We changed it

We’re making cities safer for everyone.

Architects, spatial designers and designers are increasingly seeking to understand how gender-sensitive design can drive women’s freedom and equity. Monash researchers are exploring gender-sensitive design and involving the community in the process.

We are listening to women’s stories and doing research that captures women’s experiences in cities, so we can design safer spaces, reduce violence and create real social change for all gender and sexual identities.

We’re leading the pursuit to abolish the death penalty worldwide.

In some countries, you could receive the death penalty for your religious beliefs, sexuality or political views. Capital punishment is neither effective nor just - disproportionately affecting the marginalised and disadvantaged. We are determined to change this, and are leading the pursuit to abolish the death penalty worldwide.

Monash’s Faculty of Law - world renowned as a leader in human rights, research and advocacy - is partnering with the Capital Punishment Justice Project (formerly Reprieve Australia) to establish an Anti-Death Penalty Institute, a first for the Asia-Pacific region. The proposed new institute builds on the important progress made through the Anti-Death Penalty Legal Clinic (part of the Faculty of Law’s clinical program for students), establishing a global network of partners focused on policy, research, advocacy and casework devoted to the abolition of the death penalty in Asia and beyond.

Automation and big data are transforming the legal landscape.

We’re preparing our law graduates to be part of this evolution. By embracing digital disruption and equipping our students with the skills they need to navigate and embrace the new world.

And through events such as the Global Legal Hackathon, we are exposing our students to the world’s leading legal minds and entrepreneurs, providing the opportunity to rapidly develop practical technology solutions that improve the function of law and justice around the world.

We’re taking Aboriginal history to the skies.

Until recently, the smallest star in the Southern Cross was called Epsilon Crucis – literally “the fifth-brightest star of the Cross”. It’s now officially known as Ginan, the name it has been called for thousands of years by the Wardaman people of the Northern Territory.

Ginan was among 86 stars to be officially named last year. The new names were selected from cultures around the world, including Chinese, Coptic, Hindu, Mayan, South African and Aboriginal Australian.

We’re using liquid salts to save our coral reefs.

Reefs around the world are facing unprecedented global and local pressures. An international science collaboration has created the world's largest collection of frozen coral cell samples which could be used to keep the Great Barrier Reef alive.

Monash research is contributing to a frozen “coral bank” housed at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. Using our knowledge of ionic salts, we are helping to cryopreserve coral and ensuring its survival and diversity.

We think waste is a wasted opportunity.

With time running out to find a solution to our cultural addiction to plastic, we’re scaling up solutions that cut down landfill. States and councils around the country have been struggling since import restrictions stopped us sending the bulk of our recyclables to China.

We’ve built a prototype processing plant that transforms plastic and tyres into diesel fuel. Keeping them out of landfill and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is an environmental win-win.

We’re empowering women to empower communities.

In partnership with Oxfam International, we’re collaborating with enterprising rural women in Bangladesh to transform their communities with mobile technology. By enabling women to access the world of information, the PROTIC project gives these women – many of whom grow, produce and care for livestock and agricultural crops – knowledge, power and control.

They’ve learned how to vaccinate their poultry, how to recognise and treat diseases in their cows, and how to grow vegetables in baskets.

We’re using bots to crush bullying.

In conjunction with a US-based tech firm, our researchers have created an artificial-intelligence-driven chatbot to help tackle cyber bullying.

Teenagers can talk to it when they're feeling lonely or are too afraid to talk to a person.

The gender-neutral chatbot is called Ash and is the first bot of its kind in the world.

We’re tackling addiction using virtual reality.

How do you re-train the brain when responding to addictive behaviours? Use virtual reality.

That’s what we are doing at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, a world-first research facility developing interventions for addictions and compulsive disorders. Through the technology of VR, our researchers can immerse participants in simulated environments. We can use this knowledge to crack the code of addiction and come up with life-changing ways to tackle it.

Saying their names: we’re recording border-related deaths.

No government authority collects information about the people who died after attempting to enter Australia without approved papers. We wanted to answer the questions: How many lives have been lost in the name of border protection? If people die during the immigration process, who can be held accountable?

So we created Australia’s only database that seeks to answer these questions. We want to account for the loss, not just count it.

We're changing how we teach by providing personalised learning in innovative spaces

The Learning and Teaching Building is the product of years of research and design thinking, and harnesses the expertise of multi-award winning design studio John Wardle Architects. The process has taken in and examined each critical aspect of the learning and collaborative experience – from room size and the effects of crowd size and attribution upon student participation, down to the optimum table shape and importance of ease of access to charging facilities.

The result is a visually inspiring, world-class learning environment, designed to accommodate and enhance new styles of learning experience. The open, welcoming atmosphere of the Learning and Teaching Building invites learning engagement. The building will accommodate thousands of students each semester and will be the home of advanced learning and teaching practice across Monash.

We’re developing new drugs to save millions of lives.

Malaria infects 200 million and kills nearly 600,000 people each year.

The disease is transmitted via mosquito bites and the parasite that causes malaria is resistant to most of the drugs we currently use to combat the disease.

Our researchers have made a critical breakthrough in the fight to treat and prevent malaria by identifying a class of drugs that could combat malaria with just a single dose.