Ten University of Melbourne researchers awarded ARC Future Fellowships
Ten University of Melbourne researchers have been named recipients of Australian Research Council Future Fellowships.
Their projects cover high-impact research in fields from metacognition in adolescents and children, the brain mechanisms behind biological phenomena such as sleep and pain, and mechanobiological mathematical models of organ development to soil viruses, the processes of memory-making, and native bird species.
The Future Fellowships scheme reflects the Australian Government’s commitment to supporting high-quality mid-career researchers investigating areas of national and international benefit.
The ten projects were funded for four years each, winning overall funding of $9.8 million from the $97.5 million distributed across Australia.
Two of the recipients – Iroise Dumontheil (Birkbeck University of London) and Joseph Watts (University of Otago) – will join the University of Melbourne research community to pursue their projects soon.
Successful applicants are:
Professor Iroise Dumontheil – psychological sciences
This project aims to advance understanding of the development of children and adolescents’ insight into their own thoughts and behaviours, or metacognition. Individual differences in metacognition impact learning and contribute to the educational achievement gap observed in many countries, including Australia. By combining analysis of existing international cohort data and state-of-the art developmentally appropriate neuroimaging methodology, the project is expected to create new basic research knowledge. An intended benefit is the development and evaluation of an evidence-based intervention to enhance the metacognitive skills of primary and secondary school pupils and improve their achievement in mathematics.
Dr Natalia Egorova-Brumley – psychological sciences
The project aims to reveal the brain mechanisms behind the interaction between such fundamental biological phenomena as sleep and pain. This highly interdisciplinary project expects to deliver significant insights into how poor sleep changes the brain to increase pain sensitivity in healthy adults, by combining novel lab-based mechanistic sleep and pain manipulations and naturalistic longitudinal observation. The rich multimodal dataset generated by the project will be made publicly available to enhance research transparency and international collaboration. This should provide significant benefits, ultimately opening up ways to improve quality of life and wellbeing of the Australian population.
Dr Hang-wei Hu – agriculture, food and ecosystem sciences
This project aims to investigate how soil viruses steer key nitrogen cycling microorganisms and processes, by utilising emerging approaches of viromes, DNA-stable-isotope probing, and Raman-spectroscopy-based single-cell-sorting technology. It is expected the project will generate new knowledge in harnessing the potential of soil viruses to improve fertiliser nitrogen use efficiency through manipulating the biological pathways of nitrogen losses from agricultural ecosystems. Expected outcomes of this project include novel and comprehensive evidence for the roles of soil viruses in controlling terrestrial nitrogen cycling processes. This should provide significant benefits to Australian agriculture and environmental management.
Professor Tu'uhevaha Kaitu'u-Lino – obstetrics and gynaecology
The placenta is essential for reproduction in many diverse species. This project aims to elucidate fundamental contributions of protease inhibitors and the proteases they target to placental development and maturation. It is expected to generate new knowledge around whether SPINTS play a fundamental role in disparate animals that independently derived a placenta, suggesting convergent genetic evolution. The project is expected to result in disciplinary collaboration, produce novel models, and promote future projects in many species. The project should result in significant benefits toward advancing knowledge in reproductive biology, have economic and commercial benefits, and further enhance Australia's outstanding reputation in the field.
Professor David Nisbet – biomedical engineering
Protein delivery technologies hold great potential to improve organoids (miniature organs used as in-vitro models), allowing a deep understanding of development. However, current limitations must be overcome - particularly cost, precision, and efficacy. This project will engineer delivery materials to improve the efficacy of organoids, allowing control over the location and timing of protein delivery. Outcomes will include a technology platform of immediate use in the agriculture sector and for animal model alternatives. The benefit will be widespread, ensuring the growth and sustainability of our health and agriculture sector. The project will increase public understanding of protein delivery technologies, aiding in technology adoption.
Associate Professor James Osborne – mathematics and statistics
Through a set of collaborative interdisciplinary application projects, with open scientific questions, this project aims to develop cutting edge mechanobiological mathematical models of organ development and function. The expected outcomes of this project are a step-change in the fidelity of multicellular models of three-dimensional tissues and the scientific investigations into the mechanobiological processes regulating organ development, currently not possible, that these models support. In addition to significant benefits from advances in fundamental mathematical and biological knowledge, this project plans to develop a mechanobiological modelling framework made available to the wider scientific community by an open-source release.
Associate Professor Lucy Palmer – neuroscience
Although they define us, our knowledge about how, and where, memories are processed and stored within the brain is still in its infancy. This project aims to investigate the morphological and functional changes that occur in cortical neurons during memory formation. By recording from both mouse and human neurons, this study will bridge the gap in knowledge between the heavily-investigated rodent brain and the human brain and advance our knowledge on how remote memories are formed in individual neurons within the frontal cortex of the brain. These findings will highlight potential neural mechanisms that might be awry in cases of memory loss and amnesia.
Dr Joseph Watts – psychological sciences
Thinking about mental states, such as beliefs, desires and intentions, is a universally important human ability known as mentalising. This project aims to use new cross-cultural databases and computational comparative methods to study five ways that mentalising practices vary across world cultures. The findings of this research have the potential to provide the first systematic overview of how mentalising practices vary globally as well as reveal the historical and social processes that shape the diverse ways that people think about the mind. Benefits of this knowledge include a more culturally sound basis for future developments in community-focused professions such as education, community development and counselling.
Dr Rachael Weaver – cultural studies
This project aims to produce the first comprehensive analysis of native bird species in the cultural, scientific, and economic life of colonial Australia. It expects to generate new knowledge about Australia’s environmental imagination, identity and practices locally, nationally and globally. Anticipated outcomes include new insights into the circulation, cultural meanings and uses of species and species knowledge and the tensions between enchantment and pragmatism in creative, affective and material responses to birdlife. This should significantly benefit understandings of Australia’s past and present by mapping its historical relationships to bird species and producing new insights into the pressing ecological concerns of today.
Associate Professor Neil Young – veterinary biosciences
In Australia, liver fluke disease caused by Fasciola hepatica causes major economic losses to livestock production. Triclabendazole is the most effective drug for parasite control, however resistance to this drug has emerged and continues to spread in Australia. This project expects to create a novel resource to identify new drug targets, generate new knowledge about the genetic composition of F. hepatica populations and unravel the genetic determinants underlying triclabendazole resistance. The curation of functionally-annotated genetic data for F. hepatica populations will underpin the development of diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines to deliver a new generation of intervention strategies to control liver fluke disease.