Monash science researchers awarded $804,000 in funding as part of ARC DECRA scheme
Congratulations to Monash science researchers from the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment who have received $804,000 in Australian Research Council (ARC) funding for two projects under the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) scheme.
The successful projects include one which aims to predict how wind-blown landscapes respond to changes in climate, and another which will focus on new materials platforms with no natural analog, which can be eventually used in a new generation of superconducting devices.
The ARC has announced more than $86 million in funding for 200 research projects as part of the ARC DECRA program.
Monash University was awarded $8,089,576 for 19 projects of which $804,000 will go to the Faculty of Science to fund two projects.
The ARC DECRA scheme provides focused research support for early career researchers in both teaching and research, and research-only positions.
The Monash Science research projects that will commence in 2024 by the DECRA awardees include:
Dr Andrew Gunn, School of Earth Atmosphere and Environment
Awarded: $414,000
Project: Landscape-climate disequilibrium in dune fields
This project aims to predict how wind-blown landscapes respond to changes in climate. This project expects to use novel experiments and theoretical advances to meet this aim, then apply the prediction to the dune fields which cover a third of Australia's surface to generate new knowledge on what climate shaped them in the past, and how they will respond to anthropogenic climate change. Expected outcomes of this project will strengthen collaboration with discipline-leading international researchers and develop a globally-unique laboratory experimental capability in Australia. This should provide significant benefits to understanding environmental change in Australia by vastly improving predictions of dune-field response to future climate.
Dr Yanlu Xing, School of Earth Atmosphere and Environment
Awarded: $390,000
Project: Unlocking Rare Earth Elements from mineral solid solutions
This project will utilise new materials platforms with no natural analog, which can be eventually used in a new generation of superconducting devices. This will be achieved by fabricating heterostructures with two-dimensional semiconductors by introducing a relative twist angle between the constituent materials, thereby forming the periodic superlattices. Such twisted van der Waals heterostructures host a plethora of emergent electronic phases such as the unconventional superconductivity. The outcomes of this project will develop the doped twisted van der Waals heterostructures as a new platform for superconductivity, which paves the way for the future quantum computing technology.
For a full list of funded DECRA projects, including a snapshot of funding by state and territory, please view the grant announcement kit here.
For more information on the ARC DECRA scheme, please visit the ARC website.
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Email: silvia.dropulich@monash.edu