ARC Linkage Grants  

Innovative approaches to identifying regional responses of biodiversity to climate change (2010-2013)

Industry Partner: The Australian Museum

A/Prof David Warton (with Dr Daniel Ramp, Dr Kim Jenkins, Dr Mick Ashcroft, Dr John Gollan, Dr Patrick Driver). A/Prof Warton and Australian Museum collaborators are developing innovative methods of mapping biodiversity and how biodiversity may respond to climate change at the regional scale. This project will produce climate models that are more detailed and which better reflect the climate experienced in species habitats than was previously possible, using new field measurements and novel modelling approaches. Novel biodiversity modelling approaches will then be used to study the potential threats of climate change to biodiversity in unique World Heritage Areas in the Sydney region.

Can an anti-HIV gene in blood stem cells protect from immune depletion by HIV? (2010-2012)

Industry Partner: Calimmune

Calimmune is developing a gene therapy that suppresses the expression of the HIV co-receptor CCR5, so that when administered to a person with HIV infection their immune cells will be protected. A/Prof John Murray from the School and Dr Geoff Symonds of Calimmune have obtained a Linkage Grant to investigate the effectiveness of this therapy in the laboratory, and to estimate the impact such a gene therapy could have in an HIV-infected individual. This collaboration between A/Prof Murray and Dr Symonds follows on from previous joint work related to another anti-HIV gene therapy developed and tested in a clinical trial by Johnson & Johnson Research Australia. Mathematical modeling will play an important role in this project, as it has done in their previous work. 

Other Research Projects with Industry

Boronia Manged Funds Pty Ltd: Dr Gareth Peters and researchers from Boronia are working on the development of an algorithmic high frequency trading model for futures contracts.

CSIRO: Dr Gareth Peters is a visiting scientist with the CSIRO, in the Mathematics Informatics and Statistics group, working on the following projects:

   - Together with CSIRO scientist Dr Pavel Shevchenko (who is an Adjunct Professor at UNSW), Gareth Peters works on the development of risk models satisfying quantitative requirements specified in international regulatory standards under Basel II/III and Solvency II.

   - Gareth Peters is working with Keith Hayes, Geoff Hossack and Jeffrey Danbacher from the Ecology and Marine Sciences group at CSIRO to develop statistical models for multi-species state space structures. This is a component of a large monitoring study involving several university, research and government agencies.

The Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis: In 2007 the School held two grants for work on identifying spatial and extreme risks for applications to such areas as biosecurity.

Optimisation Projects with Industry

A/Prof Gary Froyland has led several optimisation projects with industry and government.

BHP Billiton: Two ARC Linkage Projects (with Prof. Natashia Boland, Prof. Peter Taylor, Mr Peter Stone, Dr Merab Menabde, and Dr Mark Zuckerberg) and an externally funded project developed a suite of novel optimisation methodologies to improve BHP Billiton's strategic planning of open pit mining projects. These improvements included the development of long-term plans to maximise project Net Present Value (NPV), the development of optimisation methods to optimise NPV when presented with uncertain geological information, and improved algorithms to optimise long-term plans using huge geological models of very high resolution over several decades. 

Patrick Corporation: Development of new scheduling algorithms for Patrick Corporation’s new container exchange facility at Port Botany (with Dr Thorsten Koch, Dr Nicole Megow, and Mr Howard Wren). The optimisation algorithms produced a gantry crane schedules that completely eliminated wasteful rehandling moves of containers, and were incorporated into the Port Botany operations.

Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTO): Research project (with Dr Jez Gray and Dr Therese Keane) to optimally schedule landing operations of amphibious vehicles deployed from navy ships, and to most efficiently pack vehicles and other supplies on multi-decked ships with multiple unloading modes.

NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics: Undertook collaborative research (with Dr Don Weatherburn) to model the dynamics of prison populations and the effects of government policy decisions. We showed that significant reductions in prison populations could be achieved by lowering recidivism, particularly when the recidivism rate is very high.

Hunter Valley Coal Chain Logistics Team: Studied the coal supply chain at the Port of Newcastle to better understand the supply chain dynamics and reduce inefficiencies and ship queue lengths off Newcastle (with Dr Peter Pudney and Dr Palitha Welgama).

Biomedical Applications of Mathematical Modelling

Dr Adelle Coster, A/Prof Bruce Henry and A/Prof John Murray work in the area of mathematical biology. John Murray has a joint appointment with the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, holds NHMRC grants and grants with pharmaceutical companies, and provides consulting to the pharmaceutical industry on mathematical modelling. Bruce Henry works on a number of projects funded by NIH and ARC grants with the Computational Neurobiology and Imaging Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York. Adelle Coster has a joint appointment with the Garvan Institute for Medical Research and works on the link between insulin receptor signalling and glucose uptake into muscle and fat cells.

There are considerable opportunities for PhD and honours projects with a number of these in collaboration with biomedical research institutes. Scholarships for PhD study may be available. For details please contact Adelle, Bruce, or John.