Research Projects
Delivery of the Veterans’ Individualised Physical Education, Rehabilitation, Recovery and Reintegration (VIPER3) program
Wendy Li
26 Aug 2024 - 31 Dec 2026
The Veterans’ Individualised Physical Education, Rehabilitation, Recovery and Reintegration program (VIPER 3) will pilot a novel approach to address the challenges faced by military veterans that have transitioned to civilian life, through a combination of exercise and mindfulness interventions. Utilising a "battle buddy" system, 20 veterans will participate in a 12-week regime of tailored exercise and mindfulness sessions, designed to provide the psychosocial, health and wellness framework to support their reintegration into the community. Greater compliance, positive participant feedback, and improvements in physical and mental health and quality of life will support wider implementation of the program and future funding support.
‘Planim Fiuja fo Yumi’ - Co-planning climate-smart and equitable livelihood futures with small-scale fishing communities through a participatory and integrated approach to community engagement. (Old ID 30038)
Amy Diedrich
22 Jan 2025 - 03 Feb 2030
The project will implement a Participatory and Integrated Planning Approach (PIPA) trialled in a previous ACIAR project. The PIPA aims to equip small-scale fishing communities with the information, resources and capacity to pro-actively and autonomously strengthen their livelihoods towards more equitable, sustainable and climate-smart outcomes. The PIPA is underpinned by a risk-based spatial analysis that is used through participatory engagement activities to support a joint understanding of risk and strengths within local land and seascapes. The approach draws on local knowledge, decision making and governance arrangements to enhance customary community-based livelihoods planning, assessment, prioritising and action processes. This project will seek to adapt and extend the PIPA across Solomon Island contexts, and leverage opportunities to scale to other countries in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.
Develop an autonomous AI vehicle damage assessment tool (Old ID 26683)
Ickjai Lee
29 Nov 2019 - 27 Nov 2020
Development of a practical means and method for automated detection, identification and categorisation of vehicle panel damage using AI, deep learning and selected semantic segmentation networks. Semi-Supervised methods will be investigated to minimize the requirements on hand made training data (archived damaged vehicle images) and research will be conducted to determine the possibility to build a minimum viable product (MVP) directly onto the existing platform architecture.
Building Community Economic Capacity through Understanding Insurance Levels (Old ID 26741)
Nick Osbaldiston
01 Feb 2020 - 31 Jul 2020
This research will assist in understanding the vulnerability and resilience of the Cairns Community to major natural disaster events such as cyclones. Using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research, the project will collect data on how communities across Cairns insure their property and what levels of under or noninsurance there is. In doing so, the project will provide one of the first attempts to quantify and qualify under/noninsurance in the Cairns region to date. This research will also build on former similar research conducted through James Cook University (Osbaldiston, McShane and Oleszek, 2019).
Peer Work in Primary Care
Exploring the implementation of a peer support workforce for mental health support in Australia Primary Care in rural and urban centres. This project brings together lived experience organisations, health services and health researchers to increase the capacity of primary care services to provide evidence-based preventive care for mental ill-health. Collaboratively, we have co-designed and are evaluating an evidence-based peer support intervention in the primary care setting in Australia
National Multidisciplinary Primary Care Research, Policy and Advocacy Consortium
Led by Professor Michael Kidd (UNSW/Oxford and CMO of the Federal Government) members of the National Multidisciplinary Primary Care Research, Policy and Advocacy Consortium (“The Consortium”) will work collaboratively to support future-focused ways of thinking about primary care delivered through multidisciplinary team (MDT)-based care. The Consortium will generate, coordinate, and disseminate knowledge on innovative models of MDT-based primary care that improve health outcomes for people living in all parts of Australia. The Consortium brings together consumers and expert partners from across the country to identify where, when, and how MDT-based primary care can meaningfully address challenges facing our health care system. The Consortium will be a major national resource that supports ongoing federal, state and territory programs of primary care reform, strengthens the evidence base on primary care service delivery and outcomes, and accelerates the translation of knowledge into improvements in clinical care, while also increasing nationwide primary care clinician researcher capacity.
The Men’s Table Evaluation
Funded by the Queensland Mental Health Commission (QMHC), our team is performing an independent evaluation of The Men's Table (TMT) program which has been funded by the QMHC to implemented 10 “tables” across urban and rural Queensland. TMT is a peer-led service that fosters social connections among men, offering a safe, non-judgmental environment to discuss feelings and life challenges
The Living-well Club (TLC) at Southport Low Acuity Service Hotel (SPLASH)
The Living-well Club (TLC) at Southport Low Acuity Service Hotel (SPLASH) is a volunteer led social prescribing pilot to improve the biopsychosocial health of inpatients and staff. The pilot is being evaluated to address loneliness, health outcomes and satisfaction by providers and inpatients. The broader goal is to design an implementation framework that can be scaled to other low acuity facilities, such as aged care, community, and inpatient healthcare services.
Unravelling immune heterogeneity in mycobacteria-exposed children from north Queensland
Harindra Sathkumara Mudiyanselage
29 Apr 2025 - 28 Apr 2026
This project aims to understand immune responses to tuberculosis (TB) in Indigenous children from Far North Queensland, particularly how BCG vaccination impacts immunity. By analyzing blood samples pre- and post-BCG, this study will identify immune markers and mechanisms that predict TB protection. Through advanced multiomic analyses, we will assess immune cell function, cytokine profiles, and genetic factors influencing individual responses to TB infection and vaccination. The expected outcomes include a clearer understanding of TB immunity in this high-risk group, informing better TB control strategies and ultimately contributing to improved health outcomes for Indigenous populations in the region.
Assessing recovery in threatened Australian amphibians and reptiles
Conrad Hoskin
01 Jan 2025 - 31 Dec 2027
Biodiversity loss is occurring at unprecedented levels. Worldwide, human activities have ushered in the sixth mass extinction event, and driven swathes of species to the brink of extinction. In Australia, the condition of the environment is poor and declining, with the key threats to biodiversity being habitat loss, invasive species, altered fire regimes, and climate change. As a result, Australia is both a biodiversity hotspot, with 8% of the world’s species, and an extinction hotspot with 100 confirmed extinctions, and a further ~2,000 species threatened with extinction.
For 60 years, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species has provided the global standard approach for assessing the extinction risk of species. The IUCN Red List provides an internationally accepted language for assessing the likelihood of a species going extinct, that can be used across all plant and animal groups, and regions of Earth. Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) uses the IUCN Red List methodology to determine its list of threatened species. But whilst the IUCN Red List is an extremely effective way in which to assess a species’ risk of extinction, it was not designed to assess species recovery nor assess the value and effectiveness of conservation actions.
Why is measuring species recovery important? Avoiding extinction is only the first stage of successful conservation—ultimate success requires maintaining viable and functional populations, and achieving the recovery of declining and depleted populations. Indeed, the Federal Government’s Threatened Species Action Plan 2022-2032 is focused on more than simply preventing new extinctions, but also ensuring that threatened species are “on track for improved trajectory” (2027 Target 1). However, recent attempts to measure recovery of the Australian fauna, using de-listing under IUCN Red List criteria as a proxy for recovery, have proved extremely controversial. Crucially, we argue that this is because such studies have been using the wrong approach to measure species recovery.
In fact, there is a much more meaningful method for measuring species recovery, recently developed and tested by the international conservation community: the IUCN’s Green Status of Species (GSS). The GSS metrics complement the IUCN Red List, extending its existing conservation language, ecological theory, and criteria to assess how far a species is from being fully recovered (Fig. 1). The GSS also provides a way to determine the benefit of past and future conservation efforts. Critically, although the GSS approach has been adopted under the international Convention on Biological Diversity as a key indicator for measuring species recovery, it is yet to be integrated into the Australian EPBC Act or state-based conservation policy, nor any other country’s legislation.