Project-based graduate research scholarships

Description

Companies that are environmental sustainability oriented have the potential to achieve more positive consumer perceptions and higher profits in the long-term. Unfortunately, prior research has shown that new product development (NPD)  processes for environmentally sustainable innovations are not only very complex and expensive but also very risky. Knowledge on how to set up NPD processes to achieve and market environmentally sustainable innovations is urgently needed. This PhD project focus on the gaps in knowledge which limit understanding the links between environmental sustainability and innovation, especially NPD. This study will focus on investigating research questions related to the role of environmental sustainability NPD and the mechanisms firms use to identify and pursue sustainable NPD and organizational and market outcomes.

Supervisor

Professor Aron O'Cass

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Professor Aron O'Cass

Description

Uplifting the lives of 1.3 billion people who are multidimensionally poor is a social obligation for researchers and practitioners alike. For these consumers living at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), transformative services may offer a way out. The current literature provides limited insight into how financial service firms—constituents of a key sector in transformative services—can assist BOP consumers with regulating their financial planning behaviors, which potentially improves consumers’ financial well-being. This PhD project focus on identifying frontline service employees characteristics, manager leadership style, and service firm culture that support BoP consumers to regulate their financial planning behaviour.

Supervisor

Professor Aron O'Cass

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Professor Aron O'Cass

Description

The Centre aims to reduce the disparity on health outcomes between rural and metropolitan people. PhD projects can focus on i) primary care and prevention, ii) oral health, iii) first nations and iv) rural workforce.

Supervisor

Dr Leigh Kinsman

Eligibility

Research is to be conducted by candidates living outside of a major metropolitan setting.

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Leigh Kinsman

Description

The Centre aims to reduce the disparity on health outcomes between rural and metropolitan people. PhD projects can focus on i) primary care and prevention, ii) oral health, iii) first nations and iv) rural workforce.

Supervisor

Dr Leigh Kinsman

Eligibility

Research is to be conducted by candidates living outside of a major metropolitan setting.

Open to International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Leigh Kinsman

Description

The immune system plays a key role in recognising and eliminating tumours. Tumour cells however have evolved to employ multiple mechanisms to evade immune attack. Given their high energetic demand, tumour cells rapidly and efficiently use energy sources such as glucose from the tumour microenvironment (TME) making it unavailable for immune cells. Glucose catabolism by tumour cells also leads to the accumulation of intermediates such as lactic acid, which makes the TME hostile for immune cells. Tumour killing immune cells become dysfunctional in a lactic acid rich TME and fail to respond to immune checkpoint blockade therapy. Tumour cells are widely believed to rely on glycolysis for ATP production. However, glucose is the sole energy input for this metabolic pathway. Kreb’s or TCA cycle on the other hand can utilise glutamine, fatty acids and proteins as energy source to produce ATP to power the growth of tumour cells. We propose to perturb TCA cycle to make tumours fragile and susceptible to immunotherapy. To this end, we will ablate succinate dehydrogense (SDH) enzyme in murine colon tumours using CRISPR technology. This enzyme catalyses the conversion of fumarate to succinate and ablation of SDH will lead to the accumulation of succinate within tumour cells as well as the TME. Broadly, we will investigate how the metabolite succinate directly impacts tumour growth and the influence of succinate on immune cells in the TME. Succinate is known to induce ROS and promote angiogenesis. While counterintuitive, we believe angiogenesis will facilitate recruitment of immune cells to the TME. To unequivocally understand the impact of succinate on immune cells, in particular T cells, will employ SUCNR1 (succinate receptor) deficient mouse models. Furthermore, we will combine SDH inhibition with immune checkpoint blockade to assess the therapeutic benefits of succinate on cancer immunotherapy.This project will utilize cutting-edge molecular techniques such as CRISPR, RNAseq and ATACseq, multi-parameter flow cytometry, Immunohistochemistry and novel transgenic mouse models.

Supervisor

Dr Ajith Vasanthakumar and Professor John Mariadason

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

Domestic or International students completed or currently completing Undergraduate studies (Hons or Master), students must firstly make contact via students@onjcri.org.au for further details and to provide transcript of results.

Description

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women. While many drugs have been developed over the past decades for the treatment of the disease, once breast cancer cells have spread to distant organs, it is difficult to treat. The objective of this PhD project is to understand how normal and malignant cells interact in different organs, and how these interactions can be targeted to stop the growth of metastatic lesions.
Our previous work, and work from others, have shown that breast cancer clones have different levels of ‘fitness’ depending on the tumour microenvironment. Using innovative technologies such as imaging, single cell sequencing and cellular barcoding, our laboratory is studying the survival and proliferation of malignant cells in different tissues, to propose new effective strategies to prevent or stop the progression of the disease.
Human cancer clones will be labelled with cellular barcodes by lentiviral infection and the behaviour of the clones will be studied in different tissues and conditions. These models will be used to identify the transcriptomic profile of malignant cells that are likely to cause metastatic recurrence and identify gene pathways that are influenced by normal cells from the tumour environment. In particular, we will focus on ‘druggable’ pathways, that could be exploited in cancer therapy. These findings will be further validated using drug assays.

Supervisor

Dr Delphine Merino

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

Domestic or International students completed or currently completing Undergraduate studies (Hons or Master), students must firstly make contact via students@onjcri.org.au for further details and to provide transcript of results.

Description

The Mucosal Immunology and Cancer Laboratory focuses on identifying new immune targets that can be explored to develop novel therapeutics to treat bowel cancer. We study heterogeneous populations of T cells, known as intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs) that are unique to the gastrointestinal tract. Our preliminary studies show that one population of IELs, known as gamma delta T cells, play a protective role in preventing development and progression of bowel cancer. We are working closely with the Tumour Immunology Laboratory that shares an interest in therapeutically exploiting gamma-delta T cell subsets in multiple cancer types. In this project we will collaboratively study a range of surface receptors and cell-cell crosstalk molecules predicted to modify the function of gamma delta T cells and their ability to engage other immune cell subsets and prevent cancer growth and metastasis. We will study the role of these molecules in gamma delta T cell function, in disease models and patient samples. We will use various techniques including flow cytometry, immunofluorescent microscopy and single cell RNA sequencing. We will determine if gamma delta T cell surface receptor expression can be exploited therapeutically to limit bowel cancer progression.

Supervisor

Dr Lisa Mielke

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

Domestic or International students completed or currently completing Undergraduate studies (Hons or Master), students must firstly make contact via students@onjcri.org.au for further details and to provide transcript of results.

Description

It is evident that disseminated tumour cells (DTC) can remain in a clinically undetectable dormant state for years before causing a relapse. Since many types of chemotherapy rely on disrupting cell division, tumour cells in a dormant state are resistant to such therapies. To prevent recurrences and reduce breast cancer deaths, we need therapies that can either minimise release from dormancy or completely eradicate dormant cells. Indirect evidence for the existence of residual disease in patients comes from detection of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) or cell-free tumour DNA in blood samples. The difficulty of directly detecting and analysing residual disease in patients, in combination with the challenges of modelling dormancy in the laboratory has resulted in only fragmented knowledge of the establishment of DTCs in distant organs and their outgrowth into metastases. The aim of this project is to use our preclinical models of breast cancer dormancy to image and isolate cells in the dormant cell niche in bone and lung and to generate transcriptomic profiles of both tumour cells and the surrounding host cells. With this knowledge, we will assess the efficacy of therapies designed to maintain tumour dormancy or target a dormancy-specific vulnerability to eradicate these cells. We will use mouse-based breast cancer models that naturally display dormancy to image and investigate the tumour cell niche in mice using confocal and multiphoton microscopy. Tumour cells will be recovered for transcriptomic profiling as a basis for testing different therapies designed to either maintain dormancy of disseminated tumour cells or to specifically target dormant cells.

Supervisor

Professor Robin Anderson and Associate Professor Sarah Ellis

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

Domestic or International students completed or currently completing Undergraduate studies (Hons or Master), students must firstly make contact via students@onjcri.org.au for further details and to provide transcript of results.

Description

The Tumour Microenvironment and Cancer Signaling Group investigates the role of group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) in gastrointestinal disease. ILC2s are a relatively recently characterized type of innate immune cell which resemble lymphocytes but lack a T cell receptor. These cells predominantly reside in mucosal surfaces associated with epithelial tissues such as the gut and the lung and play important roles in infection and tissue homeostasis. Our preliminary studies show that one subpopulation of ILC2s, known as inflammatory ILC2 (iILC2), plays a critical role during the early and late stages of cancer development in the stomach. In this project, we aim to identify the underlying mechanisms that govern this pro-tumourigenic phenotype and to discover biomarkers of early stomach cancer for translational development.  We will study the role of iILC2s and their relevant molecules in disease models and patient samples. We will use various techniques including flow cytometry, immunofluorescent microscopy and single cell RNA sequencing. The project will provide the candidate with extensive knowledge of cancer biology, and the cellular and molecular signaling pathways which drive stomach disease and will provide the opportunity to gain expertise in the analysis of clinical samples using cutting-edge molecular profiling tools. Basic training in immunology or cancer biology (Honours or Masters minimum) will be required.

Supervisor

Dr Michael Buchert and Professor Matthias Ernst

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

Domestic or International students completed or currently completing Undergraduate studies (Hons or Master), students must firstly make contact via students@onjcri.org.au for further details and to provide transcript of results.

Description

Cancers of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, including cancers of the stomach, pancreas, bile ducts and bowel, carry some of the worst prognoses of all cancers, and claim the lives of over 12,000 Australian’s and over 3 million people worldwide each year. Alarmingly, the incidence of some of these cancers, most notably bowel (colorectal) cancer, is also increasing in younger people.  A deeper understanding of the molecular events that drive these cancers is urgently needed to develop better strategies to prevent and treat these cancers.
We have discovered that several transcription factors, including the Ets family members EHF and ELF3, are frequently downregulated in GI cancers. This PhD project will seek to directly establish whether the loss of these transcription factors promotes tumour development, the mechanisms by which this occurs, and investigate whether this results in specific therapeutic vulnerabilities.
In addition to generating critical new insight into how these cancers arise, the project will provide the candidate with extensive knowledge of cancer biology, including the transcriptional and signaling pathways which drive the disease and response to drug treatment. The candidate will also gain expertise into the use of genetically modified mouse models, organoid systems and state-of-the-art molecular and cell biology techniques.

Supervisor

Professor John Mariadason, Laura Jenkins and Camilla Marstrander Reehorst

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

Domestic or International students completed or currently completing Undergraduate studies (Hons or Master), students must firstly make contact via students@onjcri.org.au for further details and to provide transcript of results.

Description

The goal of this project is to use Drosophila models to determine which cell types and mechanisms underly the altered neuronal excitability seen prior to onset of symptoms in motor neuron disease. Understanding this will help determine intervention points and may identify novel therapeutic approaches.

Supervisor

Dr Donna Whelan

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Donna Whelan

Description

Our lab focusses on how cell death and survival pathways contribute to normal physiology and disease states, and how these can be targeted therapeutically. Such disease include cancer and inflammatory bowel disease. This PhD project will focus on the survival pathway of autophagy which is the recycling program by which cellular waste material gets degraded to generate new building blocks of life. In particular, the candidate will be using biochemical and cell biology based approaches to understand how autophagy is activated at a molecular level. Expected outcomes will inform novel therapeutic approaches to trigger or suppress autophagy in diseases where this pathway is deregulated.

Supervisor

Dr Doug Fairlie and Dr Erinna Lee

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Doug Fairlie

Description

Vascular dementia (VaD) is the second leading cause of dementia worldwide after Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Currently, no specific treatments for VaD exist due to incomplete understanding of the underlying pathophysiology. Early detection of VaD is vital for developing disease-modifying therapies, but this is challenging without blood-based biomarkers. In the next 5 years our aim is to identify translatable preclinical targets and therapies to treat VaD, and novel biomarkers for early diagnosis of VaD in humans. To achieve this, this project will strive to identify: 1) neuroinflammatory mechanisms that result in vascular dysfunction and contribute to cognitive impairment; 2) lead compounds to target neuroinflammatory pathways; and 3) early biomarkers in plasma from VaD patients.

Supervisor

Professor Garrie Arumugam

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Professor Garrie Arumugam

Description

This project aims to understand how the brains of Australia’s snakes and lizards have changed in response to past and ongoing environmental change. Brains crucially underpin the behavioural adaptations needed to cope with environmental change. Yet, studies of evolutionary adaptation have rarely assessed brains, especially in reptiles. Potential topics include investigating the effects of hot incubation temperatures on dragon brains, paleoneurology of fossil snakes, and/or how neuronal packing is linked with different ecological/sensory tasks in snakes and lizards.This project will provide new insights into the ecological and evolutionary lability of reptilian brains, generating data-rich digital specimens for future research, education and outreach, and inform conservation actions by revealing how the largest components of terrestrial diversity (reptiles) responds to environmental change. Depending on the student’s interests, they  will gain skills in a selection of the following areas: phylogenetic comparative analyses, morphometrics and microCT scanning, and neuroanatomical techniques including dissection, bioimaging, histology, tract tracing, flow cytometry, immunostaining, and transmission microscopy. The student will also have the opportunity to travel to collect data from preserved collections of lizards and snakes in museums, and field work within Australia, as well as share their research via conferences.

Supervisor

Dr Jenna Crowe-Riddell and Professor Shaun Collin

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Jenna Crowe-Riddell

Description

This project is focussed on revealing new knowledge about the molecular mechanism(s) of synthesis and regulation of (1,3;1,4)-β-glucan (mixed-linkage glucan, MLG), a major soluble dietary fibre component of cereal grain cell walls. The major polysaccharide synthase is CSLF6, an enzyme of Glycosyltransferase (GT) family 2 (www.cazy.org/), the same family to which many of the enzymes that make cell surface glycans in plants, bacteria, fungi and mammals belong. The student will: (i) attempt to reconstitute CSLF6 with the aim of obtaining detailed structural information about the enzyme, and (ii) undertake domain-swap experiments in plants and bacteria to obtain further insight into the synthesis and regulatory mechanisms utilised by MLG synthases.

Supervisor

Dr Monika Doblin and Professor Antony Bacic

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

Special conditions

Preference will be given to a candidate who is available to start immediately. A background in protein biochemistry is desired, as is experience with recombinant protein production and purification, in addition to molecular & cellular biology skills.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Monika Doblin

Description

This project aims to synthesize multi-functional chemical probes to identify proteins that undergo unfolding or specific modifications in complex cellular environment on a large scale. These probes will be further applied in neurodegenerative disease models for pathological mechanism study and for potential disease diagnosis. The expected outcome is to deliver new methodology for a comprehensive understanding of the correlation between cellular quality control machinery, stress responses and cell function. This should provide significant benefits, including contributing to fundamental knowledge on the molecular causes of neurodegenerative diseases.

Supervisor

Dr Yuning Hong

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Yuning Hong

Description

While osteoarthritis typically affects the elderly, 50% of adolescents and young adults who incur a serious knee injury (eg anterior cruciate ligament rupture) and subsequent reconstruction (ACLR) will develop post-traumatic osteoarthritis and unacceptable persistent pain, functional loss and poor quality of life before the age of 40 years. These young adults usually have occupational and parental responsibilities and thus, the individual and societal burden is formidable. There is an urgent need to reduce the burden of post-traumatic osteoarthritis in young adults. This PhD project sits within the world-leading La Trobe Sport and Exercise Medicine Research Centre. It will make use of both existing and new randomised controlled trials, evaluating the effectiveness of novel rehabilitation interventions, such as exercise-therapy and knee bracing, to identify risk factors for post-traumatic osteoarthritis and optimise outcomes for young adults following knee injury.

Supervisor

Dr Adam Culvenor

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

Special conditions

The PhD candidate should have a degree in Physiotherapy (or other health or sport science).

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Adam Culvenor

Description

This PhD project is embedded into an ARC Discovery project that is investigating the variations in the use of Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) across Australia. CTOs require people to accept mental health treatment in the community or be forcibly returned to hospital. The student will work with the project's Lived Experience Advisory Panel to further develop a research question that explores the impact of CTOs and coercion in psychiatry. People with experience in consumer perspective roles, either paid or voluntary, or other consumer perspective activities (work, study or interest) are strongly encouraged to apply. The research involved in the PhD will be refined based on the strengths, skills and experience of the successful candidate.

Supervisor

Professor Lisa Brophy, Associate Professor Chris Maylea and Professor Sharon Lawn

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents.

More information

For more information, please contact Professor Lisa Brophy

Description

This project aims to demonstrate an atomically-precise fabrication technique for the production of diamond quantum microprocessors, using scanning tunnelling microscopy to develop a novel bottom-up engineering approach. The PhD student will make use of advanced ultra-high vacuum STM facilities based at La Trobe University and will work as part of a large team of engineers and scientists in collaboration with Quantum Brilliance, an Australian-based quantum computing start-up company, and RMIT University.

Supervisor

Professor Chris Pakes

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Professor Chris Pakes

Description

This Ph.D. scholarship is awarding an qualifed student to work on a project for software Vulnerability Risk Discovery and assessment.   We would like to have a Ph.D. student who holds a computer science Master's degree or going to complete the Master's degree in Jun 2023 latest.  The candidate should have knowledge of machine learning and Deep learning algorithms for large data processing. The student is to work on the development of graph convolutional neural networks. He/she can design algorithms and analyse the results of novel graph neural networks to improve the vulnerability knowledge of graph-empowered cybersecurity applications. The student should have completed a research-based thesis in his/her Master's degree.

Supervisor

Dr Jinli Cao

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Jinli Cao

Description

The aim of the project is to contribute to resolving of (ideally, to resolve in full) the conjecture that a compact Finsler manifold with parallel, non-positive flag curvature is Berwald. The project will start with the study of known results and techniques and with understanding the low-dimensional cases.

Supervisor

Dr Yuri Nikolayevsky and Vladimir Matveev (University of Jena, Germany)

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

Special conditions

Background in differentail geometry.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Yuri Nikolayevsky

Description

This PhD scholarship is with La Trobe University’s new Climate Change Adaptation Lab. Applicants from the social sciences are sought to work and collaborate with adaptation researchers in the CCAL in exploring how climate change is manifesting and may manifest through work across sectors and sites. Recent years demonstrate that climate change is already affecting workers, but the focus to date has been on a limited scope of climate change impacts, particularly the direct impacts of heat on outdoor workers. This project will explore impacts on a greater range of work and a wider range of effects in order to provide crucial insights into the work-climate change relationship.

Supervisor

Professor Lauren Rickards and Dr Todd Denham

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

Description

This PhD scholarship is with La Trobe University’s new Climate Change Adaptation Lab. Applicants from the social sciences are sought to address a key area of interest for the CCAL: the adaptation of universities. Universities are part of the human systems being impacted by climate change and have a crucial role in not only helping mitigate emissions but enabling others’ adaptation, including through their unique teaching and research functions. This project will help explore climate change risks to and adaptation responses within universities as organisations, attending to how different professions and other groups with them conceive of, perceive, experience and respond to climate change.

Supervisor

Professor Lauren Rickards and Dr Todd Denham

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

Description

The project aims to explore how access to fire and the use of water have shaped land use from ancient times to the recent past along the Loddon valley. The project is a collaboration between a team from Archaeology and Aboriginal Studies at La Trobe and the Yung Balug Clan.  The aim of this PhD project is to investigate aspects of the archaeological record on Yung Balug Country.  The successful candidate will work with the project team to develop a research question on a topic such as the analysis of objects such as grindstones or scarred trees, the charcoal and pollen record, faunal remains and subsistence patterns, or topics on contact archaeology, the excavation of cooking mounds, or heritage management and cultural values. The candidate will work closely with Yung Balug people and with staff at La Trobe University. The research will inform cultural fire, traditional food growing and cultural heritage management practices in Victoria.

Supervisor

Professor Susan Lawrence

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Professor Susan Lawrence

Description

The project is investigating how historic gold mining activities have left a toxic legacy of mercury in Victoria.   The project integrates historical archaeology, environmental humanities and environmental science in order to document the spatial distribution of contaminants and novel ways of understanding industrial heritage. The PhD is within the field of historical archaeology and will involve collaboration with environmental historians, hydrologists and biogeochemists.  The candidate will undertake original research on archaeological sites associated with Victoria’s historic gold mining industry with a focus on locations of gold processing and waste disposal.

Supervisor

Professor Susan Lawrence

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Professor Susan Lawrence

Description

This project is embedded in an larger, funded project grant investigating work and family wellbeing. Covid-19 brought an unprecedented disruption to Australian parents' work-care routines, with different effects for women, and those working ‘at work’ versus at home. Using mixed-methods approaches and multiple Australian datasets collected pre- and post-pandemic, this unique project intends to identify families who are at risk of longer-term scarring to family wellbeing from work-care conflicts; and critical workplace supports which may prevent this. This project would suit a candidate with skills in social science, epidemiology, psychology or related disciplines to be part of a lovely multi-disciplinary team.

Supervisor

Dr Amanda Cooklin

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Amanda Cooklin

Description

Each year, approximately 12,000 children are admitted to an intensive care unit in Australia. For the families of these children, the ICU admission is a crisis, full of stress, anxiety, and fear. This world first project aims to explore how siblings are included and supported in the PICU when a brother or sister is critically ill. Using a mixed methods approach, this project will document how families are supported and encouraged to include siblings in the PICU, how often siblings visit, and what happens when they are there. The project will be embedded within a larger Australian Research Council DECRA project awarded to Dr Ashleigh Butler. Combined, the findings will assist in the development of guidelines and resources for safe, supported sibling inclusion in the PICU environment when a child is critically ill.

Supervisor

Dr Ashleigh Butler, Associate Professor Bev Copnell and Joseph Manning MBE (International supervisor, University of Nottingham).

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

Special conditions

Preference will be given to applicants who have nursing, medical, or allied health experience in the paediatric intensive care unit or in caring for children and their families.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Ashleigh Butler

Description

Strategies to improve outcomes for Australian First Nations mothers and babies are urgently needed.  Caseload midwifery is associated with better clinical and psychosocial outcomes; however few Aboriginal women have access to this model.

Supervisor

Dr Helen McLachlan and Dr Della Forster

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

Special conditions

Preference will be given to First Nations applicants and applicants who have midwifery, nursing, medical, or allied health experience in the area of maternity care and First Nations health.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Helen McLachlan

Description

This randomised controlled trial is  evaluating the impact of continuity of midwife care model for socially disadvantaged pregnant women. Pregnancy and birth provide a critical window for intervening to improve short- and long-term health and wellbeing for women and their children, and even more so for women already experiencing vulnerability at the beginning of pregnancy, yet there is a lack of evidence to guide preventative interventions.

Supervisor

Dr Helen McLachlan and Dr Della Forster

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

Special conditions

Preference will be given to applicants who have midwifery, nursing, medical, or allied health experience in the area of maternity care.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Helen McLachlan

Description

This PhD scholarship is related to a new qualitative project funded by the Australian Research Council. We are seeking an outstanding candidate with a strong track record of academic excellence in anthropology, sociology, gender studies or other relevant discipline (for example, youth studies, science and technology studies or education). The PhD project will complement the broader study which investigates young people’s drug consumption. The successful applicant will collaborate with the Project Lead of the broader study to develop a  project that is able to contribute to the aims of the larger project while also reflecting the interests and aspirations of the individual. The scholarship is based at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society – one of the Australia leading research centres investigating the social dimensions of health, gender, sexuality and consumption.

Supervisor

Dr Adrian Farrugia

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Adrian Farrugia

Description

This ARC funded study aims to understand whether heavy drinking practices have changed over time for underage young people, and in particular whether it has become de-normalised for underage young people to drink heavily. This project has two PHD students – one quantitative and one qualitative who will work together to understand the implications of the de-normalisation of underage youth drinking, e.g., whether this is creating polarised drinking environments or increasing stigma or social exclusion. We aim to use the findings to develop a contemporary theoretical model of underage drinking.

Supervisor

Dr Amy Pennay, Dr Sarah Callinan, Dr Gabriel Caluzzi, Professor John Holmes (University of Sheffield) and Professor Jukka Törrönen (Stockholm University)

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Amy Pennay

Description

This project will involve quantifying when and evaluating how ED services and systems respond to alcohol’s harm to others (AHTO) in Australia. With CI-partner, Prof Egerton-Warburton (LP190100698), and the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine (ACEM) the student will use annually collected ACEM snapshot survey data on AHTO or third-party drinking from patients from 106 EDs in Australasia. Core questions will be analysed about how alcohol is involved in family violence, street assaults and other injuries. Emergency department (state and or national) big systems (VAED and national) data will also be utilisied to identify the impacts and health costs of AHTO in Australian EDs. The ED project will inform services and policies that function to reduce AHTO in Australian health settings.

Supervisor

Dr Anne-Marie Laslett and Professor Diana Egerton-Warburton (Monash Health)

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Anne-Marie Laslett

Description

We are seeking a PhD candidate with strong python programming skills and experience training deep learning models in either the pyTorch or Tensorflow deep learning programming framework. The first objective of this study is to broaden the deep learning techniques we previously developed for static images and create and assess the performance of a new tool specifically for alcohol exposure in videos: the Alcohol Beverage Identification Deep Learning Algorithm for Videos (ABIDLAV). ABIDLAV will be developed to automatically identify and provide evidence on what kind of alcoholic beverage (beer, wine, whiskey, cocktails, etc.) features in the video, how frequently it appears, and for how long in each video. The second objective is to train ABIDLAV to identify features of the social, emotional, and environmental context in which alcohol is shown in videos. Specifically, ABIDLAV will be trained to identify who is present when alcohol is shown (how many children, adolescents, and (young) adults), their sex (male, female, not identifiable), their mood (happy, relaxed, aggressive, sad, etc.), and where alcohol is shown (bar, restaurant, outdoors, etc.).

Supervisor

Dr Emmanuel Kuntsche, Dr Zhen He and Dr Benjamin Riordan

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

Special conditions

The PhD candidate should be trained in deep learning.

More information

For more information, please contact Dr Emmanuel Kuntsche

Description

This project is part of an ARC Linkage Project involving Australian families involved in the Lighthouse Project, an innovative triage approach being taken by the Family Courts to screen litigants for family violence risk, with a primary focus on improving outcomes for families involved in the family law system. The project aims to examine risk pathways, burdens and costs of post-separation domestic and family violence (DFV), and the efficacy and cost-benefits of early DFV triage. This project intends to advance evidence on the efficacy of DFV triage and to translate findings into new resources for preventing DFV harms.

Supervisor

Professor Jennifer McIntosh, Dr Anna Booth and Dr Jason (Heng) Jiang

Eligibility

Open to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents and International applicants.

More information

For more information, please contact Professor Jennifer McIntosh