$7.9 million in ARC funding announced

Monash researchers have been awarded $7.9 million in the first round of Australian Research Council Future Fellowships.

The Australian Government created the ARC Future Fellowships to encourage research in areas of national importance and to attract international researchers to support the Commonwealth Government's innovation agenda.

Future Fellowships were awarded to researchers from the faculties of Arts; Business and Economics; Engineering; Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences; and Science.

Successful projects include an investigation into how to develop ultra-clean fuel from brown coal (Dr L Zhang); developing forecasting methods to determine stock market volatility (Associate Professor Gael Martin); and exploring the origins of our universe (Dr Duncan Galloway).

The other projects funded include:

• Associate Professor Stuart Batten, Faculty of Science, Building advanced materials from the bottom up
• Dr Jacqueline Broad, Faculty of Arts, Mary Astell: An historical-intellectual role model for women in philosophy
• Dr Christopher Hutchinson, Faculty of Engineering, Dynamically responding metals: a new generation of engineering alloys
• Dr Ranjith Pathegama Gamage, Faculty of Engineering, An assessment of carbon dioxide storage capacity of water bearing sedimentary basins
• Dr Jeremy Smith, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Masterminding reproduction: Kisspeptin and RFamide-related peptide
• Dr Bjorn Winther-Jensen, Faculty of Engineering, Electro-catalytic conjugated polymers

International researchers Dr A Mazumdar and Dr J Zhang will join the Faculty of Science as Future Fellows. "Monash has performed well in the first round of this new scheme," Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Edwina Cornish said.

"This result confirms that Monash researchers are tackling issues that are of great importance to our nation."