Research Highlights

A new ARC Linkage Project led by Professor Jinjun Chen at the Swinburne University of Technology has received $540,000 to develop a secure and efficient solution that can detect and prevent sensitive data leaks in real time. 

As more and more of our digital information is being stored in ‘the cloud’, the leak of sensitive data not only poses serious threats to both public and private organisations but also puts their employees and clients at risk. The potential loss in economic and social terms is very high. 

With additional support from industry partner, Joowing Australia Pty Ltd, the research team will develop a novel system that can monitor data leak security incidents happening over time and captured by different sensors, to identify correlations between historic security incidents and current data attacks. 

This project is expected to help significantly to secure data on the cloud for organisations in Australia, and benefit fast-growing security-sensitive data hosting and applications.

Full article issued by Curtin University.

New ARC-supported research at Curtin University has found that the impact of mining on animals is overlooked in most mine site restoration assessments, prompting a call for greater onus to be put on mine operators to restore animal communities after mining.

Lead author PhD student Sophie Cross, from the ARC Centre for Mine Site Restoration (CMSR) in Curtin University's School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said the research highlighted a need for an increased focus on fauna monitoring and behavioural studies as a way of understanding the long-term success of mine site restoration.

Full article issued by the University of Pennsylvania.

ARC Discovery Early Career Award (DECRA) recipient from The Australian National University, Dr Marcus Doherty, along with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science, have demonstrated a new hardware platform based on isolated electron spins in a two-dimensional material.

Quantum computers promise to be a revolutionary technology because their elementary building blocks, qubits, can hold more information than the binary, 0-or-1 bits of classical computers. But to harness this capability, hardware must be developed that can access, measure and manipulate individual quantum states. The research team trapped electrons within defects in sheets of hexagonal boron nitride, a one-atom-thick semiconductor material, in order to optically detect the system's quantum states.

Full article issued by Monash University.

An international study led by ARC-supported Monash biologists has found that the length of a baby bird's telomeres, the DNA caps that protect chromosomes, can predict its future fitness.

Associate Professor Anne Peters, an ARC Future Fellowship recipient from the Monash School of Biological Sciences, and Research Fellow, Dr Justin Eastwood, studied wild purple-crowned fairy-wrens, an endangered species, at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s Mornington Sanctuary. Their research, published in the journal Molecular Ecology, found that that telomere length was positively related to the birds' lifespan, breeding duration, and reproductive success.