A round of grant funding has seen a boost of almost $6 million to USyd research projects, including seven fellowships and a project grant.
Last week USyd announced that six projects would receive Future Fellowship funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), as well as one Linkage Project. The funding was part of the ARC’s $180 million round of mid-year funding, which awarded 100 Future Fellowships and five Linkage Project grants to researchers across Australia.
Future Fellowships fund “mid-career researchers” over four year projects, while Linkage Project funding is designed to partner academics with government and industry partners on “complex problems” and “fast-track solutions to benefit end-users”.
Professor David Schlosberg was awarded a $425,500 ARC Linkage Project grant for the Sydney Food Incubator, a joint project with the City of Sydney and partners at UNSW, TAFE NSW, and FoodLab Detroit. It focuses on tackling food insecurity—something which affects 17,000 residents of Sydney.
The six ARC Future Fellowships grants range from $768,125 to $1,018,125, and the research projects “span the fields of cosmology, epigenetics, computer vision, grid systems, nanotechnology, and nanoscale characterisation.”
Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Duncan Ivison told Honi that he is “sure [that these fellowships] will deliver…extraordinary discoveries and benefits for Australia and the world.”
USyd also benefited from Google’s PhD Fellowship program, receiving one of the four coveted awards. USyd Ph.D. candidate Stephen Mallon will receive funding and be “matched with a Google Research Mentor” in his research in improving the “performance and efficiency of network applications”.
USyd also announced that it would become the first Australian university within the Airbus Global University Partner Program, which gives engineering students access to Airbus’ 100-employee campus team and global exchange opportunities.
USyd will participate in the program immediately. Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and IT, Professor Willy Zwaenepoel, will visit the Zhuhai Air Show in China this November to formally sign a partnership agreement.