innovative research and the testified low-cost, low-carbon-footprint stabilisation technology has attracted increasing attention from local industry including Hiway Stabilizers Australia Pty. Ltd. and Wacker Chemicals Pty. Ltd. His work also received attention from the media Daily Mail Australia, Roads and Infrastructure Magazine, ScienceDaily, Top Stories Today.
During his PhD study, Mohammad published 32 journal articles, of which 21 were Q1 articles including 15 first-author papers published in well-known top international journals. He was the recipient of the HDR Publication Prize (2020), the APR Intern Impact Prize (2019) and the Ford Publication Prize (2018).
Dr O’Neill is a sexual violence researcher with a background in criminology and qualitative research. Her thesis explores how victim-survivors speak out about sexual violence in digital contexts. Her research sheds light on what justice means for victim-survivors - demonstrating how online spaces provide new opportunities to be heard, as well as support healing and connection. An analysis of the #MeToo hashtag movement, which coincidentally unfolded mid-way through the research in September 2017 provided valuable insights into victim-survivors’ understanding of ‘speaking out’ prior, during, and after the onset of #MeToo.
Central to her research is the importance and impact of the voices of victim-survivors and that through sharing their experiences online they significantly contribute to change.
O’Neill published a sole authored paper in a top quartile journal in 2018 during her candidature as well as co-authored an article for The Conversation and numerous conference papers.
Nitu Syed’s research demonstrate a new paradigm in developing ultra-large and atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) material for next-generation electronic applications. She developed facile, low-temperature liquid metal-based synthesis strategies allowing the isolation of centimetre-scale, super thin nanosheets of non-stratified materials, drastically increasing the number of accessible 2D materials.
Various novel properties of these ultra-thin materials have been unlocked which have provided solutions to numerous technological challenges. The elegance of the developed synthesis process is that it doesn’t require expensive or specialised equipment to create the super thin wafer-scale nanomaterials for various photocatalytic, piezoelectric and optoelectronic applications. Her research will have tremendous environmental impact by eliminating constraints in fabrication techniques and obstacles to scalability. Specifically, her developed industry-compatible procedure to print large surface area 2D piezoelectric films offers tremendous opportunities for developing piezo-sensors and energy harvesters.
In addition, in future the piezoelectric materials can be used in different medical and healthcare sensors.
The Multifunctional Composites Research Team is a world-renowned group with the mission to partner with industry and government in the application of multifunctional fibre-reinforced polymer composites. The group collaborates with multiple sectors, including aerospace, automotive and defence, to enable wealth generation and enhanced national security. The multidisciplinary team, which includes engineers, materials scientists, and chemists, applies its diverse skills to undertake computational and experimental research to advance the field of composite materials, which in 2020 is valued globally at about AUD$240 billion.
The research conducted by the Multifunctional Composites Research Team has created demonstrable impact including patentable advanced manufacturing technologies; the creation of fire structural property databanks and related models that have since been adopted by the Royal Australian Navy and the United States Navy; the diversion of end-of-life polymeric materials from the landfill; the development of shape memory foam that mitigates the risk of bed ulcers due to long-term hospitalisation; the creation of lightweight and structurally efficient composite structures for reducing the carbon footprint of transport vehicles, and the protection of Australian and allied citizens by solving defence problems.
The team members are:
Dr Soni is a trained microbiologist and incorporates the principles and methodologies for creating impact from his research in multi-disciplinary fields such as bioresource management and technology, citizen science, diagnostics and nanotherapeutics. The overarching goal of his research in ‘the sustainable mitigation of public health risks’, is achieved through engagement with individuals, communities, and public and private organisations. He is an experienced academician doing highly multidisciplinary research and is skilled in Research and Development (R&D), disruptive innovation, and technology entrepreneurship.
The potential and impact of his research includes transformation in the way biosolids are managed in Australia which paves the way for improved and more environmentally sustainable practices globally; inhaled nano-therapeutics for deadly tuberculosis; point of care microbial detection technology for risk mitigation; policy change in regard to the storage and release of recycled water; and optimization of the use of sunscreens in the marine environment.
Professor Ingo Karpen is a leading international expert in strategic design and service design. Researching and practicing these purposeful approaches to innovation, Ingo continuously engages with the community to initiate, lead, and facilitate transformation of ecosystems to better serve people. In recent years Ingo has been leading multiple projects in business and legal sectors to solve complex legacy problems and reimagine user experiences through a design-led approach. Working with various clients, for example, across legal institutions and bringing together a wide range of interdisciplinary stakeholders, Ingo has been responsible for co-designing socio-cultural, architectural, procedural, technological and strategic changes that directly benefit the wider community and importantly some of the most vulnerable members of society.
Professor Naylor has an extended track record in the areas of criminal law and criminology, and within that framework, her work has focused on violations of human rights in detention and incarceration settings and their impact on social justice. Bronwyn has been a Chief Investigator in several major grant-funded projects in these and other fields and has consulted to the Victorian Law Reform Commission on a range of criminal law reforms. In recognition of her work on human rights in places of detention, she has been appointed to a National Advisory Group to the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
Professor Naylor and her team were recognised with a 2018 Australian Philanthropy Award for its Criminal Record Discrimination Project, which successfully achieved the expungement of childhood criminal records for members of the Stolen Generation in Victoria.
Dr Aaron Elbourne’s research is focused on developing antimicrobial surface and particle technologies for the treatment of antimicrobial resistant bacteria and fungi. Antibiotic-resistant bacterial and fungal infections are a significant health concern as conventional antibiotics are slowly losing their efficacy. Dr Elbourne is working on developing novel materials with antimicrobial properties, such as magnetically activated liquid metal nanoparticles, zinc-based nanostructured surfaces, and 2D materials. Dr Elbourne’s expertise is in investigating soft matter systems using atomic force microscopy. He has been applying this technique to understand the interactions between biological entities and nano-materials, with the aim of developing novel technologies that can kill bacteria or prohibit biofilm formation. He has successfully identified a number of materials which exhibit high levels of antimicrobial activity.
Dr Elbourne is also applying his expertise to develop next-generation vaccine technologies, antimicrobial technologies, and anti-cancer antibodies, as well as new methods for combating antibiotic resistance.
Dr. Bruno Schivinski’s research has led to major achievements in the development of a cross culturally valid diagnostic tool for Gaming Disorder (GDT) as defined by the World Health Organization. The findings of his research were also used as the scientific foundation for the SMART GAMING Initiative, which was subsequently adopted by ESL Gaming, the largest esports league in the world, as a self-administered test through which gamers can identify whether they are at risk of GDT. The Initiative was widely acknowledged by the media, international press, gaming community, and beyond. The SMART GAMING Initiative has to-date reached and educated more than 250,000 gamers in over 90 countries.
Dr Abdulghani Mohamed’s research has been substantial and global and resulted from a novel, biomimetic method of minimising the impact of turbulence on aircraft - one of the major causes of aircraft accidents. This has been taken up by RMIT to full patent status and has resulted in significant commercial interest, including two meetings with the Chief Scientist of Lockheed Martin as well as senior staff from Boeing and Airbus.
Dr Mohamed co-leads the RMIT UAS Research Team which is internationally leading atmospheric turbulence research and received the 2017 RMIT VC Research Excellence Team Award. He was named among Australia’s top defence scientists in 2019 and was awarded a $10K Cash Prize as the 2015 Young Aerospace Innovator for his patented technology. Abdulghani’s research excellence is reflected by his awards and high-quality publications in top aerospace journals in addition to his strong relationships with industry, whereby he received grants (totalling >$1.9M, since 2015).
Muhammad is one of the four inventors of a rubberised concrete processing technology, a pioneering technology, for the efficient utilisation of waste rubber in concrete without causing strength deficiency. This is a significant achievement and has the potential impact to solve the problems affiliated with the inferior performance of rubberised concrete, waste rubber tyres landfilling and other environmental and health concerns. Munir has published 29 research articles including 25 peer-reviewed journal articles and 4 peer-reviewed conference publications during his candidature.
In 2018, Muhammad received an exchange PhD student scholarship of 100,000 RMB at Shenzhen University. Muhammad has also been awarded the HDR Impact Prize 2020 and HDR Intern Prize 2019 by the School of Engineering, RMIT University.
Sruthi has a passion for designing new material systems for the next generation of smaller and powerful electronics that could one day replace conventional materials. This could lead to fascinating new technologies such as smartdust and autonomous implantable devices for health/environment monitoring.
Sruthi`s collaborative works have generated technology to create high-density data storage and translate the functionality of a brain on a chip. Sruthi's work has acquired global recognition which is not only evident from the high-impact, highly cited publications (>150 citations and h index of 6).
Sruthi has been recognised as one of the Most Innovative Engineers (Electronics and Telecommunications) in Australia 2020 by Engineer’s Australia for her research contributions.
Shahla Teimouri is an international PhD candidate in the School of Science in the Food Chemistry & Biophysics Group at RMIT University. Shahla has succeeded in developing a new theoretical framework to predict the dynamics of diffusion in complex systems of swellable food-based biopolymer matrices, which is highly relevant to the field of nutraceutical and functional food design and is a significant development to research in this area.
Shahla has already published much of her PhD research in top food science journals including Food Hydrocolloids, Food Chemistry and LWT food science and technology (with impact factors of 7.053, 6.306 and 4.006, respectively).
Professor Ross Vlahos is a Principal Research Fellow and Head of the Respiratory Research Group in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at RMIT University. His internationally competitive and ground-breaking research has identified novel disease mechanisms, paradigms and therapeutic targets for lung diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and respiratory infections. Ross has co-authored more than 100 publications in leading peer reviewed journals, has had continuous National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Australia funding since 2001 and has played a major role in commercially funded work that has confidentiality/patent agreements. He has served on NHMRC Grant Review Panels / Assigners Academy, various international society committees (e.g. American Thoracic Society), numerous Editorial boards, has been invited to present at prestigious Gordon conferences and is currently Deputy co-convenor of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand COPD Special Interest Group, and a Director on the Board of the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists.
Dr Heba Ahmed’s PhD research investigates the role of Megahertz (MHz) acoustics in synthesis and tuning the properties of smart materials for environmental and energy technologies. Dr Ahmed made a remarkable discovery of the acoustic effect on the known structure of common table salt, the most studied materials in history, and formed two new structures not found in nature. Her research transcends fundamental research, where her low cost acoustic technology for synthesis of 2D Materials and Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) eliminated the necessity for using toxic environmentally harmful solvents, and reduces the greenhouse gases emitted during the conventional production methods. Her research was widely circulated in over 500 national and international media, and was scored by Altmetric among the top 5% most circulated research to have ever been published, drawing an audience of over 100,000. Dr. Ahmed’s research has attracted international industrial collaboration with Made in Space Inc., to provide her acoustic platform to NASA for CO2 scavenging on the International Space Station (ISS).
Associate Professor Sarah Spencer is a neuroendocrinology researcher with approximately 14 years’ experience. Sarah’s core research focus is on understanding the impact of the early life environment on brain and behaviour. Her recent work also addresses the neurological consequences of poor diet and obesity for the ageing brain. Sarah has 84 career publications, 48 in the past 5 years (since 2014). She has supervised 5 PhD students to completion in the past 3 years and is currently supervising 6 PhD students. Each of the students she has supervised as primary supervisor has graduated with at least 6 publications, with one student publishing an impressive 14 articles, in Q1 journals. Sarah has shown an outstanding commitment to providing a high quality and internationally competitive learning environment for her research students, and provided leadership in mentoring junior supervisors and support for improving the research training outcomes of the university.
Environmental pollution from anthropogenic sources devastates ecosystems and threatens our health and survival. Professor Dayanthi Nugegoda is a pioneering Ecotoxicologist in Australasia whose research investigating effects of pollutants on Australian biota has a significant impact on monitoring, minimising and remediating anthropogenic pollution in our environment. National and international recognition of her research has resulted in her advisory appointments to Federal, State and Industry Science Expert Panels, international Ecotoxicology Research Award Committees, OECD Ecotoxicity test validation panels, and election as the first female President of the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Australasia. She works with NGOs identifying threats to iconic native species; and her industry collaboration secured a $5 million research contract for RMIT to establish the Aquatic Pollution Prevention Partnership with Melbourne Water 2018-2023. Her passion to educate the next generation has seen her graduate 26 HDR candidates and achieve recognition for RMIT as the leader in Australasian Ecotoxicology research.
Dr Chris Berg’s research on the economics and social science of blockchain technology since 2017 has made a major impact on the blockchain industry in Australia and globally, and influenced the research and teaching of this frontier technology at RMIT and elsewhere. In addition, his public policy and media engagement has had a material impact on public policy in Australia. Through his research and leadership at the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, he has contributed to the development of RMIT as a global leader in blockchain research. He has pioneered a large number of industry engagements and research projects, across areas as diverse as economic development, health records and the protection of privacy, blockchain governance, and water management. The high national and international demand for Dr Berg’s expertise on the future of the blockchain economy has brought significant media attention and research income for RMIT.
Lauren Burns has been an outstanding and dynamic individual throughout her PhD candidature. Her research comprised of a series of studies that investigated lifestyle and support structures for athletes, with the findings being used to modify the approaches, models and support structures advocated and provided to athletes (senior and junior) by major sporting organisations to support the health and performance of athletes, as well as contributing to further strengthen the theoretical understanding of such models of support and care. The uniqueness and excellence of her work has resulted in the findings being taken up by the highest level organisations in the industry, and resulted in the presentation of her findings to a wide range of audiences, including: national sports governing bodies and institutes; regional and local sports organisations; and international conferences.
Professor Vivian Mitsogianni is Associate Dean, Architecture in the School of Architecture & Urban Design, and a director of the multi-AIA award winning practice M@ STUDIO architects – which focuses on architectural design research. Professor Mitsogianni is an acknowledged leader in facilitating processes for design innovation by combining experimental design practice research and ‘real world’ industry-linked projects.
Internationally recognised, Professor Mitsogianni is often called upon for her expertise in architectural design research and the design-practice PhD model. She was part of the founding supervisory team of RMIT’s internationally renowned practice-based PhD program in Australia and has been invited to publish and lecture on the design-practice PhD model and lead research training methods nationally and internationally including in the UK, Denmark, Belgium and Italy. She has and continues to supervise multi-award winning internationally recognised architects in Australia and Europe and formulate proposals for new hybrid design-practice PhD models.
In his role as lead for Higher Degree by Research (HDR) Student Experience and Belonging in the School of Engineering, Associate Professor Akbar Khatibi designed and implemented a new program for enhancing the experience and intellectual climate for the HDR community.
Based on a new “Development Needs Analysis Platform”, HDR candidates can now take ownership of identifying and developing their research skills. The platform provides a critical link between individual developmental needs and planned professional development opportunities across the University. Since implementing this initiative in 2019, the levels of engagement and awareness around skills training needs and opportunities have significantly increased among the HDR community within the School of Science.
Through her industry engaged HDR supervision, Professor Margaret Lech has initiated and supported innovative and transformational engagement between higher degree research candidates and industry partners.
She has successfully secured national and international Defence industry funding support with her postgraduate students and consistently links her postgraduate students to industry partners to prepare them for potential future industry and academic careers.
Dr Shwathy Ramesan is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory (MNRL) in the School of Engineering. Ramesan completed her PhD from RMIT University on utilising high frequency sound waves for various drug delivery applications in cells and tissues.
During her PhD, Ramesan discovered a novel delivery technique, the first of its kind to deliver molecules to the cell, opening up new areas of research using acoustic waves. The thesis was praised for the quality of research and the impact the work has created in the field of acoustic manipulation of fluids in biological materials and drug delivery.
Dr Ramesan’s research has considerably advanced the state-of-the-art in scientific knowledge, by developing new ideas and novel research directions. Two of the technologies have already had practical impact, resulting in publications in top multidisciplinary journals and two provisional patents. Her research was also recognised with the award of the Maxwell Eagle Endowment Award for cancer research
Dr Kim Munro’s practice-led PhD, Listening in: approaching difference, multiplicity and collectivity through a practice of listening in documentary investigated the role that a foregrounding of listening can play in documentary, so as to address contemporary isolation and reconstitute a sense of a collective.
The PhD was recognised by internationally renowned examiners as ‘outstanding work’, and ‘an exemplary PhD project, comprising both the written thesis and the practices as research’. It was noted that it was ‘an original and important contribution to documentary thinking and practice by attentiveness to difference, multiplicity and collectively through a well thought through and artfully crafted attunement to ethical and sensitive ways of listening’ and ‘is a remarkable PhD dissertation that could in fact prove to be groundbreaking’.
Dr Munro has produced both traditional scholarly outputs and creative-practice outputs including two exhibitions, participation in the international multidisciplinary arts residency and the annual Skamdeggi Festival in Northern Iceland.
Dr Payam Pirzadeh completed his PhD in the field of construction work health and safety in 2018.
His research addressed a critical problem of industry policy and practice through an interdisciplinary, collaborative design decision-making approach for improving safety outcomes.
Pirzadeh’s use of a multi-level network analysis method was highly innovative in the construction discipline, yet was ideally suited to understanding decision-making in complex construction project environments. Since completing his doctoral research, Pirzadeh’s work has received significant international recognition.
Detailed case studies developed in his thesis have now been developed into teaching resources at the National University of Singapore and he delivered a guest lecture on the subject of health and safety in design, at the University of East Carolina
Dr Scarlett Howard is an expert in honeybee cognition, learning, behaviour, and perception.
She studies topics related to rule-learning, decision-making, cognition, and neurobiology of miniature insect brains alongside pollination, urban insect density and plant-pollinator relationships. In her PhD research, she examined the ability of miniature bee brains to learn and apply numerical information. She aimed to use this knowledge to advance the development of bio-inspired technology.
Following the publication of her research, multiple laboratories across the world have replicated her work using artificial neural networks and simple learning algorithms. However, the bee brain appears to be the most efficient problem solver of these complex tasks, suggesting there is a lot to learn from honeybee neurobiological processes.
Dr Howard currently employs virtual reality and neurobiological techniques to uncover the mechanisms of simple and complex learning within the bee brain and determine which neurobiological resources are necessary for bee cognition.
Ms Inna Krasnokutska has made significant contributions to the field of physics and high-tech engineering, finishing her third year of a PhD developing future photonics technology in the Quantum Photonics Laboratory.
The research Krasnokutska is undertaking is highly collaborative, and has involved Heriot-Watt University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Chalmers University, as well as the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology.
Krasnokutska has published four first-author publication papers in highly selective Q1 journal publishing across all areas of photonics, attracting the attention of research and industry communities, especially with her first paper being cited 50 times in only one year.
In that work, she demonstrated, for the first time, the lowest propagation and coupling loss in LNOI photonics, solving one of the main problems of modern telecommunication industry and future quantum technology.
Clare McCracken’s practice-led doctoral project is based on artworks, fieldwork, and the investigation of family archives to research how mobility systems coproduce space, place and landscape across generations in Australia.
Through three carefully framed projects in different geographical milieu, she enacts a creative dialogue on the social impact of mobility through site-responsive artworks exhibited in public space.
Her research has seen her collaborate with Knox City Council and the Mission to Seafarers to create a critical discourse about the inequities and viability of current transport networks today and into the future. This has led to greater community awareness and, in the case of Knox City Council, further community consultation, the introduction of electric car infrastructure and community education programs.
Achim Washington explored the application of a risk-based approach to the regulation of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) – a pertinent issue faced by the industry. The aim of his research was to improve regulatory outcomes under a new paradigm of risk-based regulation, through providing a conceptual framework for the rational, transparent and systematic treatment of uncertainty in risk assessment and regulatory decision-making processes.
Washington’s research provides a conceptual framework for the more comprehensive treatment of uncertainty in regulatory compliance assessment and processes.
His research not only has the potential to help shape the future of the UAS industry but other industries as well, including personal air mobility vehicles and reusable space launch vehicles.
Associate Professor Charlotte Conn is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow recognised worldwide for her contribution to the development of soft nanomaterials for biomedical applications, particularly in drug delivery and protein crystallisation.
Charlotte’s methods and scientific approaches have been adopted by scientists worldwide.
Her most recent contributions include enhancing the performance of anti-microbial peptides, key contenders in the fight against global antibiotic resistance, and in successfully demonstrating effective oral delivery of insulin in animal trials.
Her research determining the fundamental physicochemical interactions between nanoparticles and the cell surface will guide the development of new biomaterials for vaccines and drug delivery, and has the potential to revolutionise personalised medicine.
The impact of this research will lead to advances such as removing the need for refrigerated storage of vaccines, reduced drug side-effects, improved patient compliance and personalised therapies.
Associate Professor Elisa Hill is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow who has pioneered a new research field investigating the interactions of the nervous system in the gut with bacteria, and the consequences of this for health and disease.
Her research is internationally recognised due to her discoveries that autism-associated gene mutations in the nervous system influence the gut.
This high impact research has been published in many prestigious Q1 journals, and received multiple highly competitive funding awards, including an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship.
Associate Professor Hill has also demonstrated impact through leading a national campaign leading to a policy change in the NDIS preventing the closure of critical services for severely disabled children.
Her breakthrough findings have opened up new opportunities for treatment design and identifying treatment targets for gut issues in autism.
Associate Professor Quentin Stevens’ transdisciplinary design research spans urban design, landscape, public art, planning, geography, and sociology. His key contribution is his close empirical examination of the design, use and perception of public spaces for which he is internationally renowned.
Quentin’s research on contemporary memorials has been supported by an ARC Future Fellowship and grants from Britain, South Korea and Taiwan. This research has been published in Memorials as Spaces of Engagement (2015) and 31 articles.
His other recent books include Public Space Design and Social Cohesion (2018), Creative Milieux: How Urban Design Nurtures Creative Clusters (2015) and The Uses of Art in Public Space (2015). Associate Professor Stevens research into innovative temporary appropriations of underused urban spaces was awarded an 18-month fellowship from Germany’s Humboldt Foundation and an ARC Discovery grant.
Professor Steven Bozinovski is Head of the Airways Inflammation Research (AIR) Group at RMIT. He has extensive experience in developing biological therapeutics for the treatment of acute and chronic lung conditions.
With industry and NHMRC support, he continues to lead research into developing new therapies for respiratory disease. He has also driven translational research efforts leading to the discovery of novel disease biomarkers.
To date, Steven has published over 90 papers in leading scientific, respiratory and pharmacology journals and has been the recipient of highly competitive fellowships (CR Roper and an ARC-Future Fellowship) and has had ongoing support from NHMRC over the past 15 years.
Associate Professor Nicky Eshtiaghi is one of the leading researchers in Australia in the area of sludge rheology. She investigates the flow behaviour of solid residue (sludge) from wastewater treatment plants to optimise energy efficiency of process in the sludge treatment lines.
Nicky’s unique industry focused approach to waste water sludge rheology is highlighted by her ability to connect local waste water treatment plants and industry experts, and blend this with her focus on the underlying science and theory.
The award of three ARC Linkage Projects emphasises the value of her work by her industry partners, with the grants also resulting in high quality research publications, allowing the outcomes of her work to be shared with industry and others.
Currently she is a Fellow of Engineers Australia (EA) and a Fellow of Higher Education Academy (UK), Engineers Australia Chartered Engineer and an Editor in Chemical Engineering Research and Design Journal (Q1, Elsevier).
Dr Lei Bao holds an Australian Research Council, Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) and is a lecturer in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the School of Engineering.
Her multidisciplinary work is centred on solving energy and environment related challenges by the controllable design of a nanodroplet-platform for nanomaterial synthesis and assembly.
As an Early Career Researcher, Dr Bao has a growing reputation for research excellence. This is evidenced by the number of high-quality and well-cited scholarly publications as well as national and international conference talks, with total Scopus citations exceeding 1700 and a h-index of 17.
Her research has been recognised by several competitive fellowships, awards, and grants, and she has also established strong collaborative links with University of Twente, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications of China, and Wuhan University.
Dr Rohit Ashok Khot is an exceptional early career researcher of international repute in the field of Human- Food Interaction. Working at the intersection of screen technology and eating practices, Dr Khot’s work challenges health stereotypes around mindfulness and wellbeing through the creative convergence of design and technology.
Dr Khot has published over 42 scholarly refereed articles in high-ranking international conferences and journals, and has received wide media recognition and best paper awards for his work.
In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Australian Research Council’s Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) having previously been awarded RMIT Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, IBM PhD Fellowship and SIGCHI Development Fund Grant. Dr Khot is the author of the first scholarly book on the topic of Human-Food Interaction.
He serves his scholarly community by contributing to program committees for leading international Human Computer Interaction conferences and leads workshops and symposiums specifically around food and play.
Dr Sefa Awaworyi Churchill’s inter-disciplinary research focuses on development economics, addictive behaviour, ethnic diversity, wellbeing, and other issues related to sociology, health and economics. He has made outstanding contributions to these fields with publications in some of the most prestigious general interest economics and field journals.
Awaworyi Churchill has also presented his research at various international conferences across the US, Europe, Asia, Australia and
Africa. He has edited two books, contributed to over a dozen book chapters and has also been the recipient of a number of prestigious academic research awards including an Endeavour Fellowship Award.
Awaworyi Churchill also has a strong record for attracting external grants, is an editorial board member for the rame Journal, and also a regular reviewer for over 25 international journals.
Associate Professor Nicola Henry’s research on technology-facilitated abuse has led to substantial legislative and policy reform in Australia. This includes specific criminal offences introduced in all but one Australian jurisdiction, including at the federal level.
Her research has also shaped, and provided the impetus for, the development of an innovative federal civil penalties scheme for the non-consensual sharing of intimate imagery. In addition to practical law and policy reform, Nicola’s research, through over 120 media interviews and multiple invited
panels and events in the past few years, has led to increased awareness and understanding of the problem of image-based abuse and other forms of sexual violence.
Associate Professor Henry has directly shaped the development of a world-first image-based abuse portal, an online training module on technology-facilitated abuse for frontline workers, and an online university course on disclosures of sexual violence.
Her work provides much-needed support to end-users, particularly victims and stakeholders.
Associate Professor Mauro Baracco has achieved national and international recognition for the quality and impact of his research, primarily in the areas of urbanism and architectural design, with his work being described as “quietly radical”.
While serving in senior executive roles within the School of Architecture and Urban Design, he has maintained a strong research program that combines the academic and practice world through his unique design approach. One of the most significant impacts of Baracco’s research is displayed in REPAIR (with Louise Wright and Linda Tegg) which was selected by a national jury to represent Australia at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture.
This prestigious commission resulted in multiple achievements, including the book published for the exhibition, book chapters, and multiple invitations to contribute to projects, publication series and exhibits.
Dr Grace McQuilten has pioneered research on the model of social enterprise in the arts in Australia and has used the vehicle of art and design to advocate for social inclusion, with a particular focus on new migrant and refugee communities.
Grace has a multidisciplinary approach that engages with a range of fields including art, design, architecture, sustainability, sociology, business and international development. Her research in the last five years has resulted in the implementation of new models of social enterprise across Australia, the success of two ARC Discovery projects, an international monograph on arts-based social enterprise and the generation of over $500,000 in research funding.
As the leader of the Contemporary Art and Social Transformation research group in the School of Art at RMIT, Grace has spearheaded the development of new research teams, labs and interdisciplinary projects with a high level of industry and community engagement.
Professor Asha Rao is an algebraist by training and applies algebraic techniques to a wide variety of problems, ranging from designing better codes for communication, to detecting money laundering and describing human interactions in the physical space.
Her research work in policy in the field of cybercrime is recognised internationally for its quality and applied nature and has resulted in her being invited by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime to attend every Intergovernmental meeting on cybercrime since 2013.
Rao is a 2019-2020 Superstar of STEM, and is passionate about mathematics and gender issues that stymie the progress of women and girls in STEM careers.
Asha uses her own research and research outcomes to address the huge challenge of gender inequity in mathematical sciences - and more broadly in STEM - to ensure pathways are created, and the participation of women and other under-represented groups in mathematics is improved.
Dr Hugh Davies is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform. He has developed an outstanding international reputation in the study and design of games and play.
At RMIT, his research productivity and industry engagement has focused on developing ethnographic play methods for health, community and museum spaces.
Projects include curating the Longitude Exhibition and workshops of Asia-Pacific Games and Play at Library at the Dock with funding from the
City of Melbourne and the Ian Potter Foundation.
Davies also led the production of TIMeR, a wayfaring app enabling users to explore Indigenous understandings of place across the RMIT Campus. He has published widely in top tier-journals, is co-author of the forthcoming book Exploring Minecraft, and was awarded the prestigious M+ and Hong Kong Design Trust Fellowship.
With interdisciplinary curiosity and a passion for practice-led research, Davies continues to apply his scholarship in public, educational and industry settings.
Dr Vicki Couzens is a Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Research Fellow, an artist and a Gunditjmara Keerray Woorroong woman, from the Western Districts of Victoria, who has played an active role in promoting the culture of her People.
Couzens has worked in Aboriginal community affairs for 40 years in cultural heritage practice, language reclamation and revival in her Gunditjmara mother tongue, and through her ongoing role as a Cloak Custodian across 80 Aboriginal language groups in the southeastern states of Australia
Vicki’s contributions in the reclamation, regeneration and revitalisation of cultural knowledge and practices extend across the arts and creative cultural expression spectrum including language research and community development.
Her contributions continue today in advisory roles across diverse community settings, including language immersion programs, youth mentoring camps, community health and wellbeing facilities, prisons and mainstream health and cultural organisations.
The Centre for Urban Research is a highly successful concentration of RMIT’s urban research capability. The Centre is a multi-disciplinary team of 65 researchers dedicated to improving knowledge and policy for sustainable cities and regions. Formed in 2012, CUR’s scale makes it the largest dedicated urban research Centre in Australia.
The Centre is highly reputed for its national research leadership and collegial multidisciplinary research environment. Sought out as a home for high-performing researchers, CUR has attracted 13 RMIT VC Fellows since 2014 and has achieved more than 20 ARC and AHURI national competitive grants, plus major collaborative bids, such as the $8.8m NESP Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub. CUR research income grew 250 per cent during 2015-2018 to $5.4 million, equivalent to 9.2per cent of RMIT’s research income.
Sans Forgetica is a new typeface designed using psychological principles to improve memory. It is believed to be the world’s first typeface created using psychological and design theories to help retention of information.
Sans Forgetica breaks many of the design principles used in typography, the resultant ‘distinctiveness’ causes the reader to dwell longer on each word, giving the brain more time to engage in deeper cognitive processing, enhancing memory. The typeface was tested across hundreds of students with positive results.
Sans Forgetica has achieved an outstanding level of national and international impact. Covered across media worldwide, it attracted over 200 million views and has since won multiple awards.
Sans Forgetica is a model of true interdisciplinary research collaboration – both between
Schools as well as between academia and industry, offering RMIT substantial status in showing applied interdisciplinary research to a local and international higher education sector.
Professor Leslie Yeo, a former ARC Australian Research Fellow and Future Fellow, is a pioneer in the field of acoustically-driven microfluidics, having discovered and elucidated many new physical phenomena in the field, including a new class of sound waves—the first such discovery in over 60 years, and having advanced their translation into real practical applications. Among these include a portable, handheld nebulisation platform for inhaled administration of next generation vaccines and therapeutics, for which he received the 2017 Johnson & Johnson World Without Disease Quickfire Challenge award. He was also the recipient of the Young Tall Poppy Science award ‘in recognition of the achievements of outstanding young researchers in the sciences including physical, biomedical, applied sciences, engineering and technology’. Professor Yeo has been at the forefront in establishing the microfluidics community in Australia and New Zealand, and is currently Editor of the American Institute of Physics journal, Biomicrofluidics.
Dr Luba Sominsky is a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences. Her research expertise is in the fields of neuroendocrinology and neuroimmunology, with a particular focus on the roles of inflammation, diet and stress in reproductive health. As an Early Career Researcher, Dr Sominsky has an excellent track record in publishing high-quality research papers, attracting research funding and media attention, as well as editorial responsibilities. Her research expertise has been recognised by multiple national and international talks and colloquia, travel awards and publication/presentation prizes. Dr Sominsky is also Chair of the Communications Committee for the international Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society.
Dr Bin Dixon-Ward’s PhD research investigated how the city grid could be re-imagined to expand our experience of the urban landscape. Through making jewellery and objects, her research revealed four states of the city grid, with the outcomes drawing connections between the city and digital grids through jewellery and objects. This research brings a distinctive lens to contemporary jewellery through the grid and provides a new way to understand and engage with our urban fabric and the role of digital technologies in jewellery; advancing new and innovative knowledge context of jewellery and craft. The contribution that this research has made goes beyond the discipline, pushing the boundaries of jewellery and aesthetics.
Professor Jiyuan Tu has demonstrated outstanding leadership in HDR supervision and junior researcher mentoring, through passionate and innovative research educational practice, that has generated sustained records of well-rounded HDR graduates across Australia and overseas, and has led to significant research outcomes. Professor Jiyuan Tu has excelled in all aspects of research supervision that have been recognised within RMIT and in national/international platforms. His passion, dedication and extraordinary leadership skills can be seen from the successful practice of his large group meetings where HDR candidates, junior researchers, overseas visiting students and scholars, and talented undergraduate students, all benefit from the dynamic research environment. The large number of high quality co-publications with the group demonstrate Professor Jiyuan Tu’s dedication to research training and the effectiveness of his supervision practice in a global community.
Associate Professor Linda Williams has made an outstanding contribution to RMIT in both research and research training. A cultural historian and theorist who has collaborated with many artists engaged in practice-led research at RMIT: as a doctoral supervisor, exhibition curator and in research collaborations such as an international ARC project. Linda leads the Art & Environment research network, providing HDR students and staff with a network to enable collaboration with more senior artists and scholars in their field. Linda provides opportunities to enhance the experience of being an artist and an academic, including postgraduate students and other RMIT colleagues in major exhibitions, mentoring students to coordinate their own exhibition with an established artist, and developing collaborative HDR workshops investigating cross-school doctoral research methods.
Professor Sujeeva Setunge is the Deputy Dean, Research and Innovation in the School of Engineering. Sujeeva is a Civil and Structural Engineer with research expertise and skills in predicting degradation, optimised asset management and disaster resilience of infrastructure and other assets. She has worked in partnership over the past 10 years with Australian local government sector delivering outcomes for optimised management of local council infrastructure comprising of buildings, road structures, drainage, parks and seaports. The smart asset management systems she has developed are currently being used by ten local councils including the City of Melbourne. She is also currently leading a team developing vulnerability models for critical road structures under natural hazards of flood, bushfires and earthquakes.
Dr Kyle Berean is the co-inventor and leader of the human clinical trials and the commercialisation of the human ingestible gas-sensing capsule (Atmo Gas Capsule) from RMIT. He is co-founder and CTO of the start-up company Atmo Biosciences which has been licensed to commercialise the intellectual property from RMIT. He was recently awarded the Johnson & Johnson Innovations Victorian Quickfire Innovation Award, an award that recognises game-changing, early-stage medical device technologies that have the potential to make a major difference to people suffering from the world’s most pressing healthcare challenges, and was also awarded a 2018 NHMRC development grant.
Leah Heiss’ PhD research involves collaboration across design, textiles, engineering, healthcare, and audiology to create the Smart Heart cardiac monitor necklace and Facett, the world’s first self-fit modular hearing aid. Facett won the 2018 Good Design Award, the 2018 CSIRO Design Innovation Award, two 2018 Best in Class Good Design Awards, three 2018 Victorian Government iAwards and a Gold Melbourne Design Award. To distinguish Facett from traditional hearing aids, Leah sought inspiration from the mineralogy collection at Museums Victoria. Facett’s distinctive geometry seeks to shift the stigma of hearing aids and move them from disability to desirability. The design work was exhibited in the Augmented Humans exhibition at the Melbourne Museum in 2018, drawing an audience of 100,000 people.
Associate Professor Oliver Jones is an analytical chemist based at the School of Science. His research group conducts cross-disciplinary research in analytical methods and technologies for a range of applications in biological, chemical, environmental and forensic sciences, and he recently helped develop a mobile app to help teach chemistry. Jones’ innovative approach to supervision has facilitated excellent HDR outcomes by developing skills required to succeed in whatever career path is pursued. By providing candidates with opportunities to interact with academics and industry professionals; utilising cross-disciplinary supervision; and promoting dissemination of research outcomes and student exchange, Jones’ supervisory techniques expose HDRs to an innovative learning environment leading to high quality outcomes. Jones is a member of the Australian Academy of Science National Committee for Chemistry; President of the Australian and New Zealand Metabolomics Network; and a board member of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance and the Metabolomics Society. Jones is a regular presence in mainstream media and the impact of his work is evidenced by several awards, including the 2015 Sir Paul Callaghan Medal.
The Environmental Biotechnology Group (EBG), located within the School of Science at RMIT University, is a world renowned research group with the mission to develop the emerging field of environmental biotechnology with an emphasis on bioremediation. The team’s research is focused on the sustainable remediation of contaminated environments. The team applies cutting edge tools to resolve environmental issues, with a focus on urban environments and the understanding of the role of microbes in the biogeochemical cycling of elements in the environment and the impact of environmental contamination.
The Chronic Infectious and Inflammatory Disease (CIID) program constitute an outstanding multidisciplinary team with unique and synergistic expertise in chronic infectious and inflammatory diseases including HIV and HIV-associated co-morbidities, respiratory viral infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with a strong emphasis on translational research and drug discovery. CIID is committed to the globalisation of the research efforts of RMIT University by building upon its current international collaborations and networks, and the international standing of its members to facilitate the generation and dissemination of knowledge. There is extensive research experience and an established culture of collaborative gain. Together the team forms an extremely strong and productive academic research environment aimed at better health outcomes and a strong environment to foster young academics and graduates with world-class research training.
The Bio Inspired Digital Sensing-Lab (BIDS-Lab) team is a consortium of researchers investigating the development of innovative digital solutions. Using a comparative approach of insect and human brains provides insights into what type of neural architecture enables complex decision making. Studying the honeybee as a model it has been possible to understand how numerical rules, like the concept of “zero”, can be acquired in brains of different animals, providing insights into how the technological thinking that enabled our modern economy could have developed in human culture, and how innovative new computing solutions can be created. Honeybee colour processing investigated using physics combined with detailed neuroanatomical maps enables the development of novel algorithms for how drones with cameras can operate better in complex natural environments under constantly changing conditions. The team’s approach has broad implications for contemporary problems such as food production with a decline of traditional pollinators and the effect of continuously increasing urban environments.
Professor Gary Bryant has been involved in the supervision and mentoring of Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidates for over 20 years. His own HDR candidates have benefited from his close mentorship, and many have gone onto outstanding careers. His contributions to the mentoring of the wider body of HDR candidates has taken many forms: he was closely involved in the development of RMIT’s modern HDR management policies; he has been a champion of the HDR milestone process, which facilitates progress and completion, but also develops presentation skills, which are vital for the modern scientist; he developed the Science PhD Research Methods course from scratch, and has been delivering it since 2014, with high candidate satisfaction. Bryant’s many initiatives have led to an improved intellectual climate across the School, and more broadly across the STEM College and the University.
Professor Kandeepan Sithamparanathan leads the Networks research group within the Communication Technologies Research Center at RMIT, and is the Chair of the IEEE Communication Society VIC Chapter. He has over fifteen years of experience in R&D and has published more than one hundred and twenty five scientific papers including a scholarly book titled ‘Cognitive Radio Techniques: Spectrum Sensing, Interference Mitigation, and Localization’ published by Artech House, New York.
Sithamparanathan’s key research areas are communication engineering and signal processing, and developed several algorithms and techniques for next generation wireless, mobile and UAV communication technologies for dynamic spectrum access and energy efficient communication systems. He works with many industries in delivering communication technology solutions and engages many of his higher degree by research candidates in such industry based research projects for training them in conducting both fundamental theoretical and applied research for meeting industry needs.
Tackling the underlying attitudes, cultures and structural inequalities that lay the groundwork for violence against women is what Associate Professor Anastasia Powell has committed her career to pursuing. Her extensive research has paved the way for law reform, policy work and the prevention of violence against women through promoting gender equality and respect. With a background in criminology and a focus on cybercrime, gender-and image-based abuse, Anastasia explores the ways in which technology has shifted the patterns and experience of sexual violence, in order to seek justice for victim-survivors and contribute to a societal change.
In a world heavily impacted by the devastating outcomes of climate change, Rhodes Scholar, Associate Professor Lauren Rickards explores the social and cultural tipping points that leave her optimistic about the future of our world. Pursuing her deep interest in the big, profound questions that environmental change forces us to confront, Lauren challenges society to work together through communication and proactive change.
Professor Andrew Greentree is one of Australia’s leading theoretical physicists, with interests spanning quantum optics, quantum information, the properties of diamond and its fluorescent colour centres, and recently the psychophysics of bees. Specific breakthroughs include his prediction of novel states of light, new methods for quantum transport, and a new proposal for a diamond magnetometer.
His publications have been cited over 8000 times with an h-index of 47. Greentree is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Chief Investigator of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics, member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts, member of the Australian Institute of Physics, and Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK).
Associate Professor Roland Snooks is internationally recognised for his research that explores the design implications of emerging technologies to rethink architectural form, structure and organisation. The calibre of his research is demonstrated through international recognition, significant outputs, and funding success. Snooks is recognised internationally as a pioneer of behavioural design methodologies - an approach that draws on the logic of swarm intelligence and multi-agent algorithms. He is also a recognised leader in architectural robotics within Australia and has made pioneering contributions internationally to applying large-scale polymer 3D printing to architecture. Snooks’ research has been exhibited widely and acquired for the permanent collection of some of the world’s leading museums of modern art and design, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Snooks leads a number of significant research projects including the $7.9M IMCRC Design Robotics project and is regularly invited to lecture at the world’s leading schools of architecture.
Dr Beni Halvorsen is a Lecturer and Early Career Development Fellow in the School of Management. Halvorsen’s research falls under two broad categories: Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour. Specifically, Halvorsen’s research focus is on migrant, minority, and under-represented employees’ experiences in the workplace, diversity, diversity management practices and their effect on organisational performance with a particular focus on employee turnover and retention.
As an Early Career Researcher, he has published his research in top-tier academic journals, and presented his research at national and international conferences. The impact of his research has seen him appointed to Diversity Council Australia’s Panel of Experts as a specialist in cultural and ethnic employee outcomes on their project called ‘The State of Inclusion: A National Index of Workplace Inclusion’.
Dr Sumeet Walia’s work is internationally recognised for its innovation in materials engineering to unlock novel properties in ultra-thin materials and deploying them to demonstrate fascinating next-generation applications in electronics and healthcare. From fabricating future semiconducting materials for electronics, to chips that can mimic the human brain for storing and recalling past information, smart sensors for health monitoring and miniaturised energy sources, Walia’s contributions to physical science have amalgamated multidisciplinary innovation onto functional application-oriented, futuristic platforms for implementation across the breadth of technology.
Dr Kathy Waghorn is striving to expand our thinking about the potential of architectural intelligence. More than simply the production of buildings and objects, it is the spatial and social relationships between things, people and places that coincides with broader relational activities. Kathy’s research focuses on engaging performative and material exploration to construct a practice that shares its borders with both art and architectural knowledge.
Dr Darcy Allen’s thesis, The Private Governance of Entrepreneurship: An Institutional Approach to Entrepreneurial Discovery, developed a novel contract-theoretic approach to the early stages of new technologies. This profound shift from the ordinary choice-theoretic approach to his contract-theoretic approach opens up entirely new analytical vistas, which emerge out of his recognition that property rights are social relationships, not relationships between people and things.
With this insight Allen investigates the innovation commons which provides a landscape upon which entrepreneurs can operate, transforming that landscape in economically valuable ways by constructing relationships among interested participants. Further, through his examination of blockchain technology in various forms, Allen conclusively demonstrates that economists have heretofore under-appreciated the ability of the private ordering of economic interaction to promote innovation throughout the range of economic activity.
Dr Alsharif Abuadbba’s PhD work is centred on solving a major privacy exposure issue of the huge collected data on cloud including sensors, smart meters and biomedicals. Abuadbba developed a novel resilient data protection for high sensor and smart devices streams in the computer cloud environment without hindering direct process of these streams. These outcomes have been published in A* journals such as IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering and IEEE Transactions on Smart Grids. Abuadbba received a nomination for a Student of the Year in the State of Victoria 2014, publication Awards 2015-2016 and the Eureka International Innovation Award 2018.
Professor Paul Carter is an internationally acclaimed academic and artist and has an outstanding track record as an industry collaborator, creative researcher, design mentor and public lecturer. He is Professor of Design/Urbanism at the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University and has excelled in disciplinary and interdisciplinary research across social and cultural geography, performance studies, urban behavior, cross-cultural poetics, acoustic ecology and public space design.
Carter has held ARC Professorial Research Fellowships at University of Melbourne (1994-2003) and won a number of ARC Discovery grants. He was also Professor and Chair of Creative Place Research, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University (2009-2013), where he founded and directed the Centre for Memory, Imagination and Invention. Carter is an interdisciplinary scholar who has produced an exceptional body of work across a range of disciplines in which he explores and uses public space.
Professor Anthony Forsyth chaired the Victorian Government Inquiry into the Labour Hire Industry and Insecure Work in 2015-16, through a research partnership between RMIT and the State Government. The Final Report to the Premier exposed widespread non-compliance with workplace and other laws by labour hire contractors, particularly in the horticulture, meat processing and cleaning industries.
Anthony’s recommendations have been implemented through the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018 (VIC), which introduces a licensing scheme to improve the integrity of the labour hire industry and protect vulnerable workers from exploitation. Labour hire providers must now show they operate a legitimate business, can pay minimum award wages and comply with superannuation, safety and accommodation requirements. The impact of this research is shown through its contribution to state law reform and potential influence in national reform, and Forsyth’s widespread engagement with the media, invited speaking engagements and dissemination of the research in academic journals.
Associate Professor Flora Salim’s research in understanding the patterns of human movement, habits and activity from data has been utilised for movement prediction, energy and demand forecasting, and intelligent assistants. With work that focuses on behaviour recognition and tracking through spatio-temporal data analytics, Flora is motivated to ensure that her methods are put to good use and are able to make an impact on our world.
Dr Miranda Lai’s research focuses on resolving practical issues relating to the interpreting profession and interpreter education, in particular in areas of police interpreting, interpreter vicarious trauma and pedagogy of deaf interpreting. She is a recipient of a Research Excellence Award in 2016 from the RMIT School of Global, Urban and Social Studies.
Lai’s research has raised awareness within the legal field of the problem of court interpreters suffering vicarious trauma and she is a pioneer in investigating Deaf Interpreting. With the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), the industry is experiencing exponential demands of hearing and Deaf interpreters and as a result, Lai’s exceptional research capability in solving practical social needs is highly renowned.
Dr Adrian Pudsey’s research broadly covers the area of high-speed flight, propulsion and systems technology. He is currently lead chief investigator and project manager of two Cooperative Research Centre Projects totalling $4.45M; the first focuses on Hydrocarbon Fuel Technology for Hypersonic Airbreathing Vehicles and the second investigates Responsive Access to Space. The success of the latter project will revolutionise atmospheric cruise flight and access to space with a more efficient propulsion system, bringing Australia to the forefront of the new space race.
The impact of Pudsey’s work is becoming global as he was invited as plenary speaker at the International Conference on High-Speed Vehicle Science & Technology in Moscow, Russia in November 2018. His experience in the Australian Defence Force and in the discipline of Aerospace Engineering provides a complementary, real-world approach to the research and creation of innovative technology that could change the future of hypersonics and access to space.
Professor Alisa Andrasek is recognised for her work on the convergence of design, computer science and exponential technologies. Bringing AI and robotics to the forefront of architectural design and construction, she is Professor of Design Innovation at RMIT University, the founder of award-winning design laboratory Biothing, a partner of Bloom Games and co-founder of AI Build.
Andrasek’s work has been exhibited and is part of permanent collections around the world including the Centre Pompidou Paris, New Museum NY, Storefront NY, FRAC Collection Orleans, TB-A21 Vienna, Beijing and Sydney Biennial, among others. In recognition for Professor Andrasek’s contributions to advancing architectural and design science, she received the prestigious “Europe 40 under 40” Award, the Metropolis Next Generation Award, and the Far Eastern International Digital Design Award. The author of Biothing (2011), Andrasek’s writings have been published worldwide and she has lectured extensively around the globe.
Jozica Kutin is a PhD candidate in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing. Her thesis examines economic abuse in young adult intimate relationships. Jozica used mixed methods to determine how economic abuse manifests and how it can be prevented within the young adult cohort. Kutin’s research has been readily sought after and used by the finance, government and community sectors. Her research results have also attracted significant radio, TV, online and print media coverage.
Kutin has presented her research at several national and international conferences. Her first published journal article was one of the journal’s 20 most downloaded articles, and is listed in the national judicial “Domestic Violence Bench Book” as key literature used by practitioners, policy makers and researchers. In 2017 Kutin won the RMIT 3 Minute Thesis competition and is currently developing a post PhD research translation co-design project in collaboration with the Foundation for Young Australians.
Mohammad Taha is a PhD candidate in the School of Engineering in the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group (FMM). His thesis focuses on harnessing electrical and optical properties of materials to engineer new applications. His research involves a self-modifying coating that can be used on surfaces such as glass. The coating allows regulation of temperature and radiation by automatically letting in more heat when it is cold and blocking the sun’s rays when it is hot. The use of the coating in ‘smart windows’ can lead to major environmental benefits and significant financial savings.
Taha’s research allows him to engineer this coating in a novel way that increases its production potential. The coating also has applications in sensors, wearable electronics, memory devices, optical modulators and infrared camouflage for stealth technologies. Taha has current multidisciplinary collaborations in memristors, 2D materials, microfluidics and optoelectronics showing his capability in applying his skills and knowledge in a multitude of ways.
Dr Jonathan Kolieb’s partnership with Australian Red Cross, produced a project designed to increase awareness of, and respect for, international humanitarian law (‘the laws of war’) – primarily enshrined in the Geneva Conventions (1949) – amongst Australian companies doing business in conflict-affected areas around the world.
Through direct engagement and both scholarly and practical business-oriented outputs, the project aimed to integrate international humanitarian law into governance systems and management practices of Australian businesses. It is envisaged that this will allow these companies to act in a more responsible and humane manner – benefitting both the company itself and the communities in which they operate.
Dr Mladenko Kajtaz’s industry-partnership research project with the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne and Evok3D, a 3D printing company from Melbourne, involves the development of a design process that allows fabrication of a novel ankle-foot orthosis using additive manufacturing.
The ankle-foot orthosis is used for children with neuromuscular disorders including cerebral palsy, acquired brain injuries and spina bifida. The new design will allow the hospital to produce a more therapeutically effective orthosis that improves the quality of life of their young patients by increasing their functional capabilities and allow them to better interact with their friends, families, and the world around them.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Distinguished Professor Cuie Wen is an internationally recognised research leader in the discipline of materials science and engineering. Her research has made significant contributions to new knowledge and innovations in developing new metallic biomaterials, surface modification and tissue-implant interaction, leading to new classes of novel biocompatible titanium alloys, magnesium alloys, metallic scaffolds and their surface modification techniques for orthopaedic and dental applications; and, new knowledge in the fundamental understanding of the evolution of nanostructures, their characterisation and evaluation, and the microstructure–mechanical property relationships. Cuie’s outstanding research track record shows sustained and excellent research performance and she has also been appointed to the ARC College of Experts 2016 and NHMRC Grant Review Panels 2017. She is an editorial board member for the journals of Acta Biomaterialia and Bioactive Materials and also a regular reviewer for over 60 international journals.
STEM College, School of Science
Dr Rajesh Ramanathan is a Vice Chancellor Fellow in the School of Science. His cross-disciplinary research spans from physical sciences to biological sciences and engineering, and focuses on development of new nanomaterials for biosensor technologies with commercial potential. As an Early Career Researcher his excellent track record in attracting research funding, research supervision and delivering high-quality research outputs includes highlights on 13 journal covers; regular presence in mainstream media; and editorial engagement with reputed journals. The impact of his research is evident from the Hitachi Social Impact Prize for Connected Health for his work on norovirus biosensor technology, and selection as a finalist (among 1400 nominations across 85 countries) for the 2017 INDEX: Design to Improve Life Award.
STEM College, School of Science
Dr Jessica Pandohee completed a PhD in Applied Chemistry studying multidimensional chromatography and investigating novel approaches in extracting chemical information comprehensively from complex samples in food, agriculture, metabolomics and forensic systems. Jessica fostered collaboration between RMIT, Deakin University and industry partners such as Victoria Police and CSIRO. Her work has resulted in five articles in internationally peer-reviewed journals.
In 2016 Jessica was the recipient of the Victorian International Education Awards – International Student of the Year (Research) and the Premier’s Award for outstanding academic achievement, contribution and connection to the Victorian community and capacity to be an inspiring role model.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Adopting a passionate and reflexive approach to creative practice research education, Craig has generated high levels of candidate and supervisor satisfaction at RMIT and externally. He has made significant contributions to university-wide research training; has won internal and external awards for supervision; has received invitations to present and facilitate workshops nationally and internationally; has published widely on creative practice research pedagogies; and has received visiting and adjunct appointments focussed on developing supervision practices in creative disciplines. Craig has earned a reputation for excellence in doctoral supervision that has not only generated excellent outcomes for his own candidates, but has also influenced others across Australia and overseas.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Distinguished Professor Mike Xie has made outstanding contributions to the original development and subsequent world-wide adoption of a technology known as Evolutionary Structural Optimisation (ESO) and Bi-directional ESO (BESO). This technology has been used to design many iconic buildings and other novel products internationally. In Australia, he has collaborated with major companies such as Arup, Boeing and Thales on designing light-weight and high-performance structures and materials. Professor Xie won the 2017 Clunies Ross Innovation Award from the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering and the 2017 AGM Michell Medal from Engineers Australia.
College of Business, School of Management
Dr Macdonald’s research programme addresses questions that are critical to social and economic outcomes arising from Australia’s new National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), including improving health and wellbeing, improving social welfare and social cohesion, enhancing the effectiveness of organisations, ensuring evidence-based policy-making and influencing public policy. Her research is investigating the workforce challenges of NDIS examining how the Scheme is impacting on the nature of jobs and conditions of work of the low-paid disability support workforce; exploring new business models for disability services and potential for innovation that combine good quality support and good quality support work; and identifying ways in which regulation and social policy can shape the services market to ensure good outcomes and sustainable jobs in social care systems.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Robert Chapman is a PhD candidate in the School of Engineering in the Quantum Photonics Laboratory and Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T). His thesis focuses on the development and implementation of crucial protocols and algorithms for quantum information science and technology. His research interests extend to the development of novel quantum photonic technologies that will open pathways for future quantum information applications. Robert was awarded the RMIT Prize for Research Impact - HDR (Technology) in 2016. He has presented at multiple conferences in both the US and Europe and has published several high-impact peer-reviewed articles, in prestigious research journals.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Fashion and Textiles
Associate Professor Lijing Wang has 30 years of work experience in fibre material research with more than 200 publications. He has been a chief investigator for eight Australian Research Council grants, and 20 more other funded research projects. He leads the Smart Textiles research cluster for the Centre for Materials Innovation and Future Fashion and the School’s Saving Lives research stream. His areas of research interest are protective clothing and comfort, smart textiles, flexible sensors and wearable technology, and fibres and polymers material science, engineering, sustainability, and modelling.
STEM College, School of Engineering
The Civil Infrastructure Management Research Unit brings complementary expertise in contributing to new knowledge and creating impact in enhancing resilience and sustainability of Civil infrastructure.
The team has developed a niche expertise and focus at RMIT University for predicting degradation of Civil infrastructure including buildings, bridges, seaports, drainage, water mains, buried pipes, tunnels and roads and also developing sustainable infrastructure solutions including low embodied energy materials and reducing emissions and energy consumption. The work of the team has established the position of RMIT Civil Engineering as the established research unit for Civil Infrastructure management.
Professor Sujeeva Setunge, Professor Chun Qing Li, Associate Professor Kevin Zhang, Associate Professor Rebecca Gravina, Dr David Law, Dr Dilan Robert
STEM College, School of Engineering
The Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research Team conducts world-leading research into the technical, operational, social and safety challenges of UAS technologies. With a record for delivering real world outcomes for research and industrial partners, the team includes senior academics, research fellows, doctoral and undergraduate students across many disciplines. They recently competed in France at the 2017 International Micro Air Vehicle Competition winning the “Record Breaking Micro Heavy Lift Event” and will be hosting the prestigious conference and competition in November 2018 at RMIT University. This is the first time this high tech competition and conference will be held in the Southern Hemisphere.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Architecture and Urban Design
Adjacent to a series of formal university leadership positions related to Graduate Research, Associate Professor Pia Ednie-Brown has been an investigator on three externally funded research projects concerned with various aspects of Creative Practice Research and HDR candidate experience. Through these leadership and research activities she has instigated a range of initiatives providing intellectual and community support for candidates, supervisors and associated research cultures.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Fashion and Textiles
Professor Olga Troynikov’s industry-based research centres on the physical, physiological and psychological interfaces between humans, materials, apparel systems, and external environments. She has made significant contributions to new knowledge and innovation while developing new apparel and materials that support and protect the human body when worn under strenuous, dangerous and dynamic conditions. Her discoveries have had impact in important fields such as firefighting, mining and other heavy industry, medical garments and sport. Her commitment to the development of HDR candidates has generated excellent outcomes for them; she sees them as research collaborators and builds their engagement with industry throughout their candidature.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
From ethical consumption and Indian reality TV to new digital work-life practices, Tania Lewis’s research puts a critical spotlight on global and local lifestyle and consumer trends. Tania has published over 50 journal articles and chapters on this broad topic and is the author of numerous books and edited collections including Smart Living (2008), Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction (2011) and most recently Telemodernities: Television and Transforming Lives in Asia (2016). An ex-medical practitioner and a member of RMIT’s Digital Ethnography Research Centre, Tania has conducted a wide range of empirical research from groundbreaking research on young people’s internet use for health information to video ethnographic studies of household recycling, backyard permaculture and everyday digital household media use. Tania is currently writing a book for Bloomsbury Press entitled Digital Food: From Paddock to Platform.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Professor Brandt is the leading Australian researcher in the area of macro machining with lasers and has conducted work over the last 30 years in laser cladding, cutting, drilling, welding and more recently additive manufacturing. This has resulted in technological achievements, patents, research papers and commercial products, which have been recognised internationally and nationally in both scientific and industrial circles.
He also led the team that designed and manufactured the first additively manufactured titanium spinal disc implanted into an Australian patient in 2015. His book published in 2016 by Elsevier titled Laser Additive Manufacturing: Materials, Design, Technologies and Applications has now sold over 700 copies globally. In 2018 he takes on the presidency of the Laser Institute of America for a 12 month term.
STEM College, School of Science
Professor Vipul Bansal is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Founding Director of the Sir Ian Potter NanoBioSensing Facility. He leads a highly cross-disciplinary research team that works across the boundaries of chemistry, biology, physics and engineering.
His research focuses on the development of nanotechnologies for societal, biomedical and industrial impact, examples include i) self-cleaning textile nanotechnology facilitating chronic wound healing and cleaning clothes using sunlight; ii) a variety of biosensor and diagnostic technologies to detect different diseases, food and environmental contaminants; and iii) a cancer imaging nanotechnology that has been licensed to a biomedical company and is currently under human clinical trials.
Professor Bansal’s research strategy has a strong emphasis on converting fundamental knowledge into products and services with an underlying end-user focus.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Architecture and Urban Design
Dr Jordan Lacey was awarded one of the prestigious Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowships (2015-18) for his multisensory design research. In this position, he has generated substantial research funding and was project leader and creative director on three interdisciplinary research projects. His creative research practice operates at the interface of urban design, user experience and publicly situated multisensory installations. He has a particular passion for investigating innovative ways that digital technologies can be embedded in urban environments to augment the atmospheric and materials conditions of everyday life.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Dr Hunt is an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow and Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Global Research. His expertise is in evaluating the impacts of international conflict management and peacebuilding efforts. As an early career researcher, Dr Hunt has a growing reputation for research excellence. This is evidenced by the number of high-quality scholarly and policy-oriented publications as well as the support received as a chief investigator to advance his work on civilian protection in UN peace operations and security and justice sector reform in the aftermath of violent conflict (over $1.5 million of Australian Competitive Grant funding in the past five years).
STEM College, School of Engineering
Dr Torben Daeneke’s multidisciplinary work is centred on solving engineering challenges through material design at the nano-scale. His work on utilising room temperature liquid metals as reaction media has resulted in new synthetic pathways that provide access to a new class of low dimensional materials with promising properties for their application in electronics, catalysis and sensing. His work also resulted in the development of novel catalytic systems that harvest solar energy, including the recently developed solar paint that converts moisture and solar light into hydrogen fuel.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Dr Taylor’s PhD explored female perspectives in mainstream, comedy screenplays. The research focused on screenwriting practice and script development. A feature film comedy screenplay was written as part of the creative practice approach to the research. A postmodern feminist theoretical position underpinned the project. The outcomes are new techniques for writing specific perspectives into comedy screenplays, especially gendered and marginalised perspectives, with a view to maintaining those perspectives through script development and production processes.
College of Business, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing
Dr Berg’s thesis investigated the history of prudential regulation and regulatory change in Australian banking between 1893 and 2008. He found that regulatory change is driven by changes in subjective institutional costs. The findings help us understand the trajectories of economic reform and the growth of Australia’s regulatory state. While completing his PhD, he also published three books on political philosophy and political economy, wrote 200 newspaper columns and magazine articles, using findings from his ongoing research to directly participate in the public policy process.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Dr Khot’s PhD research contributes inventive strategies for turning physical activity data into delightful physical representations such as 3D printed plastic artifacts, sports drinks, and 3D printed chocolate treats – which are personalised based on an individual’s efforts. Through these systems, Dr Khot offers a fresh perspective on engaging with one’s physical activity data and contribute new interaction design knowledge towards making physical activity more pleasurable and fulfilling.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Dr Jessica Wilkinson is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing in the School of Media and Communication. She is a poet and scholar passionate about the potential for poetry to convey and explore historical subject matter in the genre she refers to as ‘nonfiction poetry.’ Her practice has explored this concept through numerous works of both high quality and deep impact, including books (poetic biographies), articles and chapters, a nonfiction poetry journal (for which she is Editor-in-Chief), and various interdisciplinary collaborations. Her work has also seen engagement activity both nationally and internationally, resulting in many benefits for literary communities and creative industries.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Property Construction and Project Management
Distinguished Professor Helen Lingard leads a team delivering applied research in construction work health and safety (WHS). Organisation culture evaluation tools developed by Helen’s team have been adopted by the Australian Constructors Association comprising the 19 largest construction companies operating in Australia, and are widely used by government agencies to evaluate WHS policy and benchmark performance. In 2017 Helen led a national review of the operation of the model Work Health and Safety Regulations in the construction industry. Helen is also an invited member of the newly formed NSW Government Centre for Work, Health and Safety Research Foundation.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Associate Professor Madhu Bhaskaran is transforming the way we imagine, use, and interact with electronic devices and sensors. Her breakthroughs on combining functional oxide materials processed at high temperatures with elastic and plastic materials has led to stretchable electronics and sensors. She has been recognised by international and national awards and fellowships including being listed on Innovative Engineers in Australia 2017 by Engineers Australia. She has also won the 2017 Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher. Her work has appeared in leading journals, led to patents, and been communicated widely beyond traditional boundaries, raising the profile of engineering and its impact.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Architecture and Urban Design
Dr Attiwill’s research establishes an expansive idea of ‘interior’ and re-frames the discipline and practice of interior design as a critical contemporary practice in which questions of urban inhabitation and subjectivity are foregrounded. Her research has local and international impact evidenced through workshops, citations and speaking engagements; for example, ‘Urban + Interiority: Propositions toward a new collective urban inhabitation’, a workshop held in Nicosia, Cyprus addressing the potential future reunification of Cyprus; and executive editorship of a special issue of the IDEA Journal titled ‘urban + interior’.
College of Business, Graduate School of Business and Law
Dr Kallies’ research focus is on energy and environmental law, with a special emphasis on renewable energy and electricity market regulation. It sits at the intersection of law, markets and technology. Anne holds German and Australian law degrees. Her international background and the comparative focus of her research add to the global appeal of her work.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Dr Adam Chrimes has been involved with three projects with significant industry impact. These are i) detection and identification of submicronic contaminants on 'clean' and polished surfaces ii) human ingestible gas sensing capsule iii) biofuel production monitoring using microfluidic platforms. He was recently awarded the CSIRO Science Industry Endowment Fund STEM+ researcher in business fellowship so that he may continue his impacting research in collaboration with RMIT University and OptoTech Pty. Ltd. (Melbourne based SME).
STEM College, School of Engineering
Dr Xin Ren studied three-dimensional metamaterials and structures with negative Poisson's ratio. The research developed a novel methodology for generating metallic auxetics with tunable mechanical properties. He also designed and tested the first auxetic nails in the world.
He has published several articles in prestigious journals during his PhD candidature, including two front cover papers published in Smart Materials and Structures, one of which was selected as one of the “Highlights of the year 2015” by this journal.
College of Business, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing
Quanda (Samuel)’s research area is in development economics with a focus on poverty, inequality and financial inclusion. His research applies rigorous econometric techniques founded on sound economic theory in order to formulate evidence-based economic and social policy recommendations aimed at improving conditions in developing countries.
Samuel has presented at conferences in UK, Australia and China, and has published in many peer reviewed journal articles, including in Journal of Development Studies and The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics.
As an economist, Samuel actively promotes his work and takes part in policy debates in various arenas. So far, his work has been featured by media around the world such as World Economic Forum, Asia Timesand The Conversation.
STEM College, School of Science
Litty Thekkekara is a PhD candidate who holds an RMIT International Research Scholarship in the School of Science. Her work on the development of graphene based energy storages has the potential to be developed as an improved technology for energy storage in the future. Graphene has been immensely popular for its potential applications, but many of these have been thwarted by fundamental material and structural limitations. Litty has overcome this using laser scribing techniques inspired by the patterns of a fern leaf, to create complex structures in graphene.
In 2017, Litty's research on bioinspired graphene solar energy storage was published in Scientific Reports (an online open access journal from the publishers of Nature) with the significance of this work recognised internationally with extensive media coverage and industry attention.
Litty was also awarded the 2017 ‘Warsash Science Communication Prize in Optics’ from the Australian Optical Society. This prize is awarded to an individual who has published the highest quality postgraduate research in optics or its application, in a refereed journal.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Dr Megan Nethercote was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2017 and is based in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. Her research investigates the impacts of urban intensification, and of capitalist political economy in particular, on households and cities. Her current work focuses on high-rise apartment development, and also the functions of housing and households under neoliberal shifts.
Dr Nethercote is currently undertaking a pilot study with social enterprise Nightingale Housing, investigating alternative relationships between land and housing, including understandings of their progressive possibilities to reorientate us towards de-commodification, and its impacts on households and communities.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Dr Jianzhen Ou is a Senior Research Fellow, an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow, and Victoria Fellow in the School of Engineering. His research interests mainly focus on the development of high-performance micro-/nano-technology enabled chemical sensors based on low-dimensional metal oxides and chalcogenides. These sensors particularly target the detection of toxic and pollutant gases and human metabolites for applications of environmental monitoring and remediation, public safety and security as well as human healthcare. Some of his research outcomes have been engaged with national and international industry partners for collaboration and commercialisation.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Distinguished Professor Sarah Pink is Director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre. Sarah brings together theoretical scholarship and applied practice to create new interdisciplinary understandings and insights into how people experience and use digital technologies in everyday life and to consider the implications of this for digital futures.
She is a world leader in the development of innovative ethnographic research methodologies. Her research has been funded by national research councils in the UK, Spain, Sweden and Australia and through a number of industry partnerships internationally (including Suncorp, Unilever and Volvo cars).
She currently holds a Swedish Knowledge Foundation funded Visiting Professorship at Halmstad University, Sweden. Sarah’s latest books in the fields of digital technologies and applied research include Digital Materialities (2016), Digital Ethnography (2016) and Theoretical Scholarship and Applied Practice (2017).
STEM College, School of Science
Dr Flora Salim is a Senior Lecturer at the Computer Science and IT discipline, School of Science, RMIT University. Her expertise is in human mobility and behaviour analytics of spatio-temporal sensor data from mobile, pervasive computing, and smart cities and environments. She was a recipient of the prestigious Australian Research Council (ARC) Postdoctoral Fellowship (Industry) in 2012-2015.
As an Early Career Researcher (ECR), she has a solid research track record in attracting and managing research funds and delivering high-quality research outputs. Dr Salim has been awarded nationally competitive grants from the ARC, IBM Smarter Cities Lab, and numerous industry contracts, with the total amount awarded of over than $1 million in the last five years.
Her research in spatio-temporal data analytics, context recognition and behaviour recognition and prediction from sensor data is evaluated across a diverse source of data sources, such as from smartphones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Beacons, road sensors, and parking sensors, and across multiple projects, including indoor monitoring and analytics in university and retail environments, driving behaviour recognition, road risk analysis, and passenger movement analysis in airports.
STEM College, School of Science
Supervisor: Dr Samuel Ippolito, Dr Ylias Sabri, Professor Suresh Bhargava
Thesis title: Surface acoustic wave based sensors for selective detection of low concentration elemental mercury vapour
Dr Mohibul Kabir was a doctoral student in the School of Applied Sciences and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in School of Chemistry of University of New South Wales. The main focus of Dr Kabir’s PhD work was to design and develop surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices for sensitive and selective detection of low concentrations (<3.5 mg/m3) of elemental mercury vapour.
He successfully developed SAW devices with various structural designs and integrated them with noble metals such as gold, silver as well as gold nanomaterials and investigated their performance for mercury sensing applications. The developed sensors showed promising results to be implemented as potential mercury sensors within industrial process. Dr Kabir published 13 journal articles and three conference papers during his PhD candidature.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Professor Roddick has a sustained record of providing an environment and opportunities which enable HDR students to leave RMIT with well-developed skills for undertaking research, enhanced verbal and written communication skills, tangible outcomes in terms of peer-reviewed publications, and high employability.
Her weekly HDR research group meetings provide a forum for the students to learn from visiting and RMIT experts, to participate in personal development activities, and to increase their presentation skills. Weekly supervisory meetings with individual students and their Associate Supervisor contribute to their steady progress and timely completion.
Felicity has also contributed to training in HDR student supervision and policy development at College and University level. In total, she has supervised 45 HDR students (34 as Senior Supervisor) to successful completion.
STEM College, School of Science
Professor John Handmer is a geographer, economist and lawyer. He undertakes research with fire and emergency services to reduce risk and to improve the safety and resilience of people and communities. His research was one of 20 cases nationally selected for its impact on policy and practice by the Excellence in Innovation for Australia 2014 report.
He led the development of bushfire community safety research in Australia with the Bushfire CRC, in close collaboration with end-users, shortlisted for the CRC Association’s 2014 Innovation Award. He co-led the post-fire Human Dimensions research after Black Saturday. This work, on behalf of all Australian fire agencies and the Royal Commission, was instrumental in re-shaping Australia’s safety policy and warnings for bushfires.
He works in a variety of national and international committees including the disaster committee for the International Council for Science. He also updates the National Emergency Risk Assessment Guide. Recently, he completed the development of a new dataset for Australian disaster impacts, and is working on identifying factors underpinning losses including fatalities.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Dr Karyn Bosomworth worked with five of Victoria’s Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs) and several research colleagues to help these CMAs plan for the uncertainties and dynamics associated with a changing climate.
The research helped CMAs apply the concept of ‘Pathways Planning’, which helps explore how robust current and potential management practices are across multiple possible futures, and how well they leave future options open. Such planning provides a long-term perspective, while guiding immediate and medium term action. The concept is changing approaches to climate change planning.
Like several other CMAs, Corangamite CMA used the concept to inform their recent Climate Change plan. Karyn is now working with all of Victoria’s CMAs in further applying and refining the approach to help implementation of their climate change plans.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Architecture and Design
Supervisors: Dr Jane Burry, Dr Charles Anderson
Thesis title: Building Simplexity
Kristof Crolla is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture and Design. He is a Belgian Hong-Kong based architect who combines his architectural practice Laboratory for Explorative Architecture & Design Ltd. (LEAD) with an Assistant Professorship in Computational Design at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Architecture (CUHK). His work focuses on strategic implementations of computation and local construction idiosyncrasies into the architectural design and construction process.
He is best known for the projects ‘Golden Moon (Mid-Autumn Festival, Hong Kong, 2012)’, which received over 400,000 visitors during its six-day lifespan, and the public event space ‘ZCB Bamboo Pavilion (Hong Kong, 2015)’, a unique bending-active shell structure built from 3 kilometres of hand-tied bamboo poles. Both projects internationally received over two-dozen design awards and accolades, including the G-Mark (Japan) and Architizer A+ (USA) Awards.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Associate Professor Craig Batty is HDR Director in the School of Media and Communication. He has published widely in the areas of screenwriting practice and pedagogy, creative practice research and the creative practice research degree. He is an international advocate for the screenwriting practice PhD, and for developing shared understandings that support excellence in the supervision of practice-based PhDs.
In 2016 Craig was the recipient of a national AAUT Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, for his work in developing a peer-to-peer pedagogy that assists creative writers in their transformation to becoming creative writing researchers.
STEM College, School of Engineering
The Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group is adept at growing ultra-thin materials, controlling their properties, and harnessing these to enable electronics, sensing, and photonic technologies. The Group’s vision is to be internationally recognised for outcomes and impact and to nurture the next generation of research leaders.
The Group has created nanoscale electronic memories, wearable sensor patches, flat optical devices and more. The results have appeared in over 80 journal articles in the last five years with an average impact factor >7.5 with five patents. Fifteen articles have featured on journal covers, with many appearing on television, radio, and print and online media (with well over 2500 mentions). The significance and impact of the Group's outcomes is evident from members receiving 48 fellowships, awards, and prizes in recent years.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Distinguished Professor Sarah Pink is the Director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre. A key strand of Sarah’s work involves bringing together design, ethnographic and documentary video practice to create innovative methodologies for research, intervention and dissemination of her work.
This has been developed in national research council funded projects, as well as through a series of industry partnerships, including the Energy and Digital Living website (2014) based on an EPSRC funded project in the UK, her design ethnography film Laundry Lives (2016), created through partnership with Unilever, and the Design for Wellbeing Project with Bendigo Hospital and Exemplar Health in Victoria (2016-18).
Sarah’s latest books in the design field include the Un/Certainty ibook, Digital Materialities: anthropology and design (2016), Future Anthropologies (2017) and Making Homes: ethnography and design (2017).
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Dr Yolande Strengers is an ARC DECRA Fellow and co-leader of the Beyond Behaviour Change Research Program at the Centre for Urban Research, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. Her research is clustered around a series of applied and theoretical projects exploring the impacts of smart technologies in everyday life, and their energy and sustainability outcomes.
Yolande has led and co-led a series of projects with industry partners including energy utilities and advocacy organisations, the ANZ Bank, environmental authorities and state government departments. She is the author of Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and co-editor of Social Practices, Intervention and Sustainability (Routledge, 2015).
STEM College, School of Science
Stefan Kasapis is a Professor of Food Sciences. His research interests focus on bridging the gap that has emerged between advances in fundamental knowledge and direct application to product situations with a growing need for scientific input.
Since joining RMIT in 2009, he has published in excess of 80 articles in learned journals, edited two books, acted as principal supervisor of nine doctoral and three Masters by Research graduates, and delivered five Plenary Lectures at main events in his field, including those organised at the Universities of Guelph and Wageningen. He is the Editor of Food Hydrocolloids, which is the highest impact-factor research journal in food sciences.
His lifetime citation number of published work is 4,349 with the h-index being 38. He received four ARC grants mainly in collaboration with industry in developing innovative breakfast foods.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Architecture and Design
Craig Douglas is a Senior Lecturer in the Landscape Architecture Program, and Co-Director of the Office of Urban Transformations Research (OUTR) Laboratory, a School of Architecture + Design d_Lab research team in the Centre for Design Practice Research.
His research explores design as an activity of making and as an agent for understanding and responding to the challenges of the built environment in a rapidly changing complex world through live projects in collaboration with community, industry and government stakeholders.
The research focus is for the generation of sustainable urban futures conceived through a practice of design informed through a careful and rigorous exploration of economic, environmental, and social systems that constitute the dynamic medium of the landscape and the landscape of the city.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Dr Larissa Nicholls is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban Research. She investigates the health, wellbeing and environmental issues emerging from the nexus of energy, housing and urban planning policies. As a member of the Beyond Behaviour Change research program, her research aims to reorient policy and programs to achieve social and environmental change.
Dr Nicholls has been a chief investigator on several industry-funded applied research projects investigating household vulnerability and the role of energy policy in Australia. She is leading a research project to understand and manage the health impacts of heatwaves on vulnerable households. Dr Nicholls received the Peter Harrison Memorial Prize at the 2015 State of Australian Cities Conference for contribution to knowledge and capacity for sustainable urban development in Australia.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Dr Jianzhen Ou is an ARC DECRA Fellow in the Centre for Advanced Electronics and Sensors (CADES), School of Engineering. His research focuses on exploring functional materials and nanotechnology enabled systems.
He also co-leads the commercialisation of an innovative medical device – “Human Gas Sensor Capsule”, supported by an Accelerating Commercialisation grant, DIIS. In the past five years, Jian has published over 70 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals and international conference proceedings. His works have received more than 2200 citations so far with an h-index of 25.
His research has also attracted exceptional public media attention from hundreds of international media outlets, including those reported by TIME Magazine, CBS News, NPR and ABC News.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Supervisors: Dr Linda Daley, Dr Rebecca Hill
Thesis title: Lotjpa Yorta Yorta! Retrieving, reclaiming, and regenerating language and culture through the arts
Dr Bennett explored the centrality of the performance arts in retrieving, reclaiming and regenerating Cultural Heritage community languages, specifically Yorta Yorta.
Her research found that: Cultural Heritage community languages are alive, developing, and evolving; Cultural Heritage communities and people must be at the forefront of creating their language programs; and the arts are critical to the health and wellbeing of Cultural Heritage community’s languages and culture.
Dr Bennett’s PhD brought her creative professional practice into the academy as a place where urgent questions of cultural survival and maintenance could be investigated.
College of Business, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing
Supervisors: Professor On Kit Tam, Dr Meg Sato
Thesis title: Attracting Foreign Direct Investment: A Critical Analysis of Vietnam's Performance
Dr Thanh Hoa Le completed his doctoral studies in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing at RMIT University. His research dealt with issues critical for Vietnam’s development and reform in that he investigated the factors which determine success in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to the country, and the efficacy of government policies towards FDI.
Dr Le’s research will enable policy developers in government departments and elsewhere in Vietnam to increase the focus on economic reform and development to improve the competitiveness of the country’s FDI location advantages.
Since completing his PhD, Dr Le has taken a senior position as Dean of Supporting Justice Division, Justice Department of Can Tho City, in southern Vietnam.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Supervisors: Professor Arnan Mitchell, Dr Elizabeth Soergel, Mr Giang Thach Nguyen
Thesis title: Laser light induced domain engineering of lithium niobate for photonic and phononic applications
Dr Andreas Boes was a doctoral candidate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) within the School of Engineering, RMIT University. He has pioneered an extremely novel approach for modifying lithium niobate, a material of great interest for optical and acoustic applications.
The modified structures can control and manipulate light and sound waves within microchips, enabling new devices in the thriving fields of quantum photonics and phononics, ultra-broadband communications and plasmonics.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Professor Mike Xie is an RMIT Distinguished Professor, Director of Centre for Innovative Structure and Materials and Fellow of Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. The work of his research team focuses on design optimisation and advanced manufacturing of novel structures and materials.
His team has a strong and continuing track record in securing Australian Research Council grants and other competitive grants. Professor Xie and his colleagues Dr Pannirselvam and Dr Xu and PhD student Mr Ren have successfully developed a novel method to test the strength of waffle pods used in the construction industry.
This joint research project with Unipod arose from a commercial testing conducted at RMIT's Rheology and Materials Characterisation laboratory. Their developed method is currently adapted as a testing standard in Unipod. The research has provided a practical solution to a significant industry problem.
College of Business, School of Business IT and Logistics
Babak Abbasi is an associate professor of Business Analytics and Operations Management at School of Business IT and Logistics. His research focuses on industry-motivated quantitative modelling and decision making under uncertainty applied to healthcare delivery improvement, supply chain coordination, resources allocation, service operations management and manufacturing.
He holds an h-index of 16 in Scopus. He has recently developed a large scale mathematical/simulation model for the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS). This research used data from 105 hospitals in Australia and provided a simulation tool for the ARCBS that can evaluate the impact of any operational policies such as reducing the shelf life of red blood cells, changing the trans-shipment network and blood substitution policies.
STEM College, School of Science
Dr Suelynn Choy’s research focuses on precise satellite positioning and navigation. She is the lead investigator in a research project with the Australian Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Spatial Information and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, investigating the capability of the Japanese regional satellite navigation system to deliver precise positioning services.
Dr Choy and her research team successfully demonstrated that augmentation data generated by Australian infrastructure and transmitted by the regional satellite navigation system can be used to provide accurate positioning anywhere outdoors in Australia at any time. Her research is laying the foundation of a basic discovery for innovative augmentation solutions and development of technological capacity for Australia to deliver nationwide precise position information.
Dr Choy was recently awarded the 2016 Australian National Measurement Institute Prize.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Dr Jonathan Duckworth has established a strong reputation for his practice-based design research that forges synergies between digital media art, science, rehabilitation, disability and game technology.
Dr Duckworth has designed two highly successful projects called Elements and Resonance funded by the Australia Research Council and Australia Council for the Arts. Both works provide a medium for rehabilitation of movement and cognition for individuals with an acquired brain injury. Elements was recognised for its design innovation as a recipient of the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Design Award and 2016 Good Design Award.
These projects have yielded significant innovations within rehabilitation, the arts and technology field, and have generated applications with significant impact in other cultural and community sectors relevant to disability, performance, and participation in the arts.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Education
Dr Rebecca Seah is a lecturer in mathematics education in the School of Education. As part of the research team in Reframing Mathematical Future II, an Australian Mathematics and Science Partnership Program Competitive Grant Project (2015–2018), Rebecca leads the work on reasoning in geometry and measurement.
Rebecca is responsible for developing the draft learning progression for spatial thinking, the trial assessment tasks and the accompanied learning activities/resources currently being used across Australian schools. She acts as a mentor to five research schools in Queensland and is in the process of completing the recording of five videos to provide quality professional learning for teachers and to be housed on AAMT’s online professional learning portal where they will be accessible by 4500 individual and institutional members.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Dr Sumeet Walia is a researcher in the School of Engineering and specialises in the use of metal oxides for next-generation nanoelectronics. Having completed his PhD in 2013 from RMIT University, he has several high impact publications and his research has appeared on the cover of many prestigious journals.
His work has also been featured in over 800 national and international media outlets with one of the discoveries being featured in the Top 100 innovations list released by Netexplo in partnership with UNESCO. Sumeet's commercially oriented research has also attracted interest from industry. He was awarded the 2014 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Doctoral Excellence.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Fashion and Textiles
Supervisors: Associate Professor Olga Troynikov, Dr Nicola Massy-Westropp
Thesis title: Therapeutic gloves for patients with arthritis
Siti Hana Nasir is a doctoral student in the School of Fashion and Textiles. Her doctoral research significantly contributed to establishment of an evidence-based framework for design and engineering of therapeutic gloves for individuals suffering from hand arthritis.
Hana adopted a unique and innovative user-centric study design in her approach to the development of the evidence-based framework. She engaged with a number of industry partners, professional bodies and interdisciplinary researchers during her studies and her research work received attention from health, engineering and design scientific communities, both in Australia and internationally.
Hana was awarded ‘Outstanding Student Paper Award’ at a conference and also is the recipient of the RMIT European Union Centre HDR Travel Grant in 2015.
College of Business, School of Business IT and Logistics
Supervisors: Dr Siddhi Pittayachawan, Mr Bruno Vincenzo
Thesis title: Investigating the formation of information security climate in a large Vietnamese construction company: a social network analysis approach
Duy Dang-Pham completed his Bachelor of Business (Information Systems) at RMIT Vietnam and also an Honours degree at RMIT University with a Vice-Chancellor’s List Award in 2013. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the School of Business IT and Logistics.
For his thesis, Duy is collaborating with TTT Corporation - one of the largest construction enterprises in Vietnam - to enhance their information security systems. The research utilised network analysis techniques to improve security awareness of hundreds of employees within a short time. Important mechanisms of the security awareness diffusion process were also explored in the research.
Duy has been publishing in high impact journals and engaging with industry partners in Vietnam. His research interests include information systems, security management and supply chain management.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Supervisors: Dr Alberto Peruzzo, Dr Steven Flammia
Thesis title: Developing Photonic Quantum Information Technologies
Robert Chapman completed his Masters degree at the University of Bristol (UK) and is currently undertaking a PhD with the Quantum Photonic Laboratory at RMIT University.
Robert has demonstrated several key quantum information protocols and developed novel integrated photonic devices which manipulate the state of single photons for quantum information applications.
During the final year of his PhD, Robert will integrate single photon emitters onto these photonic devices. This will present a scalable architecture for generating and manipulating photons on a single integrated device, opening future pathways towards quantum computing and quantum communication.
Robert has presented at conferences in the US and Europe and has published several peer reviewed journal articles, including in Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters and Scientific Reports.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Dr Bosomworth will use the grant to work with Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority on a project titled "Enabling sustainable management of our natural resources under a changing climate".
In partnership with the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority (GB-CMA), this project aims to provide practical guidance for natural resource managers in an approach to planning for climate change known as adaptation pathways planning.
It will also support GB-CMA’s role as coordinator of the Victorian CMA Climate Change Forum in piloting such guidance for all CMAs; produce and begin implementation of GB-CMA’s own climate change plan; provide state-wide guidance for Natural Resource Management adaptation policy and practice; provide a tangible case study for Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) of the state’s Adaptation Plan principles in practice and government action on climate change; and provide the basis for specific DELWP guidance on future planning for the state’s waterways and estuaries.
STEM College, School of Engineering
Dr Walia will use the grant to work with Johnson & Johnson on a project titled "Smart Contact Lenses".
Dr Sumeet Walia, a researcher with the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group, will commence an industry-partnered research project with Johnson & Johnson Inc, headquartered in USA.
The work will involve the development of flexible, smart contact lenses. In line with the industry engagement strategy of RMIT University, this project will explore potential pathways to advance the research into a marketable product in partnership with a leading company. The project also has the potential to generate commercially important intellectual property.
College of Business, School of Management
Professor Sara Charlesworth is an ARC Future Fellow in the School of Management’s Centre for Sustainable Organisations and Work. Her research focuses on gender inequality in employment and has involved collaboration with diverse organisations, including GM Holden, Victoria Police and the Australian Human Rights Commission, and with colleagues in Canada and the UK.
Professor Charlesworth’s research has direct policy impact and has been cited in reports of a number of parliamentary inquiries and decisions of the Fair Work Commission.
STEM College, School of Applied Sciences
Professor Vipul Bansal is an ARC Future Fellow and mentors a cross-disciplinary team of 25 researchers as the Director of the Ian Potter NanoBioSensing Facility and the group leader of the NanoBiotechnology Research Laboratory (NBRL). Over the past five years, he has supervised 15 doctoral candidates to successful completions, with a number now placed in reputed organisations such as Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Stanford University and the University of Oxford.
His research focuses on the development of new nanomaterials for applications in diagnostics, drug-delivery, bio-imaging, catalysis and flexible electronics. He serves on the editorial advisory board of six reputed journals including the senior Section Editor of PLOS ONE and Associate Editor of RSC Advances.
College of Business, School of Business IT and Logistics
Dr Bill Davey is a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems. He has held several working group positions with the International Federation of Information Systems and is the Associate Editor of the journal, Education and Information Technology.
Dr Davey is the RMIT chief investigator in a joint research project with Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University in Stuttgart, Germany, investigating design of hospital information systems, and has published several key papers with researchers from Idaho State University on aged care and informatics.
He is currently working on a book on Requirements Elicitation for information systems. Dr Davey supervises two industry-based PhD candidates in Project Management and two PhD candidates investigating the value of IT in addressing specific health issues.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Supervisors: Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh; Professor Michael Austin; Dr Madhu Bhaskaran
Thesis title: Anodized Nb2O5: Application for Gas Sensors, Lithium-Ion Batteries and Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
Dr. Rozina Abdul Rani was a doctoral student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her doctoral thesis contributed to producing in-depth knowledge on the capabilities of oxide of niobium for specific devices including gas sensors, batteries and solar cells.
Her research resulted in fundamental knowledge regarding the synthesis parameters and structural properties of the investigated material, enabling enhancement of these devices' performance. Rozina’s work has been published in several high-impact factor journals and received worldwide attention within scientific communities.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Supervisors: Dr Khashayar Khoshmanesh, Dr Ravi Shukla
Dr. Shi-Yang Tang completed his PhD in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2012-2015. During this time, he developed versatile microfluidic systems for the sorting, trapping, chemical stimulation and microscopic analysis of cells, with a potential application in emerging lab-on-a-chip platforms.
He also developed several innovative microfluidic systems utilising gallium-based liquid metal alloys. His works have been published in several high-impact journals, including PNAS, Advanced Functional Materials, Lab-on-a-Chip and Analytical Chemistry.
STEM College, School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (Director, Sir Lawrence Wackett Aerospace Research Centre)
Professor Chun Wang is the Director of the Sir Lawrence Wackett Aerospace Research Centre. His research focuses on the creation and application of advanced materials and analytical models for structural integrity management of safety-critical structures in a wide range of industries.
Over the past five years, he has received 11 ARC grants, supervised 15 PhD students and 6 postdoctoral fellows, and completed collaborative projects with Boeing, Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Carbon Revolution, and Defence Materials Technology Centre.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies (Future Fellow)
Associate Professor Sarah Bekessy is an ARC Future Fellow and leader of the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. She is interested in the intersection between science and policy in environmental management and is currently involved in a range of research projects, including an ARC Future Fellowship titled ‘Socio-ecological Models for Environmental Decision Making’. She leads two themes under the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions – Threatened Species, and Clean Air and Urban Landscapes.
Her research on ‘Reimagining the Suburb’ (funded by the Myer Foundation) was recently highlighted in newspapers around Australia. Sarah she gave the keynote address at the Cities International Conference in Surabaya, Indonesia, in November 2015.
College of Business, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing (Professor of Economics)
Professor Jason Potts is a professor of economics in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, and an ARC Future Fellow. His research focuses on the very early stages of a new technology (such as 3D printing or the blockchain) when agents need to cooperate to discover entrepreneurial opportunities in the shadow of subsequent competition.
His work examines the institutions that emerge to govern that space, and how these relate to innovation policy.
College of Business, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing
Supervisors: Professor Imad Moosa, Dr George Tawadros
Thesis title: A Reconsideration of The Meese-Rogoff Puzzle
Dr Kelly Burns is an Early Career Research Fellow at Curtin University and a recent doctoral graduate of the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing at RMIT University. Her research focuses on international monetary economics, mineral and energy economics, and forecasting.
Her most notable research achievements include the publication of a book, Demystifying the Meese-Rogoff Puzzle, and over ten A-ranked publications, including a paper in the prestigious Journal of Macroeconomics. Kelly has also secured competitive research funding including grants from the BankWest Curtin Economic Centre.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Supervisors: Dr Joseph Siracusa, Dr Aiden Warren
Thesis title: "This Awesome Field"; A History of United States Nuclear Testing and its Influence on Nuclear Thought, 1945-1963
Since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, there have been over 1,900 nuclear tests. What were their purpose and consequences of nuclear testing on international security?
In his engaging and deeply researched thesis, which has since been published to critical acclaim by Rowman & Littlefield, Dr. David Blades explores how nuclear testing influenced nuclear thinking in the United States, revealing how these tests had an enormous influence, not only on how the weapons and their delivery systems were developed, but also on the strategies for their use.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Supervisors: Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh, Professor Vipul Bansal
Thesis title: Tuning and Engineering of ZnO and CuXO for Sensor, Solar Cells and Storage Devices
Dr Ahmad Sabirin bin Zoolfakar was a doctoral student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He investigated properties of model metallic compounds including zinc and copper oxides for the development of sensors, energy harvesting cells and memory devices.
Ahmad was able to produce fundamental knowledge on parameters that can be engineered in order to enhance the properties that can be obtained from the metallic compounds. The outcomes of this study produced new insights into the development of nanotechnology enabled devices.
College of Business, School of Accounting (Associate Lecturer.)
Supervisors: Professor Garry David Carnegie; Professor Brian West
Jasvinder Sidhu completed his Master of Professional Accounting and Master of Commerce degrees at RMIT in 2006 and also completed an Honours degree at the University of Ballarat. He is a School of Accounting staff member and doctoral candidate.
While undertaking his Honours and PhD research, Jasvinder authored eight journal articles, including in Accounting History, Journal of Intellectual Capital, and Corporate Ownership and Control, and has presented peer-reviewed papers at conferences in Europe, North America, India and New Zealand.
His main research interests are accounting history and intellectual capital. He is also involved in volunteer work and applies accounting techniques in creating efficient service models for community work.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication (Adjunct Principal Research Fellow.)
Supervisors: Professor Larissa Hjorth; Mr Christian McCrea
Brendan Keogh is an adjunct research fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT, and a freelance videogame critic. His research focuses on the phenomenological and critical aspects of videogame play and development cultures.
He has written about the craft of videogames for a variety of outlets including Overland, Polygon, Ars Technica, Kotaku, Reverse Shot, New Statesman, Edge, and the ABC's The Drum. He is the author of Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line.
STEM College, School of Electical and Computer Engineering.
Supervisors: Professor Arnan Mitchell; Mr Giang Thach Nguyen
Andreas Boes is a doctoral candidate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) within the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, RMIT University. Andreas has discovered a new method to modify the functionality of the material lithium niobate with nanometer precision without damaging the surface.
These new structures can control light and sound waves within microchips with applications ranging from quantum optics to drug delivery. Andreas has presented 9 peer reviewed conference papers and published 8 journal articles, including in Advanced Materials Interfaces, Physical Review Letters and Applied Physics Letters.
STEM College, School Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (Head of School.)
Professor Adrian Mouritz is Head of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and Leader of the Multifunctional Composites Research Team. Professor Mouritz leads a large team of researchers, including five academic staff, six Research Fellows, and over 20 PhD students, performing fundamental and applied research into composites for aerospace, automotive, marine and other applications.
The team led by Professor Mouritz has an extensive national and international collaborative research network, and the research is funded from many government and industry sources including the ARC, Boeing, Airbus, Ford, Defence Science Technology Group, United States Office of Naval Research and several small-to-medium sized Australian companies.
STEM College, School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering (Future Fellow and Professor of Chemical Engineering)
Professor Leslie Yeo is an ARC Future Fellow, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of the MicroNanomedical Research Centre. Leslie was the recipient of the Young Tall Poppy Science Award and Monash University’s Dean’s and Vice-Chancellor’s early career research awards.
His work on microfluidics has been featured widely in the media and has culminated in a book, over 175 publications and 7 patents. Leslie is the Editor of Biomicrofluidics and editorial board member of Interfacial Phenomena and Heat Transfer and Scientific Reports.
Associate Professor Rajiv Padhye, Centre Director
College of Design and Social Context, School of Fashion and Textiles
The Centre for Advanced Materials and Performance Textiles (CAMPT) is the leading-edge textile research facility within the School of Fashion and Textiles. A group of widely-experiences researchers explore the synergies between textile design, optimal technological performance, and fashion appeal.
Innovative solutions are sought for practical textile problems encompassing improved personal protection, athletic performance, health, and wellbeing. CAMPT has developed notable products including protective fabrics for defence, fire fighters and sports applications, and car seat covers that ensure optimal airbag deployments.
Associate Professor Olga Troynikov, Associate Professor, School of Fashion and Textiles |
Associate Professor Lijing Wang, Associate Professor, School of Fashion and Textiles |
Dr Jenny Underwood, Senior Lecturer, School of Fashion and Textiles |
Dr Arun Vijayan, Senior Research Fellow, School of Fashion and Textiles |
Dr Lyndon Arnold, Research Fellow, School of Fashion and Textiles |
Dr Amit Jadhav, Research Fellow, School of Fashion and Textiles |
Dr Rajkishore Nayak, Research Fellow, School of Fashion and Textiles |
Kate Kennedy, Lecturer, School of Fashion and Textiles |
College of Design and Social Context, School of Property, Construction and Project Management
Dr Ruwini Edirisinghe is a Vice-Chancellor's research fellow in the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT University. She is working in the emerging "ICT and smart technologies in construction" research area. She is leading a number of research and industry projects and international research collaborations.
Dr. Edirisinghe has developed a smart safety vest to monitor the physiological conditions of construction workers in real time to improve work health and safety. Validating the technology's usability in industry is ongoing.
College of Business, Graduate School of Business and Law
Dr Ingo Karpen is an Associate Professor and cross-disciplinary researcher in Strategy, Service and Design at RMIT University’s Graduate School of Business and Law. In his research, Ingo focuses on optimising both organisational design and customer experience design in view of better engaging stakeholders and co-creating better solutions.
For this purpose, Ingo collaborates with international business partners across industries but particularly health care providers to facilitate knowledge generation for the betterment of business and societies.
STEM College
Professor Suresh Bhargava is the Director of the Centre for Advanced Materials and Industrial Chemistry and an internationally recognised and highly cited RMIT researcher (> 5400 citations, current rate of five/day). A Fellow of five learned academies around the world, including Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the current phase of his research is focused on real world applications and creating RMIT brand research leaders for tomorrow. In the past five years, he has produced 17 PhD scholars and multiple postdoctoral and Future Fellows. As one of the top 1% of science and technology leaders in the Australian resource sector, he has received competitive ARC Linkage grants with large corporate multinationals, including Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Alcoa.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh is the Director of the Centre for Advanced Electronics and Sensors (CADES) at RMIT. He is the co-author of nearly 300 books and highly cited scientific papers, Kourosh is internationally recognised for his research into nanotechnology enabled sensors, especially bio and gas sensors, and two dimensional semiconductors. His other areas of research interest include microfluidics and electronic materials.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr Sharath Sriram is a Senior Research Fellow and ARC Australian Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He jointly leads the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group, with a focus on micro/nano-devices for sensing, memories, electromagnetics, and flexible electronics. Sharath is also the Deputy Director of RMIT University’s new MicroNano Research Facility (MNRF). Sharath has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications, with work featured on ten occasions on covers of prestigious journals and receiving extensive media coverage.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The miniaturisation of energy generation systems, while simultaneously maintaining their energy and power capacities, is an important technological challenge. Dr Sumeet Walia’s thesis demonstrated a novel solution to this problem using "thermopower waves" to convert chemical energy to electrical power at high transformation rates. By coating thermoelectric thin films with combustible fuels and igniting them, he demonstrated combustion waves that could produce strong electric current with power-to-mass ratios larger than conventional technologies, such as supercapacitors and lithium ion batteries.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Architecture and Design
Nicholas Williams is undertaking a PhD in the School of Architecture and Design, College of Design and Social Context. He has published nine conference proceedings in the field of computational modelling in architecture during the initial two years of his PhD candidature and is lead author for four publications. Nicholas also has a journal publication accepted in Automation in Construction, one of two top ranked journals in the field. Significantly these publications reflect Nicholas’s prodigious creative project output, for which he has also been invited to exhibit in six venues, domestically and internationally.
College of Business, Graduate School of Business and Law
Professor Supriya Singh is the Professor, Sociology of Communications in the Graduate School of Business and Law. A member of the Global Cities Research Institute, Supriya also co-convenes Asia@RMIT and is a member of the Global Cities Research Institute. Her research focuses on the sociology of money and banking; migration, remittances and the transnational family; globalisation, financial inclusion, user centred design of information and communication technologies; and methodological issues relating to qualitative research.
College of Design and Social Context
Professor Ralph Horne is the Deputy PVC, Research and Innovation for the College of Design and Social Context. With a wide network of industry partnerships, Ralph has been Chief Investigator in over 100 industry-linked research projects across the built environment, urban sustainability and social change since 2005. His research interests include social and policy change for environmentally sustainable design and relations between housing quality and benefits for households. He is also Director, Cities Programme, the urban arm of the UN Global Compact, New York, USA.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh is the Director of the Centre for Advanced Electronics and Sensors (CADES) at RMIT. He is the co-author of nearly 300 books and highly cited scientific papers, Kourosh is internationally recognised for his research into nanotechnology enabled sensors, especially bio and gas sensors, and two dimensional semiconductors. His other areas of research interest include microfluidics and electronic materials.
College of Business, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing
Supervisors: Professor On Kit Tam, Professor Anthony Naughton
Celina Ping Yu has completed her doctoral candidature in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, College of Business. Her thesis, entitled "Corporate Governance of Chinese Fund Management Companies" followed a highly original topic of enquiry, exploring governance quality and drivers of performance outcomes in fund management companies. Celina’s thesis provided new critical insights and extended knowledge and understanding of the subject area, drawing upon perceptive, persistent and careful research, including time spent in Fund management companies in both China and Australia.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Supervisors: Professor Manfred Steger, Dr Marg Liddell
Dr Martinovic produced original and exemplary research on a very complex issue—Home Detention Based Sanctions (HDBS). She analysed ethical, legal, political, and stakeholder controversies and issues as they developed over the decades and commented on them judiciously. She provided evidence that HDBS is more beneficial to society than prison, which operates under a punishment rather than rehabilitation ideology. The insights, knowledge, and authority acquired through her research and writing has made her a world leader in this field.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Supervisors: Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh, Associate Professor Vipul Bansal
Dr. Adam Chrime’s thesis represented a high quality scientific work on the next generation of biosensing systems. It contributed novel ideas to the field of microfluidic biosensors, creating new methods to control nano sized particles for increased sensitivity using conventional optical measurement systems. Adam’s work has been published in several high-impact journal articles, one of them chosen by the editors of the American Chemical Society journals as one of the most promising nano systems for biosensing of the year in 2012.
College of Business, School of Accounting
Supervisors: Professor Brendan O’Connell, Dr Mahesh Joshi
Arabella Volkov is mid-way through her doctoral candidature in the School of Accounting, College of Business. During the course of her PhD studies, Arabella, has produced five journal articles and two conference papers as first author. Her PhD investigates the impact of work-based learning (such as the cooperative year offered at RMIT University) on accounting student’s learning outcomes. While undertaking this research, Arabella has also developed a theoretical framework regarding the impact of work-based learning on student learning. Her thesis title is "Assessing the benefits of integrating an extended internship into undergraduate accounting programs"
College of Design and Social Context, School of Architecture and Design
Supervisors: Professor Sand Helsel, Associate Professor Andrea Mina
Roger Kemp is mid-way through his doctoral candidature in the School of Architecture and Design, College of Design and Social Context and his thesis title is "Negotiating Space: A Process of Constructing Interiors". Roger has developed innovative design strategies that foreground and position occupants relative to perceived and experienced physical and virtual conditions of a space. This negotiation of space was tested through a series of 15 exemplary projects, incorporating a range of media, including film, installation, exhibition, drawings, models, montage and text. This led to an expanded definition of interior design, which breaks from the restrictive parameter of interior space as a condition of enclosure. In addition to his creative works, he has published two journal articles, one as first author.
STEM College, School of Health Sciences
Supervisors: Professor Jiming Ye, Professor Aimin Xu
Xiaoyi Zeng is nearing the end of his doctoral studies having recently submitted his PhD thesis, "Anti-Diabetic Effects of Oleanolic Acid and Matrine", for examination. Xiaoyi’s body of work includes 14 journal articles and one conference paper, in two cases as first author. He has also presented at national and international conferences and was listed as a finalist in the Australian Postgraduate Student award at the Australian Diabetes Conference.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Art
Professor Lesley Duxbury is Deputy Head, Research for the School of Art and the editor of the Studio Research Journal. Lesley’s research leadership was exemplified through her pro-active work in establishing the processes for the collection and reporting of creative works, as well as ensuring that standards of quality were adhered to. She is a prolific researcher, producing creative in addition to producing text based output. Lesley has authored five book chapters (including research on the supervision of HDR candidates in the Creative Discipline) and has also taken the lead in terms of getting her creative work in the RMIT research repository, further showcasing the creative work produced at RMIT. Lesley was the ERA leader for DSC for ERA 2012 as well as being the FoR expert for code 1905 (Visual Arts and Craft). RMIT received a 4 for this FoR code—the highest score in Victoria, outpointing the Victorian College of the Arts.
STEM College, School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences
Professor Kefei Zhang’s research pioneered the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) Radio Occultation (RO) technique for Australian meteorological applications such as weather forecasting, climate and severe weather monitoring. Partnering with the Bureau of Meteorology, Kefei’s team has successfully used this frontier technology to significantly improve the accuracy of short-to-mid-term weather forecasts by up to 10 hours in the Australian region. As a result, this important new space based technique is now officially used in the operational Australian forecasting system. Over 23 million Australians have benefitted from this innovation and will continue to benefit through timely and more accurate weather prediction.
The SportzEdge program focuses on improving sports performance through smart and instrumented sports equipment, non-linear sports dynamics, advanced manufacturing and sustainable engineering of equipment, sports aerodynamics, and design optimisation and customisation of sports equipment, thereby contributing to Paralympic and world championship gold medals. Notable products developed for optimisation of training and improvement of performance comprise smart balls and bats (cricket, AFL), optimised wheelchairs, smart insoles, improved winter sport garments, smart climbing holds, optimised rugby balls and snowboards, and smart gyms.
STEM College, School of Applied Sciences
Professor Dougal McCulloch completed his PhD in 1994 at RMIT University. Since then, he has published more than 150 refereed research papers and been awarded over $3M in competitive grants in the fields of microscopy & microanalysis and advanced coating materials. He is the Discipline Head of Physics in the School of Applied Sciences and the Director of the RMIT Microscopy & Microanalysis Facility (RMMF).
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr Margaret Lech has a Masters degree in Physics and Biomedical Engineering and a PhD in Electrical Engineering. Her interdisciplinary research collaboration has led to the development of speech-based diagnosis of clinical depression, as well as an efficient modelling methodology allowing the understanding of emotional interaction patterns in parent-child conversations.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Architecture and Design
Dr Rosalea Monacella is an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Design, and Co-Director of the research laboratory OUTR: Office of Urban Transformations. The focus of her research is the adaptation and transformation of the city at the nexus of the urban and natural environments that explores the infrastructural, economic, environmental and social complex systems that constitute the city.
College of Business, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing
Thesis Title: Investor protection and agency problems in family firms: Evidence from China
Dr Jing Zhou’s thesis investigates how China’s family companies make choices on corporate governance mechanisms to minimize agency costs with uneven legal investor protection. It produces new perspective and evidence on the governance of the increasingly important family businesses, challenging some conventional findings with implications for succession strategy and executive development.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Sivacarendran Balendhran's research involved developing electronic devices based on two dimensional (2D) semiconducting materials such as molybdenum trioxide (MoO3). He developed field effect transistors (FETs) based on 2D MoO3 with enhanced carrier mobilities, with operational characteristics that exceed any other 2D FETs to date. He has also proven the biosensing capabilities of 2D MoO3.
STEM College, SPACE Research Centre, School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences
Professor Kefei Zhang has made significant contribution to the fields of satellite positioning and geodesy. Kefei holds a number of international patents and has published widely. He is the recipient of the prestigious Australian Space Research Program platform technology project and an Australian pioneer in satellite technology for weather, climate and environmental studies.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Professor Gavin Wood’s main research interests are in urban economics, housing finance and labour economics. He has published widely and is currently on the International Editorial Advisory Boards of the academic journals Urban Studies and Housing Studies. Current research interests include the project “The Edges of Home Ownership” that involves researchers from Cambridge University, Curtin University as well as RMIT University.
College of Business, School of Business IT and Logistics
Professor Prem Chhetri is internationally known for research in developing spatially-integrated business solutions. Prem's recent research focused on urban modelling, tourism analysis, emergency management, and application of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) in transport, infrastructure and logistics planning. Prem has been a Chief Investigator on seven Category one Grants, including three ARC grants in the last five years.
STEM College, School of Applied Sciences
Thesis title: Towards understanding the influence of physico-chemical environment on biological synthesis of inorganic materials
Dr Rajesh Ramanathan’s research involved training bacteria as tiny nanofactories for the fabrication of different nanomaterials. In particular, he investigated the fundamental role of the physico-chemical environment in controlling the mineral morphologies at the nanoscale during biological and biomimetic synthesis of nano-biomaterials.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Property, Construction and Project Management
Thesis title: Exploring Contingent Employment Policy in IT - Impacts upon IT Project Management Capabilities Enhancement in Large Hong Kong Organisations
Dr Chui Ha Ng’s thesis investigated the question of how organisations can accumulate knowledge when most project team members are contingently employed. Chui studied three cases in Hong Kong and suggested reference models of enhancing IT project management capabilities under contingent employment context.
College of Business, School of Business, Information Technology and Logistics
Thesis title: Enterprise Systems and Organisational Agility: Developing and Exploring a Casual Model
Organisational agility refers to the organisation’s ability to compete and thrive in unstable business environment by quickly detecting and seizing opportunities and tackling threats. Dr Trinh Thao’s research set out to investigate the role of enterprise systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management and Supply Chain Management in organisational agility and to explore the underlying mechanisms of how enterprise systems impact on organisational agility.
STEM College, School of Applied Sciences
In the past few years, Dr Michael Taylor has published over 30 journal papers and book chapters, and over 70 international conference presentations, directly impacting scientific practice in national laboratories, universities and hospitals around the world. His findings include methods for halving the risk of secondary cancer in children.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Fashion and Textiles
Amit Jadhav is a recipient of an Australian Government Endeavour Doctoral Scholarship. His research is based on electro-spraying technology which involves functionalising textiles by coating polymer solutions. Amit has designed and developed novel equipment which has capability of producing bicomponent polymer coating at Nano/micro level for a Protective, Medical and Technical textiles applications.
College of Business, School of Management
Ashkan Khalili is a Doctoral candidate in the School of Management. He has published a number of papers on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in high quality journals. Ashkan’s broad research interests include human resource management, organisational behaviour and entrepreneurship.
STEM College, School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering
Professor Felicity Roddick’s research over the recent years has focused on the treatment of water, initially drinking water and latterly wastewater with a view to reuse. Felicity’s work has concentrated on the characterisation and removal of organic matter by various physico-chemical and biological means to improve its quality and thus safety and aesthetics for the consumer, reuse applications and the receiving environment.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Architecture and Design
Pia Ednie-Brown is an Associate Professor and HDR Director in the School of Architecture and Design. She is currently engaged in a large cross-institutional research project enquiring into various aspects of creative practice research, in which many of her PhD candidates are involved. Her academic writing has been published internationally.
STEM College, School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
With background in medicine and engineering, Professor Franz Konstantin Fuss is specialised in Sports Technology Innovation, specifically in the development of smart and intelligent products equipped with sensors or sensor-less sensing systems for optimisation of training, improvement of performance and prevention of injuries.
Core Member- Professor Felicity Roddick
The Water: Effective Tools and Technology (WETT) Centre draws on researchers in SCECE, SAS and SAMME to combine engineering and scientific principles to provide a multidisciplinary approach to solving water-related problems. WETT researchers engage with the community, government and industry to develop technologies and methodologies for managing the quality and quantity of water.
College of Business, School of Management
Dr. Margaret Heffernan, O.A.M. focuses her socio-ecological research on the assimilation of complex public health interventions and equity dynamics for culturally and linguistically diverse population groups. Her work on the implementation of HPV vaccination has resulted in cross-cultural collaborations and resource improvements.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Project title: High performance piezoelectric thin films for haptics applications
Dr. Madhu Bhaskaran is an ARC Fellow, who jointly leads a research group in Functional Materials and Microsystems. She has published 90 peer-reviewed publications, including 55 journal articles. This research will establish a collaboration with STMicroelectronics on the use of piezoelectric thin films for haptics applications.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Media and Communication
Project Title: Increasing local level engagement to build resilient communities: Stakeholder perspectives of conditions that enable local action to reduce disaster risk
In partnership with United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and Plan International Australia, Judy's project is an exploratory study of factors that enhance local level engagement to build disaster resilience in two Asia Pacific communities - Nuku'alofa, Tonga and San Francisco, Cebu, The Philippines.
School of Computer and Electrical Engineering
Professor Arnan Mitchell is Chief Investigator and RMIT Node Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence CUDOS. His research is highly multi-disciplinary, spanning integrated optics, photonic signal processing, functional materials, microsystems, nanomaterials and lab-on-a-chip technology. His aim is to create innovative platforms to enable research in fundamental science and biomedicine and then connect these new technologies to real world applications.
School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
Dr Adrian Orifici is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, and Program Director for the Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering Programs. His research focuses on aerospace structures using fibre-reinforced composite materials and includes damage modelling, postbuckling aircraft structures, multi-axial material characterisation and composite aircraft repair.
College of Business
Professor Brian Corbitt PhD FACS CP has a long track record in research and research training combining competitive funds from the ARC and NCCARF with industry and government funds. Brian’s research addresses problems in Australia, NZ and S.E.Asia related to National IT Policy, improving service delivery, climate change adaptation and improving manufacturing work processes through designing and building business driven, ICT-based solutions. Brian currently supervises 13 PhD students having supervised 61 PhD students to completion.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr Jerry Yu’s research involved the design and fabrication of many new highly sensitive hydrogen and hydrocarbon gas sensors using different metal oxide nanostructures. He investigated the physical, electronic and catalytic properties of these structures, and developed new theoretical mechanisms to incorporate the unique effects exhibited by matter on the nanoscale.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Mr Laith Al-Mashat's PhD research was focused on developing novel nanostructured conducting polymers and nanocomposites based gas sensors. His work featured collaboration with universities in USA, Korea and France. He published a number of articles in high quality journals and international conferences.
College of Business, School of Management
Professor Peter Fairbrother, known internationally for work on union renewal and public service restructuring. Peter’s recent research investigates regional transitions to low carbon futures and local preparedness for bushfires. Peter has published ten books, numerous articles, presentations and reports.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Property, Construction and Project Management
In 2009 Professor Helen Lingard was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship to deliver a programme of research in construction health and safety. Helen has been a Chief Investigator in five ARC Linkage Projects and One Discovery Project. She frequently undertakes contract research for industry and government in Australia, and internationally.
STEM College, School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
Professor Jiyuan Tu has made significant contribution to the field of computational fluid dynamics. He has published four research books by Elsevier and Springer, in particular, one of his books was awarded a prestigious Brennan Medal by IChemE in UK. He has received 14 ARC grant awards over the last ten years.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Arnan Mitchell is Chief Investigator and RMIT Node Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence CUDOS. Until 2012, he led the Microplatform Research Group, a diverse team of over 50 researchers. Through 2012, this research strength has grown with several new, high profile micro-technology research leaders joining RMIT. As a member of this vibrant community, Professor Mitchell aims to ensure that RMIT is recognised as a national and international leader of this discipline.
Joint recipients from the College of Design and Social Context
School of Fashion and Textiles
School of Fashion and Textiles
School of Fashion and Textiles
The research leadership over the last five years has contributed to substantial growth in the School’s research performance across research income, publications and research activity.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr PJ Radcliffe was initially employed by RMIT because of his industry and teaching skills. When the opportunity to do a PhD finally arose he completed that in 18 months and then started taking research students of his own. He now thoroughly enjoys both teaching and research.
Joint recipients from the STEM College
STEM College Office
School of Applied Sciences
School of Applied Sciences
This award recognises early stage innovation with the potential to have a dramatic impact on society. Professor Bhargava, Dr Ippolito and Dr Sabri have developed mercury sensing technologies which will contribute to the health and wellbeing of communities and the environment.
College of Business, School of Business IT and Logistics
Dr Bhavani Sridharan developed a novel e-learning success model for an Australian tertiary education environment. The model has led to the identification of the critical success factors intertwined between pedagogies, technologies, learning resources and management of learning resources in e-learning. Specific policy initiatives are suggested for the effective implementation of the proposed model.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Property, Construction and Project Management
Dr Ehsan Gharaie’s research investigates house completion time within the Australian housing industry. His work addresses the issue of lengthening house completion times at various levels, investigating production factors at the national, state and company levels. Ehsan’s research area also includes mobile plant safety, and construction modelling, simulation and optimisation.
STEM College, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr Haidong Zheng made significant contributions to the understanding of the photoanode materials for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). He developed a method for efficiently growing titania nanotubes on transparent conductive substrates and fabricated the first DSSC based on nanostructured tungsten oxide with respectable efficiency.
College of Business, School of Business IT and Logistics
Ms Asmidah Alwi’s research investigates the interactive effects between the way humans process the information they receive and the museum information representational format on museum learning experiences. The data was collected using quasi-experimental design, and then analyzed using Rasch Model to provide measurable outcomes that could facilitate museum exhibit design.
College of Design and Social Context, School of Fashion and Textiles
Mr Saniyat Islam investigated wound-dressing developed from wool and wool blends using different techniques such as pad-dry-cure, electrospraying and dissolution – regeneration. Bio-active and absorbent wound-dressing materials were engineered utilising biopolymer and nanoparticle additives. Morphological, structural, chemical characteristics of the fabricated dressing materials were determined.
STEM College, School of Applied Sciences
Mr Jos Campbell completed his B.Sc. in bio-nanotechnology before undertaking honours in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. During his PhD, Jos developed nanoparticle based systems for applications in targeted MRI contrast, catalysis and sensing applications in the School of Applied Sciences.
School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences
Dr Suelynn Choy completed her PhD in 2009. Her current research interests are in multi-Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Precise Point Positioning and using GNSS for atmospheric remote sensing. Suelynn is the co-chair of the International Association of Geodesy Working-Group 4.5.2: PPP and Network RTK under Sub-Commission 4.5: High Precision GNSS Algorithms and Applications.
School of Health Sciences
Professor Xue's research has focussed on taking an evidence-based rigorous approach to systematically evaluate major traditional and complementary medicine interventions for common chronic respiratory diseases and pain conditions. These research activities have been supported by over $8 million research grants from the NHMRC and major international grant schemes. To-date, our findings have showed that acupuncture and herbal medicine are beneficial for hayfever, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease as well as chronic and acute musculo-skeletal pain.
School of Applied Sciences
Dr Franich's research in Medical Physics is focused on improving the accuracy of radiation delivery in radiotherapy and medical imaging, while minimising the radiation dose to healthy tissue. This goal is achieved by developing novel systems and techniques for accurately measuring and calculating the radiation exposure distribution in patients’ anatomy. Dr Franich’s research includes the world’s first 3-D deformable radiation detector, and a system for real-time feedback of radiation dose during treatment of prostate cancer.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr Bhaskaran's research has focussed on functional materials to enhance electronic devices, with a specific focus on piezoelectric materials to harvest electrical energy from mechanical pressure. Dr. Bhaskaran is an ARC Post-Doctoral Fellow and has published over 50 peer-reviewed publications in the last 5 years. Her work on nanoscale energy generation properties of piezoelectric thin films has received widespread, international media attention for which Dr. Bhaskaran was recently awarded the RMIT Media Star Award 2011 for Research.
School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning
Thesis Title: Disassembling Capitalism
Nicole Pepperell’s Disassembling Capital highlights the use of irony and parody in Marx’s Capital, in order to explore better ways of theorising complex and dynamic social environments. A revised version of the thesis has been accepted for publication with Brill’s Historical Materialism series.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr Sriram undertakes research is in novel materials and micro-devices with applications in energy, sensing, and memory technologies. These areas are aligned to RMIT University’s research focus area of Smart Technology Solutions. The Ian Permezel Memorial Award provides him with a valuable professional development opportunity. Through this award, he will participate in the 2nd NanoToday Conference, where he will be presenting two papers highlighting outcomes from his current ARC Australian Post-Doctoral Fellowship.
School of Media and Communications
Dr Olivia Guntarik has published in the fields of memory studies, and indigenous and multicultural history and heritage. This project aims to promote greater understanding around how Vietnamese, Sri Lankan and Turkish families rebuild their lives in the post-resettlement years. The research will contribute directly to policy debates about the support services for and development of migrant and refugee communities.
School of Economics, Finance and Marketing
Thesis Title: The roles of systematic skewness and systematic kurtosis in asset pricing
Dr Doan's research focused on investigating factors used to price stocks on the Australian stock market. Specifically, the factors underpinning stock market returns. Her research showed that it is not sufficient just to consider the mean and variance of returns as investors also price skewness and kurtosis (a measure of excessive large and small returns). When these factors were considered the pricing models performed better, especially in bull and bear markets.
Supervisor: Dr Heather Mitchell
School of Health Sciences
Thesis Title: Feeling Grateful: A Parse Research Method Study
Dr. Judith Hart’s dissertation explored the question: What is the structure of the lived experience of feeling grateful? in relation to health and quality of life. The Parse research method, underpinned by the ontology of humanbecoming guided this study. The participants were 10 individuals in the community. Feeling grateful was experienced as: potent elation amid tribulation arising with the assuredness-unassuredness of benevolent alliances. These findings contribute new nursing knowledge and further expand the humanbecoming school of thought.
Supervisors: Dr Phil Maude, RMIT University; Dr Anthony Welch, CQU; Dr Rosemarie Rizzo Parse, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Loyola University of Chicago
School of Architecture and Design
Thesis Title: Sound and Space: An Architect's Investigation
Murray researched a positive role for acoustics in architecture, a field in which acoustics are usually applied to suppress unwanted sounds. He developed the concept of an acoustic landscape, profiled in sound contours that would enable groups of learners to work in open plan, sometimes all linked in lecture mode, but also within their own acoustic containers. He prototyped a segment of this landscape and demonstrated it at work. The research has profound implications for the design of learning environments.
Supervisor: Professor Leon van Schaik
School of Applied Sciences
This award recognises Professor Irene Yarovsky's sustained excellence in research over a period of three years against research benchmarks for quality; including research publications, research student training and research grant success.
School of Medical Sciences
This award for an RMIT researcher, who has completed their PhD within the last 5 years, recognises Dr Vernon Coffey's performance over a period of three years against research benchmarks for performance.
School of Architecture and Design
Thesis title: Negotiating Context
Dr Daniell’s research, which documented the impacts on practice of specific cultural and regulatory regimes, emerged from his fascination with the variations between architectural expectations on three continents. This research revealed a gradient of alignments with local conditions and a range of principles shared with his peers around the world. He discovered that this tension between the specific and the architectural ideal energized design at all scales of work, discernible in modest alterations to a traditional house in Kyoto and in a large gallery in Nevada.
Supervisor: Professor Leon van Schaik
School of Media and Communication
This award recognises the outstanding achievement of Associate Professor Lisa French who has enhanced student learning through exemplary teaching practice and advanced the frontiers of knowledge through a significant contribution to research within a discipline area.
School of Architecture and Design
Paper title: Demonstration of an Open Platform for Tangible and Social Interactions with Responsive Models
Dr Flora Salim will be presenting her paper “Demonstration of an Open Platform for Tangible and Social Interactions with Responsive Models’ at the 2010 Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture conference. The paper aims to encourage the wider international community to participate in the existing research network on interactive and responsive architecture fostered by the authors.
School of Property, Construction and Project Management
Project title: An evaluation of how Occupational Health and Safety is embedded in the Education of Australian Building, Design and Construction courses.
Dr Lara Wallis's study aims to ascertain if students participating in vocational education or higher education built environment design study are provided with a broad OHS education, with relevant examples of designing for safe and health construction of buildings/structures. The study will also ascertain if the curriculum allows students to have a functional health and safety knowledge when they are employed by industry.
School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering
Project title: Impact of sludge Rheology on waste water treatment flow processes.
Large volumes of sludge are treated in anaerobic digester at sewage treatment plants in order to reduce the odour potential of the raw sludge. Internationally, existing wastewater treatment plants are under pressure to treat increasing volumes of wastewater with existing treatment plant due to increasing urban populations and financial constraints. By thickening sludge, the chance of pipe blockage and reduction in digester volume increases due to solid deposition. Dr Nicky Eshtiaghi's project will develop an objective design standard for anaerobic digester to enable industry to operate tertiary treatment system at higher concentration. This will lead an immediate reduction in the cost of maintenance and electricity usage.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Project title: Establish an interaction between RMIT and the silicon photonic industry
A formal research collaboration between RMIT and Lightwire Inc, a world leader in silicon photonics for high-speed interconnects, will be formed by Dr Thach Nguyen to investigate silicon photonic devices that can be incorporated on to a single silicon photonic chip to transmit and receive information at very high speed.
PhD (School of Art)
Thesis title: The Possibility of Infrasonic Music
Dr Hope explored the manipulation of very low frequency sound, known as infrasound, in musical compositions, live performance, installation, improvisation, and recording in new and extant artworks. Her research discovered that music centred around the vibration and resonance created by low frequency sound results in a more embodied listening experience where sound is felt in the body as well as heard with the ears.
Supervisors: Dr Philip Samartzis and Dr KeelyMacarow
PhD (School of Economics, Finance and Marketing)
Thesis title: Empirical Studies of Over-the -counter Currency Option Contracts
Dr Wong explored over-the-counter currency option trading by examining the behaviour of the implied volatility of these contracts. His results reveal option-implied volatility varies over time and does not follow a random walk process. They also indicate a relationship between the volatility smiles and anticipated foreign exchange risk, suggesting their shape affects the predictive ability of implied volatility. These findings provide important insights into the pricing of currency option contracts and the empirical anomalies reported in the currency option market
Supervisors: Assoc Professor AmaliaDiIorio and Professor Richard Heaney
PhD (School of Computer Science and Information Technology)
Thesis title: Document Representation for Efficient Search Engines
Dr Tsegay developed and tested several algorithms that are key components of modern text search engines. With web search engines such as Google processing many thousands of queries per second, very fast algorithms for processing the query and returning a set of answers is expected. The thesis describes novel means of compressing and storing billions of documents that allows fast summarisation, and more efficient responses to queries.
Supervisor: Dr Andrew Turpin
Head of School, School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering.
School of Media and Communication.
Paper titled: “Warts-and-all: the real practice of service design’ addresses a critical concern of human-centred design which challenges the designer’s role in shaping and informing the ideas and behaviours of people and their environment.
Project titled: ‘Women in Victorian Film, Television Industries’ and examines women’s participation in the film and television industry in Victoria.
Thesis Title: Local NGO’s in National Development: The Case of East Timor
Acknowledgement of Country
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Luwaytini' by Mark Cleaver, Palawa.
Acknowledgement of Country
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.
