A project using smart sensors to help the visually impaired navigate through crowds is just one University of Wollongong initiative set to benefit from the latest round of Australian Research Council (ARC) grants.
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UOW researchers were this week awarded $6.44 million in funding.
The university received one of only 12 Indigenous Discovery grants awarded nationally. UOW researchers were awarded $498,000 for a place-based model for Aboriginal community-led solutions.
They will investigate the unique approaches used by Aboriginal community-controlled organisations to enable community ownership of holistic health and social programs in complex community settings.
The university’s other successful grants included 10 Discovery Projects (DP) and five Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards (DECRA).
Innovative projects funded ranged from guidelines for parents on how to interact with children during digital play, and modelling sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in order to mitigate their effects, to understanding why commuter cycling is standing still while leisure cycling participation rates grow exponentially.
Three of the 16 projects funded received more that $500,000 each, with the net-shape micro manufacturing of composite micro channels’ project headed by Professor Zheng Jiang and Professor Ming Yang, topping the list with $540,000.
This was followed closely by the $535,000 researchers received to look at a smart functional lubricant for hot strip rolling.
Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) Professor Will Price said the ARC grants highlighted the university’s world-class research across a wide range of academic disciplines.
“I would like to congratulate our researchers for their success. These projects vary greatly, but the one thing they have in common is that they seek to understand and solve complex, real-world problems,” Professor Price said.