Examples of Future Fellowships projects commencing in 2014
South Australia
South Australian (SA) research organisations will receive more than $9.1 million through the
Australian Research Council Future Fellowships scheme for 12 new research projects
commencing in 2014.
Some examples of the SA projects are provided below.
To view the summaries of all successful projects, visit the ARC announcements page.
The University of Adelaide
Future Fellow: Dr Matthew Tucker (FT140100780)
Summary: Unlike animals, individual somatic cells in plants have the remarkable ability to
regenerate into new plants, depending on the signals they perceive. This developmental
plasticity is particularly important during normal plant growth, when mature cells adopt new
identities within multicellular environments. Tissue complexity is critical for the utilisation of
plants in society as food, fuel and fibre, but how and why plant cells adopt or change
identity has been difficult to determine. This project aims to employ next-generation
molecular methods to identify pathways driving differentiation of specific ovule and seed
cell-types, which directly impact crop quality, yield and end-use.
ARC funding: $772 104 over four years
University of South Australia
Future Fellow: Dr Sarah Wheeler (FT140100773)
Summary: Given the future risk of water scarcity, farmers will need to plan for greater
farm-level adaptation. Drought and policy reform have inflicted significant economic, social
and personal stress upon Murray-Darling Basin rural communities. This project aims to aid
water managers and policy makers with a greater understanding of transformational farmer
adaptation in order to plan for the economic, social and health impacts of future water
scarcity from climate change and water reform-related policies. The focus will be on the
Murray-Darling Basin, as well as undertaking a comparative analysis with water stressed
basins in the United States.
ARC funding: $736 554 over four years
The University of Adelaide
Future Fellow: Associate Professor Megan Warin (FT140100825)
Summary: There is growing recognition of the need for new ways to tackle the obesity
problem, and for forms of intervention that move beyond the limitations of individual
behavioural changes. This project provides a paradigm for re-orientating how we have
come to know obesity by investigating the cultural and institutional processes that shape
everyday food and activity practices. Understanding and intervening in these dynamics of
social practice are central to the challenges of reversing trends in the prevalence of obesity.
ARC funding: $789 729 over four years
The University of Adelaide
Future Fellow: Dr Emma Baker (FT140100872)
Summary: Australia is currently in a housing crisis, with many escalating problems,
including poor affordability, chronic undersupply, homelessness, insecurity in the private
rental market and a shrinking public housing sector. While some Australians are unaffected,
increasing numbers of already vulnerable people experience multiple housing problems.
This project aims to develop a new theoretical framework for focusing on Australians who
experience multiple housing problems. It aims to identify who will be affected, how this will
play out on individual health and wellbeing, and how governments can best respond. It will
provide essential evidence and intervention tools for understanding and improving the lives
of the most vulnerable.
ARC funding: $661 414 over four years
The University of Adelaide
Future Fellow: Dr Giang Nguyen (FT140100408)
Summary: Failure at large scale such as slopes, embankments, and underground
mining is fatal in terms of human lives and property loss. This project aims to develop a new
methodology to connect micro-mechanisms that trigger and govern failure with the
behaviour at much larger scales. In particular it will allow building constitutive models
directly from microscale mechanisms, while possessing the capability to span the spatial
scales. It will also transform the understanding of material property scaling into a predictive
tool for engineering analysis, helping to obtain more cost effective designs with greater
confidence in safety.
ARC funding: $607 289 over four years
The University of Adelaide
Future Fellow: Dr Martin White (FT140100244)
Summary: Following the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, the greatest outstanding
mystery in physics, it is now time to identify the nature of the dark matter that fills much of
our Universe. This project aims to invent new data mining techniques to test the viability of
a wide class of theoretical dark matter models, using an extensive range of particle
physics and astrophysics data. It will use these models to help design the next generation
of dark matter searches in gamma ray and neutrino astronomy, using the Large Hadron
Collider. This project aims to put Australia at the forefront of international particle
astrophysics research and potential new discoveries will change the future direction
of international particle research.
ARC funding: $757 549 over four years