Major Grants for funding commencing in 2015
Examples of New South Wales
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award projects
New South Wales (NSW) research organisations will receive more than $20.9 million through
the Australian Research Council DECRA scheme for 60 new research projects commencing
in 2015.
Some examples of the NSW projects are provided below.
To view the summaries of all successful projects, visit the ARC announcements page.
Australian Catholic University
DECRA Recipient: Associate Professor Vince Geiger (DE150100269)
Summary: Numeracy has been a national education priority for more than a decade, yet
there appears to be little progress in students' numeracy performance. A lack of numeracy
skills leads to devastating social and economic outcomes for individuals. This project aims to
improve students' numeracy capabilities through: attention to the design of tasks intended to
enhance numeracy learning across the curriculum; and the refinement of teaching practices
with a view to improving student performance on both standardised numeracy tests and
more realistic, contextualised tasks. The project aims to generate new theoretical and
practical insights into effective numeracy education across the school curriculum.
ARC funding: $361 876
Macquarie University
DECRA Recipient: Dr Sasha Tetu (DE150100009)
Summary: Environmental pollution threatens the sustainability of the world's oceans.
However, we still do not understand how pollution affects primary producers at the base of
oceanic food chains. This project aims to provide the first account of how common chemical
pollutants (herbicides, plastic leachates and crude oil) affect key groups of marine
photosynthetic bacteria. As these microbes underpin entire marine food webs, understanding
their responses is crucial to monitoring and mitigating the impact of pollutants on ocean
ecosystems. The aim is to design and validate novel, rapid environmental stress assays,
based on gene expression profiling. This represents a pioneering new application of gene
monitoring techniques to ocean conservation.
ARC funding: $389 476
The University of Sydney
DECRA Recipient: Dr Yang Song (DE150101655)
Summary: This project aims to develop a new framework for the detection and quantification
of cancer biomarkers in diagnostic and histopathology images with discriminative modelling
of intrinsic structures. The framework will be the first computerised solution to provide
automated, quantitative annotations of cancer imaging biomarkers at the macroscopic and
microscopic levels to support standardised reporting of image interpretation. It will help to
alleviate the inter-observer variability and time-consuming process of manual analysis. The
project aims to advance fundamental biomedical imaging research in generalised visual
structure extraction and classification, and enable large-scale translational research in
systems pathology for personalised cancer care.
ARC funding: $297 036
University of Wollongong
DECRA Recipient: Dr Christine Eriksen (DE150100242)
Summary: Bushfire emergencies in Australia have social, ethical and political, as well as
biophysical causes. Hidden in embedded vulnerability, social norms and institutional
structures, these causes are often critical obstacles to building resilient communities. This
project aims to identify key ways to heighten resilience by examining how sacred and secular
faith affects the ability of individuals and communities to prepare for, respond to and recover
from bushfires. Using ethnographic methods, this project will critically examine evidence of
bushfire vulnerability, resilience and adaptation strategies driven by, retained in, or promoted
through faith and ethics.
ARC funding: $353 773
The University of Newcastle
DECRA Recipient: Dr Amy Waller (DE150101262)
Summary: End of life care provides an ideal framework in which to explore the principle of
individual autonomy and consumer decision making. Older people at a high risk of dying in 6
months will be recruited from acute care wards, and asked about preferences for
involvement in end of life decision making in a standardised interview survey. Surrogate
decision makers and physicians will be asked to answer the same questions from the
patient's perspective (namely what they think the patient wants). Findings will suggest ways
end of life care can be better tailored so that patients can participate in decisions and receive
care that is consistent with their wishes.
ARC funding: $359 753
Macquarie University
DECRA Recipient: Dr Celia Harris (DE150100396)
Summary: Older couples remember more together than apart, but little is known about
mechanisms underlying such collaborative benefits. Collaborative remembering may have
therapeutic value in age-related cognitive decline and dementia, providing cost-effective,
readily-available memory support. However there are several 'active ingredients' that may
underlie collaborative benefits and not all of these will be equally effective or translatable into
therapy. This project aims to identify and evaluate these active ingredients, teasing apart
'what', 'who' and 'how'. Testing younger and older couples, healthy and in early stages of
decline, this project aims to generate new knowledge and provide a basis for future therapies
utilising collaborative remembering.
ARC funding: $342 000
University of Technology, Sydney
DECRA Recipient: Dr Nicholas Hopwood (DE150100365)
Summary: Children born into circumstances of socio-economic disadvantage are at risk of
missing out on the developmental, educational and social opportunities that give them the
best possible start in life. By helping parents in disadvantaged families to cope with adversity,
parent education services can mitigate these risks, build resilience in families, and change
children's prospects for the future. This project aims to identify the most effective ways that
parent educators can create lasting positive impacts for families. This project also aims to
find out what needs to change to make these best practices more widespread and cost
effective, including learning from study of low-cost community-based services.
ARC funding: $371 000
University of Wollongong
DECRA Recipient: Dr Rute Santos (DE150101921)
Summary: The levels of sedentary behaviour are now alarmingly high in toddlers, yet little is
known about the effect of this behaviour on cognitive development and executive functions
during early childhood. This 15 month cluster randomised controlled trial will examine the
effects of reduced sitting time on cognitive development and executive functions in Australian
toddlers from low socio-economic families. This project aims to develop and implement
evidence-based strategies and policies designed to optimise developmental and health
outcomes in young children, specifically in those from a low socio-economic status, thus
giving young children the best start in life.
ARC funding: $357 000