College of Science & Engineering
Sophia Love
- Doctor of Philosophy (Natural and Physical Sciences)
- sophie.love@jcu.edu.au
Romain Vaucher
- Senior Lecturer, Sedimentology
- romain.vaucher@jcu.edu.au
Jenny Fisher
- Associate Dean, Learning and Teaching
- jenny.fisher@jcu.edu.au
Ambili Narayanan
- Doctor of Philosophy (Natural and Physical Sciences)
- ambili.narayanan@my.jcu.edu.au
Sarfaraz Ali
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- sarfaraz.ali@jcu.edu.au
Mikaeylah Davidson
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- mikaeylah.davidson@jcu.edu.au
Liuxin Chen
- Lecturer
- liuxin.chen@jcu.edu.au
Rafael Cabral Carvalho
- Lecturer, Marine Geoscience
- rafael.cabralcarvalho@jcu.edu.au
Tom Lloyd
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Global Ecosystems
- tom.lloyd@jcu.edu.au
Mohamadreza Chalak Qazani
- Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering
- mohamadreza.chalakqazani@jcu.edu.au
Northern Australia Plant Biosecurity Facility
Lucas Cernusak
01 Jan 2024 - 30 Jun 2025
This proposal aims to establish the only Australian plant quarantine facility north of the 27th parallel (Brisbane), and therefore the only one in the Australian tropics. The facility will enable effective research on tropical invasive plants, which currently can only be developed via proxy facilities far from the relevant habitats. This poses severe limitations to biosecurity research in the Australian Tropics. JCU is a leading institution in tropical environmental research, and as a broad and diverse base of biosecurity researchers that will be expand their capacity to develop world class research on plant biosecurity under safe and adequate conditions. Research ranges from the impact of reintroduction of new genotypes on weed fitness, genetic variability and sensitivity, impact of climate change on weed expansion, the role of plant-animal interactions on plant control, and others.
Lead Scientist - Group on Earth Observations Global Ecosystem Atlas
Nicholas Murray
01 Feb 2024 - 31 Dec 2024
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is a global partnership that promotes the use of Earth observations (EO) as evidence for environmental decisions, policies and finance. GEO’s recently adopted Post-2025 Strategy envisions a bold direction for the future. It calls for transformative programs that will enable GEO to deliver a portfolio of initiatives, providing Earth intelligence needed to unlock transformational change in the way that societies interact with the planet. As part of this vision, the Global Ecosystems Atlas initiative has been established as an international collaboration convened by GEO to create an urgently needed common reference to facilitate harmonized and coherent national, regional, and global reporting of the state of ecosystems. To move the concept closer to its realization as a full proof-of-concept by the Convention of Biodiversity (CBD) Conference of the Parties (COP) in October 2024, GEO is planning to contract Associate Professor Nicholas Murray to perform the role of Lead Scientist. The Lead Scientist will lead the design, planning and execution of atlas activities in 2024 and coordinate the globally distributed Science Core Team.
How plant heat stress will influence global warming this century
Alex Cheesman
01 Mar 2024 - 30 Nov 2024
Our objective is to elucidate the mechanism, from subcellular to global scale, underlying the interdependence of
plants and climate during Earth's current climate transition. This century, rising CO2 will force global temperatures to
increase, pushing some vegetation systems into heat stress and potentially physiological collapse, irrespective of
rainfall (1). Indeed, the most vulnerable regions are humid, high rainfall zones where 'wet-bulb' temperature (the
lowest temperature that an evaporating object or organism can cool to) will rise to levels known to induce
physiological stress and cellular death (2).
Plants crucially affect climate through stomatal regulation of transpiration, which influences partitioning of
net solar radiation into heating and evaporative cooling actions at the land surface (3). Plant vulnerability to heat
stress can diminish this role and promote further climate warming, but little is known of the physiological and
molecular mechanisms of stomatal regulation under heat stress, or of the combined physiological and climatic
conditions that generate lethal leaf temperatures. This limits our capacity to predict and prepare for the long-term
effects of global warming (4). This project will unlock mechanistic information from plant molecular genetics and
heat stress physiology to formulate new theory describing stomatal regulation under temperature extremes, and
apply this in an Earth system modeling framework to develop tools for predicting and adapting plant-atmosphere
dynamics.
Our central hypothesis is that previously unrealized breakdown of the stomatal regulation mechanism under
heat stress, when expressed at the landscape scale, will add a significant and as yet unforeseen enhancing feedback
to climate change this century. To test this, we will undertake the first coordinated integration and scaling of the
stomatal control mechanism responding to heat under high CO2, from molecular signaling through to global fluxes, to
quantify the full effects of plant heat stress on regional and global climate. Genetic and physiological methods will be
used to develop and validate a new leaf-scale model of stomatal regulation at high temperature. This will be
implemented in Earth system simulations to re-evaluate end of century climate scenarios in the most heatvulnerable
regions using improved surface energy partitioning calculations.
She Flies: Using Drones to build STEM Confidence in Girls (Old ID 22974)
Karen Joyce
17 Feb 2017 - 31 Dec 2017
The ‘new drone economy’ is estimated to be worth US 20B pa by 2020, providing 10% of future jobs. Australia leads the world in non-defence applications of drone technology. Yet women and girls are largely missing from this important emerging sector (<1% female pilots). ‘She Flies’ will give girls confidence in a male dominated STEM field. We will create and deliver a hands on workshop for high school girls, their parents and teachers, teaching technical skills, safety, and environmental survey.
Genomics for Undiagnosed Infectious Disease Evaluation and Diagnosis in Northern Australia (GUIDED-North Australia) (Old ID 23362)
Paul Horwood
01 Jan 2018 - 31 Dec 2019
The early detection and diagnosis of infectious diseases currently relies on a best guess of likely causative agents with specific testing for those agents. In this project, we aim to evaluate a genomics approach for the diagnosis of febrile illnesses of unknown cause in Northern Australia. The project will be conducted in major hospitals across three different regions of Northern Australia: Cairns (Queensland), Darwin (Northern Territory) and Broome (Western Australia). It is likely that most emerging infectious diseases initially present as undifferentiated fevers. It follows then that investigation of undifferentiated fevers provides targeted surveillance for new and emerging infectious diseases.
Genetic diversity audit of farm held stock of greenlip and blacklip abalone (Old ID 23387)
Jan Strugnell
03 Apr 2017 - 31 Oct 2018
Conduct a genetic audit of farm held stocks of greenlip and blacklip abalone to identify current levels of genetic diversity, effective population sizes, and levels of coancestry/relatedness captured within individual farms and the wider industry.
Environmentally friendly corrosion inhibitors (Old ID 25075)
Peter Junk
16 Jul 2018 - 15 Mar 2019
Corrosion is a multibillion dollar cost afflicting critical infrastructure in almost all major industries. This research project aims to translate the cutting edge of corrosion science and technology to advance the knowledge of corrosion and its inhibition for a practical industry application. JCU will collaborate with Prochem haulage to design a corrosion inhibitor formulation for water used in cleaning/washing of mining vehicles.
Climate Vulnerability Index (Old ID 26781)
Scott Heron
01 Jan 2020 - 31 May 2020
Climate change is the fastest growing threat to World Heritage properties, many of which - natural, cultural and mixed - are already being impacted. The Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) is a rapid assessment tool to identify key drivers of vulnerability, opportunities for response and priorities for action across all types of World Heritage properties. The CVI framework considers potential impacts, adaptive capacity, and economic, social and cultural consequences of climate change. Here we propose to apply the CVI process in the Wadden Sea World Heritage property.
Global assessment of dugong status and trends (Old ID 29025)
Helene Marsh
16 Jun 2023 - 29 Feb 2024
This desktop project contributes to the Conservation and Management Plan for the Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation and Management of Dugongs (Dugong dugon) and their Habitats throughout their range (CMS Dugong MOU) by determining the distribution and abundance of dugong populations to provide a base for future conservation efforts and actions.
What is natural? Humans, megafauna and climate in northern Australia (Old ID 21664)
Michael Bird
01 Nov 2014 - 31 Dec 2020
This project will produce the first long-term (100,000 year), replicated, high-resolution terrestrial records of environmental change before, during and after the arrival of humans in Australian savannas. These records will be the first in the world to extract, from the same material, independent, cutting-edge organic and isotope geochemical records of changes in water balance, vegetation type and fire activity. This will enable natural and human drivers of change in northern Australia's climate and biodiversity to be disentangled on two timescales (i) millennial - before, during and after Aboriginal arrival in northern Australia and (ii) centennial - before, during and after European arrival in northern Australia.
Organic matter, sodicity and soil structure
- 1998
- Oxford University Press
- Researchers:Paul Nelson
Argument free clustering via boundary extraction for massive point-data Sets
- 2002
- Researchers:Ickjai Lee
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01 Jan 2019
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01 Jan 2013
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01 Jan 2018
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01 Jan 2020
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01 Jan 2015
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01 Jan 2016
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01 Jan 2018