College of Science & Engineering

Sophia Love

Sophia Love

Romain Vaucher

Romain Vaucher

Jenny Fisher

Jenny Fisher

Ambili Narayanan

Ambili Narayanan

Sarfaraz Ali

Sarfaraz Ali

Mikaeylah Davidson

Mikaeylah Davidson

Liuxin Chen

Liuxin Chen

Rafael Cabral Carvalho

Rafael Cabral Carvalho

Tom Lloyd

Tom Lloyd

Mohamadreza Chalak Qazani

Mohamadreza Chalak Qazani

Resolving the blue-ringed octopus fauna of Australia: taxonomy, phylogeny and human health (Old ID 23007)
Jan Strugnell
01 Jan 2011 - 31 Dec 2017
Despite renowned toxicity and human fatalates, knowledge of the blue-ringed octopuses (genus Hapalochlaena) remains poor. Their taxonomy requires through revision: four species are currently considered valid, yet preliminary investigations by the applicants identify a total of at least 15 species worldwide, of which over half occur in Australia. This project aims to use taxonomic and molecular tools to: (1) revise the genus; (2) identify and describe Australian species; (3) describe distributions, habitats and biology; (4) investigate phylogeny and biogeography; and (5) provide crucial identification and health hazard information to scientific and wider audiences.
Ecoacoustic data analysis (Old ID 27596)
Lin Schwarzkopf
04 Jan 2022 - 15 Jun 2023
It is now possible to collect and store vast amounts of environmental sound, or bioacoustic data. The promise of environmental recording is that it could allows us to monitor populations of vocal fauna (birds, mammals and amphibians), but there is so much data, it is not possible for expert human listeners to listen to and identify each species. Thus, artificial intelligence, or AI methods would be useful. However, ecologists also lack the large amounts of labelled data required to easily create convolutional neural networks typically used for such tasks. To develop new AI approaches for monitoring fauna, we require skilled people. This grant is intended to support a post-doctoral fellow to conduct this work.
Developing Partnerships Towards Quantifying the Impacts of Climate Change on the Ocean Ecosystem Economy of the Pacific (Old ID 29030)
Reniel Cabral
01 Mar 2023 - 01 Mar 2025
This project will support the initial work of developing relationships with Pacific Island stakeholders and identifying opportunities for co-designing research based on climate changerelated priorities and needs of the Pacific Island Nations. In addition, this project aims to identify existing climate-related programs and initiatives in the Pacific that our team can build upon when designing our long-term research programs. The funding will be used for travel-related costs.
Geological Services, Geita Gold Mine (Old ID 19263)
Paul Dirks
01 Apr 2011 - 31 Dec 2017
The aim of the project is the development of new gold reserves from satellite pits and from the Kukuluma terrain, by building an integrated geological model for the entire tenement area. The area will be mapped, and a regional geological interpretation will be made as a basis for building a genetic model that will enable gold mineralization to be targeted, through ranking existing targets and generating new ones. A training strategy to improve the mine geology team will be implemented.
Palaeo-vegetation, biodiversity and early human dispersal through island Southeast Asia (Old ID 20779)
Michael Bird
01 Jan 2014 - 31 Dec 2016
This study will use newly developed and fully validated isotope techniques to obtain robustly dated proxy records of vegetation change from the thick deposits of cave guano that occur extensively throughout island Southeast Asia (Sundaland). We will test the hypothesis that during the Last Glacial Period, there was a substantial contraction of the rainforest towards the equator into refugia. This led to the development of an open ‘savannah corridor’ connecting savanna north and south of the equator. The project will shed new light on the palaeoclimatology of the region and provide a major contribution to explaining modern biogeographic patterns across Sundaland, as well as the trajectories of early human dispersal through the region.
Blue carbon and cane land restoration methods development (Old ID 26857)
Nathan Waltham
31 Dec 2019 - 16 Jul 2024
The Project seeks to advance the development of a blue carbon methodology under the Australian government’s emissions reduction fund, by undertaking a project to restore tidal connectivity and wetlands in a selected catchment. The Project team will collect baseline data (GHG emissions, carbon storage, water quality and biodiversity) to inform the blue carbon methodology and undertake post-restoration assessments to quantify carbon and co-benefits arising from the restoration. The Project also seeks to undertake terrestrial restoration on a small section of low productivity farmland, to quantify whether there is a business case for land use change to carbon farming in an intensive farming environment. The Project will then support the farmer/s within the Project boundary to transition to best management practice agriculture, and to quantify whether this transition satisfactorily offsets land taken out of production for the i) wetland restoration and ii) terrestrial revegetation undertaken.
Reef Restoration and Adaptation –Regulatory and Policy Environment (Old ID 27114)
Mia Hoogenboom
30 Mar 2021 - 30 Jun 2024
The existing regulatory and policy frameworks have originally been designed as part of the conventional approach to reef management. As such, they are not entirely fit for purpose to address unconventional technological interventions for reef restoration and adaptation. These interventions, given their innovative and emerging nature, challenge existing regulatory frameworks to address novel risks and impacts and make decisions based on information with relatively high levels of uncertainty. Critical to the feasibility and viability of RRAP R&D programs is, therefore, an enabling regulatory environment that can effectively and timely assess the range of risks and impacts associated with unconventional reef restoration and adaptation interventions. In this context, the objectives of this project are to: (i) Investigate the capacity of the existing regulatory and policy frameworks to address R&D and deployment of RRAP interventions (ii) Scope which interventions are permitted and under what conditions (e.g., scale, location and timing) with the aim to inform the R&D programs (iii) Help enhance the capacity of the regulatory system to assess the range of risks and impacts associated with R&D and deployment of interventions
Development of in situ Sr isotope analyses in shark vertebrae (Old ID 27633)
Brandon Mahan
01 Jan 2022 - 31 Mar 2023
Accurately ageing sharks underpins sustainable harvest and population recovery. The conventional ageing technique consists of counting growth bands in vertebrae, however, this approach suffers errors associated with over- and under-counting due to misidentifying periodic features and in-complete. More recently, element-to-element ratios have been explored as complementary tools for determining age and migratory, and in this context Mn:Ca shows promise as an age-specific fingerprint, and Sr:Ca has shown promise as one of the most prominent indicators of fresh/estuarial vs. marine environment (along with Ba:Ca), because marine environments typically have significantly higher Sr (and lower Ba) concentrations. This means that Sr:Ca—alongside Mn:Ca and Ba:Ca—can potentially be used as an annual marker, in particular for female sharks that annually return to freshwater environments to pup. It is well-known from fish otoliths (a calcified part of the inner ear) that marine and freshwater environments display distinct Sr isotope signatures (87Sr/86Sr ratios), and that fresh vs marine signatures can be readily distinguished at requisite length-scales (e.g. 50 microns) using in situ (“in place”, i.e. non-destructively) laser ablation multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (or LA-MC-ICP-MS). Moreover, it is well-established that 87Sr/86Sr ratios can be determined in situ in bio-apatite (calcium phosphate or bone, such as that in fish vertebrae), and 87Sr/86Sr ratios in bio-apatite can be used to determine sub-annual mobility. And yet to date, Sr isotopes have never been investigated in shark vertebrae towards these ends. This study will combine in situ elemental compositions and 87Sr/86Sr ratios in the vertebrae of sharks to determine their ultimate viability as complementary ageing, environmental and migratory reconstruction tools.
Understanding allergens in alternative food from urban aquaculture fish to underpin food safety
Ludwig Lopata
01 Jul 2022 - 31 Dec 2026
This project aims at evaluating the food safety risks associated with innovative solutions to meet and secure Singapore’s nutritional needs through domestic fish production from sustainable urban aquaculture. Introducing novel food sources into the mainstream diet has potential significant unintended health consequences, particularly that of severe allergic reactions. The production of fish in urban aquaculture systems using combinatorial supplementation of fish feed and selective breeding along with processing innovations has not been evaluated for enhanced allergenicity, which is determined by the presence and immunoreactivity of allergenic proteins (allergens). Consequently, current food safety regulations for allergens are not equipped to tackle upcoming food safety issues faced by the growing innovative production of urban foods and alternative proteins. Their potential allergenicity is the focus of this project.
Using Outcomes of Marine Protected Area Implementation to Infer Potential Socioeconomic Consequences of Offshore Energy Development to Commercial Fisheries
Reniel Cabral
04 Oct 2023 - 03 Oct 2025
The purpose of this study is to describe the detectable socioeconomic consequences experienced by the commercial fishing industry due to the implementation of formal de facto marine protected areas in California and elsewhere and to use this information to inform impact analyses of prospective offshore energy projects, including offshore wind and marine hydrokinetic projects.
Title: JCU reef scientist goes global after plumbing the depths, Townsville Bulletin
Reseracher: Gemma Galbraith (AIMS@JCU Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Reef Connectivity)
Start Date: 10 Nov 2024
Title: Deep dive: How I use robots to survey coral reefs, Nature
Reseracher: Gemma Galbraith (AIMS@JCU Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Reef Connectivity)
Start Date: 31 Mar 2025
Title: Bengali
Reseracher: Khandakar Faisal Ibn Murad (Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering and Related Technologies))
Title: English
Reseracher: Khandakar Faisal Ibn Murad (Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering and Related Technologies))
Title: Wet Tropics Management Authority - Scientific Advisory Committee
Reseracher: Nathan Waltham (Associate Professor, Blue Carbon)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2024
Title: Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF), Australia
Reseracher: Simon Das (Research Fellow - Grouper Nutrition)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2024
End Date: 01 Jan 2027
Title: ARC Future Fellow ($680,000), Global Change: Rainforest responses to experimental drought
Reseracher: Susan Laurance (Professor, Personal Chair)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2014
Title: American Society of Naturalists
Reseracher: Megan Higgie (Associate Professor)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2003
Title: PhD, James Cook University
Reseracher: Alana Grech (Professor)
End Date: 01 Jan 2010
Title: Bachelor of Environmental Science (Honours), The University of Adelaide
Reseracher: Alana Grech (Professor)
End Date: 01 Jan 2003