Sustainability research
We are committed to making a difference – not only asking the relevant questions but finding the right answers.
Sydney researchers from a broad range of disciples are engaged in research that throws new light on the sustainability of our current way of life and offers solutions for all our futures.
Many of these researchers contribute to the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, which aims to make a significant contribution to the challenges of sustainability, working with industry, government groups, scientific organisations and others in the community who are seeking strategies for a more sustainable world.
Here are just some of the many amazing people changing the way we look at how we live.
- Protecting food sources
- Targeting obesity
- Lessons from locusts
- Measuring our footprint
- Harnessing the sun
- Lessons from history
Protecting food sources
Professor Robert Park aims to provide the global population with better food security by helping to safeguard wheat, one of the world's primary crops. Fungus-caused diseases known as stem rust have caused significant losses in wheat crops globally, including in North America and Australia, and continue to impact on production.
During 2010 Robert Park, Professor of Cereal Rust Research in Sydney's Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, spent four months on a Fulbright Senior Scholarship in the United States to research the genetic basis of resistance stem rust.
"Along with insects, pathogens reduce yields of the eight most important crops by a staggering 42 percent," he says. "The most effective, economical and environmentally sound way to control rust diseases is the development and cultivation of wheat varieties with in-built genetic resistance."
Targeting obesity
Back in 1981, Jennie Brand-Miller was investigating Aboriginal bush foods when she came across a concept that has since changed the way the world thinks about food, nutrition and dieting.
Now Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Sydney, Brand-Miller is renowned around the world as the scientist who defied her critics with groundbreaking work on the Glycemic Index, a method of measuring the body's absorption of carbohydrates.
Her research interests focus on all aspects of carbohydrates including diet and diabetes, the glycemic index and insulin resistance. After 16 books and 200 journal articles, 'GI Jennie' is at the forefront of research that may help millions of people avoid the chronic condition of diabetes.
Lessons from locusts
Professor Steve Simpson's innovative research on locusts and what causes them to swarm, has led to some amazing findings and significant impact on a variety of scientific fields – from locust swarms to obesity, to more effective and environmentally sustainable dietary supplements for aquaculture.
In 2009, Simpson, one of our ARC Foundation Fellows, was named as the New South Wales Scientist of the Year 2009 for his cutting-edge work on nutrition and its implications for ecology, evolution, agriculture and human health.
Measuring our footprint
The University of Sydney's Integrated Sustainability Analysis (ISA) research
group has developed unique reporting capabilities and tools that makes it easier for organisations to measure and understand their environmental footprint.
The ISA model is a type of triple bottom line (TBL) reporting – a valuable technique that analyses an institution's social and environmental impact in addition to reporting the traditional financial bottom line.The methodology, developed by Professor Manfred Lenzen and Dr Chris Dey, allows institutions such as the University to manage our resources as efficiently and responsibly as possible, while continuing monitoring its own carbon footprint – as well as the performance of third-party suppliers such as building contractors and power generators.
In 2009 the ISA team received the New South Wales Green Globe Public Sector Sustainability Award.
Harnessing the sun
Professor Thomas Maschmeyer hopes to help tackle the world energy crisis with third generation biofuels and solar-powered processes.
A technical chemist who specialises in catalysis – accelerating chemical reactions –Maschmeyer can harness sunlight to generate hydrogen gas from waste water by using a non-carbon emitting process which addresses concerns about climate change and can also be an integral step in recycling degraded water supplies.
"More solar energy reaches the earth in one hour than the world needs for a year," explains Maschmeyer, one of Sydney's ARC Federation Fellows. "This is a source of energy we need to employ for global good".
Lessons from history
Professor Roland Fletcher and Dr Dan Penny are two Sydney academics cooperating with other leading universities and international institutions to reveal new truths about the demise of Angkor, the gigantic medieval South-East Asian city.
The results, driven by our strength in South-East Asian studies, offer intriguing insights into the future sustainability of our modern urban life, including the risks of over-reliance on inert infrastructure.