Over $8 million in research funding to Sydney ARC Future Fellows

Psychology, green ammonia, improving our understanding of sleep and companion planting for pollinators are some of the research areas that have been awarded funding in the recent Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowships announcement.

“It’s wonderful to see our researchers’ success in their bids for ARC funding. Their dedication to advancing knowledge and innovation has been rightfully recognised under the ARC Future Fellowships. From housing ownership to women’s intellectual history, promoting pollination to optical computing, the projects will focus on crucial areas for progress in Australia and uncover new pathways for investigation,” Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Emma Johnston said.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) announced $106.7 million in funding for 100 new projects under the ARC’s 2024 Future Fellowships scheme.

“The ARC Future Fellowships scheme plays a significant role in facilitating research excellence in areas of national and international interest,” ARC Acting Chief Executive Officer, Dr Richard Johnson said.

“The breadth of topics that will be investigated in this round of the Future Fellowships scheme is a reflection of the ARC’s commitment to supporting outstanding mid-career researchers to undertake high quality research for the benefit of all Australians.”

These new Future Fellowships are awarded to outstanding mid-career researchers, who will receive funding support for the next four years. 

Professor Ben Colagiuri from the Faculty of Science  was awarded $1,208,839 to investigate the psychology and spread of ‘nocebo’ effects.

The opposite of a placebo effect, a nocebo effect is when negative expectations about a treatment lead to worse outcomes. For example, although necessary, warning people about side effects can lead to negative expectations that actually cause worse side effects.  The nocebo effect often leads to personal harm and can cause broader harms to society. There have been advances in research in identifying the basic psychology behind nocebo effects. But this project aims to look closer at how nocebo effects spread, how they impact decision-making, and how noticeable they are to the person experiencing them. Professor Colagiuri’s project will also look at how to prevent or reduce nocebo effects. The results will significantly advance scientific understanding of nocebo effects and pave the way for much needed translational research to reduce the substantial harm they cause.

Professor Colagiuri is also affiliated with the Charles Perkins Centre.

Dr Ben Fulcher from the Faculty of Science was awarded $1,066,792 to better understand sleep patterns from large time-series datasets.

The project, which was awarded $1,066,792, aims to establish new ways to measure and analyse patterns in large datasets using methods from nonlinear dynamics and complex systems. It will use these methods to better understand how sleep varies between people, and how it underpins learning and memory. Expected outcomes include new methods and software to detect, measure and ultimately improve our understanding of sleep function.

Professor Martijn Konings from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences was awarded $1,210,100 to shed light on the role of property ownership in shaping new patterns of social integration and exclusion.

The research program will determine how property ownership came to be a key marker of middle-class status and what problems later arose from that role. The project will examine how the high cost of housing has affected the financial resiliency of Australian households, and it will identify new policy pathways and ways to reshape the public debate.

Associate Professor Girish Lakhwani from the Faculty of Science was awarded $1,210,652 to build new capabilities in optical computing.  

Associate Professor Lakhwani’s research focusses on utilising light to strongly interact with organic semiconductor materials to create polaritons that are part-light part-matter hybrid particles. These particles exhibit unique nonlinear optical properties that can be exploited to develop new capabilities in optical computing and neural networks, benefiting applications that require pattern recognition, such as artificial intelligence.

Associate Professor Lakhwani is also affiliated with the University of Sydney Nano Institute.

Associate Professor Tanya Latty from the Faculty of Science was awarded $1,004,164 to research pollinator companion planting for food production. 

Professor Latty’s research aims to investigate planting pollinator-friendly companion plants alongside food crops. This has been proposed as a way to increase the yields of produce by attracting more pollinators than otherwise may have been present. It can also have positive side effects for biodiversity. But the effects are not always consistent. This project will look at how flower traits and pollinator behaviours interact to determine whether a companion flower helps or hinders its neighbouring plants. This project aims to provide significant benefits to food production and food security by developing techniques for safeguarding pollination amidst ongoing pollinator declines.

Dr Fengwang Li from the Faculty of Engineering was awarded $923,048  to advance chemical processes used for green ammonia and other renewable technologies.

This project aims to improve understanding of a process in chemical reactions, catalysis. It will combine multiple ways of measuring, observing and modelling these reactions. This understanding will help in creating new catalysts to speed up reactions as well as inform how reactors are designed where these reactions take place. These advances will have applications in improving energy efficiency for green ammonia production. This will enable a transformative way for green hydrogen storage and transport, providing significant benefits for Australia’s net zero targets, sustainable manufacturing, and exports. 

Dr Li is also a member of Sydney Southeast Asia Centre and the University of Sydney Nano Institute.

Associate Professor Dalia Nassar from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences was awarded  $1,156,721  to investigate the neglected history of women's contributions to the debates concerning nature, the human, and their relation.

This project aims to explore how women–who were identified with nature– thought about the crucial categories of the “natural,” the “human,” and their relation. It will generate new knowledge of an understudied tradition of ethical and environmental thought and demonstrate its relevance today. The research will improve understanding of women’s contributions to philosophy, make their works more accessible, and increase public awareness and appreciation of women’s role in European thought and culture. This should provide significant social benefits including the promotion of gender equality through the recognition of women’s intellectual history.
Associate Professor Nassar is also a member of Sydney Environment Institute.

Dr Barnaby Norris from the Faculty of Science was awarded $912,557 to research better techniques for imaging planets.

Understanding our place in the universe, the diversity of distant planets and even the possibility of life are some of the biggest questions in science. While countless planets exist around distant stars, many like our Earth, we have never been able to see them in detail. This project will develop and deploy innovative new astrophotonic technologies at four major observatories. It will allow Earth-bound telescopes to image distant planets and other astronomical objects with unprecedented clarity, and measure the composition of their atmospheres and surface. The project will produce the first images of solar-system scale planets, and the developed technology will greatly benefit other fields such as space communications and remote sensing.