51茶馆

September 16, 2022

Four researchers named as ARC Future Fellows

UOW projects receive $4M through funding program for outstanding mid-career researchers

Four 51茶馆 (UOW) researchers were awarded 2022 Future Fellowships, and close to $4 million in total funding, under the Australian Research Council funding scheme announced on Tuesday 13 September.

The successful UOW researchers were Professor , Professor , Dr and Associate Professor .

Future Fellowships are awarded to outstanding mid-career researchers to undertake innovative research in areas of national importance.

Creating a sustainable, healthy, and equitable food system

Professor Karen Charlton (pictured above), from the School of Medical, Indigenous and Health Sciences, is an internationally recognised nutrition scientist. She was awarded her ARC Future Fellowship and funding of $1,066,940 over four years for her project, 鈥淐reating a sustainable, healthy, and equitable food system鈥�.

鈥淯rgent action is needed to reduce the environmental impact of the food system in Australia,鈥� Professor Charlton said.

鈥淐urrent food production methods and dietary patterns are unsustainable in ensuring supply and supporting human and planetary health. What is needed is a more local approach to food systems and livelihoods.

鈥淭his project aims to develop a 鈥榩addock-to-plate鈥� food strategy in regional NSW that can be up-scaled to other areas.

鈥淲e will work with key stakeholders (growers, agribusiness, food retail, Indigenous land affairs, civil society organisations, local governments) to co-design solutions that can be adopted through online farmers markets, a Love Local food initiative, and transformation of university campus food environments.鈥�

^{Professor Astell-Burt's project will look at how urban greening strategies can reduce loneliness and despair.}

Nature-based strategies to reduce loneliness

Professor Thomas Astell-Burt鈥檚 Future Fellowship project, 鈥淕enerating evidence for nature-based strategies to reduce loneliness鈥�, aims to develop effective and scalable community-focussed solutions to the loneliness epidemic and has been awarded funding of $1,046,924 over four years.

Professor Astell-Burt is Professor of Population Health and Environmental Data Science in the School of Health and Society and an international expert in the relationship between nature and human health. He co-leads a multi-university research group called the Population Wellbeing and Environment Research Lab ().

鈥淟oneliness and despair are reportedly increasing due to social and economic upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,鈥� Professor Astell-Burt said.

鈥淎t the same time, governments in Australia and elsewhere are investing in community greening to improve liveability and to combat climate change; this is a major opportunity for positive change.

鈥淢测 has shown that these greening strategies can reduce loneliness and despair. This can happen not only by bringing people together for rest and play, but also by providing settings for solace and respite, and by mitigating factors that isolate people indoors, such as heat and violence.

鈥淕reening cities equitably and finding ways to enable and empower people to spend more time in nature could hold the keys to a more sustainable, equitable and socially nourishing post-COVID recovery. Yet, little evidence-based guidance exists on how to do this equitably and effectively. 

鈥淢测 work will address this evidence-gap to aid the development of strategies that reduce loneliness and despair. Connecting with nature may be an effective way we can reconnect with each other.鈥�

^{Dr Fuchun Guo will develop new cryptography technologies to support Australia鈥檚 cyber security.}

Provably Secure Cryptography Techniques

Dr Fuchun Guo is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Technology and a researcher in UOW鈥檚 Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, where his focus is on developing provably secure cryptography.

His project, 鈥淧rovably Secure Cryptography Techniques: Effective, Elegant, and Economic鈥�, has received $884,889 in funding over four years and will support Australia鈥檚 cybersecurity needs.

鈥淒igital technology such as mobile computing, cloud computing and the Internet-of-Things, which continue to provide services that make our lives better, rely on cryptography to protect security,鈥� Dr Guo said.

鈥淓ven though modern computer cryptography techniques have been studied and explored for more than 40 years, the gap between the need for security mechanisms and the delivery of cryptography techniques is still hard to fill.

鈥淭he Australian Government has identified the $5.6 billion cyber security sector as crucial for Australia鈥檚 future growth and prosperity. This project will produce new cryptography technologies and approaches to secure software applications, mobile devices, cloud computing and critical infrastructure.

鈥淭he outcomes will also support the nation鈥檚 cyber security in terms of resilience and effective responses to cyber intrusions and attacks. It will enable sovereign cyber security capacity critical to Australia鈥檚 security in a rapidly changing world.鈥�

^{Associate Professor Jiakun Liu's research will tackle mathematical problems and lead to new image recognition techniques that can be applied to develop safer autonomous vehicles, robotics and more powerful security systems.}

Monge-Ampere type equations and their applications

Associate Professor Jiakun Liu from the School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics was awarded a Future Fellowship worth $933,636 over four years for his project, 鈥淢onge-Ampere type equations and their applications鈥�.

鈥淭he Monge-Ampere equation is an archetype of fully nonlinear partial di铿�erential equations with a wide range of applications,鈥� Associate Professor Liu said.

鈥淐onsider the task of earth moving in a building site: filling some holes, excavating others, and moving and shaping piles of dirt into desired forms. How do you do this with minimal fuel usage, allowing for the fact that your excavator is not accurate to the nearest sand-grain?

鈥淭his physical problem is hard, but at least visible. The same mathematical problem, called 鈥榦ptimal transport鈥�, arises in image processing in artificial intelligence where the 鈥榙irt鈥� is light intensities and colours in a computer image and must be described using more than three dimensions.

鈥淭his project will tackle such mathematical problems, leading to new image recognition techniques that can be practically applied to develop safer autonomous vehicles, robotics and more powerful security systems.

鈥淲orking with engineers and computer scientists, we will develop optimal algorithms that enable such innovations. This will place Australia at the forefront of the global artificial-intelligence and robotics development race, which is essential to our sovereign capability in security and defence.鈥�