DeathscapesLeading an international effort to reduce racialised violence

Life after impactExploring a 66 million year old subsea crater

THE MAGAZINE OF CURTIN’S OFFICE OF RESEARCH

WINTER 2016

Air bornUsing geospatial data to identify patterns in pre-term birth

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BETTER DECISIONS

THROUGH DATA FOCUS

R U N N I N GA T I G H T

S H I POPTIMISING LNG VESSEL SCHEDULING

With the backdrop of the Higher Education Reform Package proposed in early 2014 and the release of the National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA) in December 2015, the new parliament will be in a position to drive significant change across both teaching and research. Elements of the NISA are already subject to consultation in the form of the Engagement and Impact Consultation Paper and the New Research Block Grant Arrangements for Universities. These initiatives are currently influencing conversations and planning (see knowledgenation.com.au), with universities placing greater focus on industry relationships across research and innovation.

Curtin has a strong focus on collaboration and is proactive in industry-focused research and innovation that delivers economic and social benefits to Australia. Curtin’s proportion of industry (Category 3) and CRC (Category 4) research income in WA, compared to other WA universities, has increased year-on-year since 2010. Strong partnerships with industry are central to our endeavours. Joint appointments, contract research, collaborative grants and commercialisation initiatives help deliver innovation that benefits both industry and the University.

Curtin’s national reputation in innovation is well known. In addition to a very active innovation program - Commercialisation Advisory Board and KickStart Innovation Fund, Curtin Innovation Awards, WesTechFest and OzAPP Awards - Rohan McDougall has a national reputation in innovation through leadership of the Accessing Innovation and the ATN METS Industry Forums, and as Deputy Chair of the Knowledge Commercialisation Board.

Curtin’s ambitions have always embraced the full spectrum of research, that is, competitive grants (category 1) and business and end-user research (categories 2, 3 and 4). In addition to industry-focused research and innovation, Curtin is achieving international success in research quality awards.

Revision of the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher categories has seen four Curtin researchers achieve this status since 2014. In 2015, five Curtin researchers were recognised in the Thomson Reuters Citation and Innovation Awards, and in April 2016 Curtin was recognised by the Nature Publishing Group as the most collaborative university in Australia and the third-fastest mover globally, assessed across more than 60,000 papers published in 68 high-quality natural science journals. In 2014-2015, three Curtin researchers received WA Premier’s Science Awards.

These results support our rise of more than 150 places in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) from 2013 to 2015. More importantly, Curtin’s performance in each category for the ARWU has shown improvement in recent years, indicating the substance underpinning the headline ranking performance.

ERA 2015 represented the culmination of several years’ strategic development with Curtin achieving 86 per cent of 4-digit Fields of Research ranked world standard or above, up from 71 per cent world standard or above in ERA 2012. This outcome represents a substantial advance over this period built upon researcher performance, publication quality and strategic development. It places Curtin in a strong position not only for future ERA events, but for overall competitiveness.

Curtin’s enhanced national presence is clear: the significance of the $100 million GRDC bilateral; outstanding improvement in NHMRC success; the national impact of the BankWest Curtin Economics Centre; high level industry engagement through the Cisco Internet of Everything Innovation Centre; and the social significance of the research of the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education.

In this issue of R&D Now we see further evidence of progress towards our goals as a leading, research-intensive university – genomic research into fungal pathogens, lipid signal blocking to reduce the spread of cancer, geospatial health analytics, research into the prevalence and reduction of ratialised violence, and sustainability research to support development of Greater Curtin.

The quality and dedication of Curtin researchers have been fundamental in delivering our strategic ambitions and I am confident this will continue into the future. It has been a pleasure to be part of this period of outstanding achievement at Curtin and I will observe with pride further progress under our new DVC Research, Professor Chris Moran.

Professor Graeme Wright Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research

research.curtin.edu.au

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Curtin is committed to achieving its vision for 2030: to be a recognised international leader in research and education.Curtin will:• strengthen as a research-intensive university

• attract and retain iconic scholars to undertake world-leading research in areas of global significance

• change lives in Western Australia, the nation and the world through high-impact research.

Curtin’s status as a research-intensive university will be determined by the quality, scale and significance of its research, as assessed against national and international benchmarks.

The University will focus its resources to invest in areas of high-quality research and creative production that truly matter, generating outputs that have relevant and significant impact on communities. It will lead through the discovery and practical application of knowledge that addresses real-world issues and changes lives. It will excel in thought-leadership through creative expression and through our influence on public debates, changing the minds of decision-makers at all levels on issues that matter to society.

By increasing our investment in areas of strategic significance, Curtin will be home to a growing number of world-class researchers who will deliver research of greater global impact than ever before.

OUR AREAS OF STRENGTH

MINERALS AND ENERGY

ICT AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

HEALTH

CURTIN’S RESEARCHSTRATEGY There’s a lot to celebrate

after a highly productive and successful year of research at Curtin.As you read this issue of R&D Now there is a federal election that will be fundamental in determining the future policy direction for higher education.

R&D WINTER 2016 OVERVIEW

The new DVC Research, Professor Chris Moran.

ISOTOPE SCIENCE Life after impact 2

BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE Blocking the signal 4

PROFILE Professor Marco Falasca 5

DIGITAL HUMANITIES Deathscapes 6

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT KIC: Starting a greener, smarter future 8

RADIO ASTRONOMY Expanding the horizons of science 10

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Regional predictions 13

MATHEMATICS Running a tight ship 14

CULTURE AND MEDIA Curtin responds to ‘Created in China’ 16

BIOINFORMATICS Fast-tracking fungal disease resisrance 18

PROFILE Professor Sam Spearing 19

HEALTH ECONOMETRICS Economical with the truth 20

GEOSPATIAL HEALTH ANALYTICS Air born 22

PUBLIC HEALTH Q+A: Professor Rachel Huxley 24

Director: Charlie Thorn

Editorial TeamEditor: Jarrad LongSub Editor: Anita ShoreWriters: Karen Green, Kitty Drok and April Kleer

Design: M3 Design Co. Photography: James Rogers

New OrleansHouston

Mexico CityMérida

Chicxulub impact crater Cancún

GULF OF MEXICO

Yucatán

The location of the Chicxulub impact crater, Mexico.

M E X I C O

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR HONOURED WITH GIBB MAITLAND MEDALInternationally recognised Curtin University organic geochemist and stable isotope expert Professor Kliti Grice has been awarded the Geological Society of Australia’s (GSA) 2016 Gibb Maitland medal.

P rofessor Grice, a John Curtin Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the founding director of the WA-Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre at

Curtin, received the award in recognition of her work in organic and isotope geochemistry and its applications to fundamental geology, and for her substantial and sustained contributions to the petroleum and minerals resources sector in Western Australia and internationally.

Professor Grice’s nomination citation, delivered by John Curtin Distinguished Professor Simon Wilde, was presented at the 2016 GSA-WA Annual Dinner last Friday night. The citation emphasised that Professor Grice was a dedicated and highly creative researcher and an internationally recognised leader in her field, with a prodigious publication record.

“Using substantial competitive grant funding, Kliti established the WA-Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre in the Department of Chemistry at Curtin University, which has acted as an international hub for world-leading scientists in organic geochemistry,” Professor Wilde says.

Professor Grice, who has held two Australian Research Council (ARC) QEII fellowships and a Discovery Outstanding Research Award at Professorial level, has been responsible for a number of major international scientific breakthroughs.

Her research has significantly contributed to knowledge around the causes and recovery of four of the five largest mass extinction events on Earth, with special relevance to WA geology and exploration of critical resources.

Professor Grice and her team will shortly begin analysing samples taken from the Chixculub impact crater.

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Isotope science

The researchers aim to understand how life recovered and repopulated Earth following the catastrophic asteroid impact event 66 million years ago.

Associate Professor Marco Coolen, geomicrobiologist and ancient DNA expert, is the only representative from Australia visiting the drilling location in Mexico to obtain samples for the team’s research.

The drilling project, which commenced in April and will take place over a few months, aims to reach 1,500 metres below the ocean floor into the crater’s ‘peak ring’.

The samples will be frozen and shipped to Curtin University for further analysis by the WA-Organic and Isotope Geochemistry team and the John de Laeter Centre.

As part of this unique multi-national and multi-institutional drilling and scientific effort, the researchers from Curtin hope to find evidence that will explain what happened after the bolide impact.

“Through analysing the molecular remains of life found in this crater, we hope to obtain evidence of the resurgence and evolution of marine and terrestrial life following the asteroid impact offshore at Chicxulub in the Gulf of Mexico,” Associate Professor Coolen says.

“Furthermore, we will explore to what extent the diversity of subsurface bacteria reflect post-impact environmental changes.”

John Curtin Distinguished Professor Kliti Grice, a widely recognised expert in molecular fossils and mass extinction events, says the team will be applying an innovative approach to combine geological, biological and geochemical tools to study the environmental factors accompanying life during and after the impact event.

“It is estimated that close to the impact, greater than 50 per cent of species became extinct, including calcifying plankton whereas non-calcifying organisms recovered from the event,” Professor Grice says.

“This international research effort will yield critical insights into how this major mass extinction event impacted the evolution of life on a planetary scale.

“Research associated with this end-Cretaceous event is closely related to the rise of our current CO2 concentrations, which saw the levels rise at least four times more than present levels.”

Curtin University Associate Professor Fred Jourdan, a geologist and expert on argon dating and the causes of mass extinctions, explained that this end-Cretaceous period extinction event is currently the only one that can be associated with an asteroid impact event and volcanic activity 66 million years ago.

“Other extinctions are associated solely with voluminous volcanic activity which affected the biogeochemical cycles and microbial communities in the ancient seas,” Associate Professor Jourdan says.

“One of the main research areas that we will also look at is the extent of a hydrothermal system associated with the impact, and the advantages for the colonisation of life right after a major impact.

“This can have implications on how early life can colonise a planet after its formation.”

The project is funded by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program. It has been supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) $10 million infrastructure program led by Australia-New Zealand IODP Consortium.

wa-oigc.curtin.edu.au

Curtin University WA-Organic and Isotope Geochemistry researchers are working with an international team of scientists drilling into the 180 kilometre-wide Chicxulub Impact Crater associated with the dinosaur extinction event.

By April Kleer

The drilling project, which commenced in April and will take place over a few months, aims to reach 1,500 metres below the ocean floor into the crater’s ‘peak ring’.

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Biomedical science

Pancreatic cancer currently offers sufferers little hope of survival, but a Curtin research team is making inroads by focusing on ways of blocking lipid signalling.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal diseases in Australia today. Although it is currently the eleventh most prevalent cancer diagnosed in the country, it is difficult to detect in the early stages, and once established, is highly aggressive

and results in a high mortality rate. Resistant to both chemo and radiotherapy, a pancreatic cancer diagnosis presents the physician with few, if any, effective treatment options. Of around three thousand new cases of pancreatic cancer diagnoses nationally in 2015, only six per cent of sufferers will survive to five years following diagnosis.

There is an urgent need to understand more about how this disease is initiated and proliferates, in order to develop treatments and cures.

Professor Marco Falasca from Curtin’s School of Biomedical Sciences is heading a team committed to finding cures and treatments for patients

with chronic diseases, in particular challenging illnesses, such as pancreatic cancer.

His current focus is on the role of metabolism in the pancreatic function, specifically intracellular signals regulated by specific lipids that act as ‘second messengers’ inside a cell to control a plethora of cellular functions, including cell growth, proliferation and metabolism.

Funded by European Union Research Funding, Diabetes UK, British Heart Foundation, Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund and Prostate Cancer UK, among others, Professor Falasca and his team have studied how lipid signalling acts in cancer. Their findings have included an understanding that from the initial stages of pancreatic cancer, lipid signalling is hyperactivated, and this in turn affects the proliferation of cells. Finding a means of blocking the hyperactivated signals could assist in halting or degrading the proliferation of cancerous cells, slowing or stopping the spread of the disease.

“We are paying particular attention to lipids known as phosphoinositides, such as Lysophosphatidylinositol (LPI), that can themselves act as, or be converted into, messengers, ultimately Professor Marco Falasca left the UK for Australia in 2014,

after 15 years at University College London followed by seven years at Queen Mary University of London, to

establish the Metabolic Signalling Group at Curtin’s School of Biomedical Sciences.

Within Falasca’s research area of metabolic diseases, his interest is the role of cellular lipids in the regulation of cell functions including growth, proliferation and metabolism.

Although comparatively few biomedical scientists are working in the area of lipid metabolism, his research to date has seen major advances in the understanding of pancreatic cancer, obesity and diabetes.

Falasca completed his doctoral research in pharmacology at the Consorzio Mario Negri Sud, Italy, studying the signalling pathways that regulate intracellular physiological and pathological processes.

In recent years, his research interest on tumour metabolism has led to the identification of key signalling pathways controlling metabolic routes that fuel tumours. His current projects are investigating the mechanisms involved in development and progression of pancreatic cancer.

At their Curtin lab, the Metabolic Signalling Group is studying the relationship between intracellular lipids that act as ‘second messengers’ and diseases such as Type-2 diabetes, metabolic-syndrome obesity and pancreatic cancer.

In particular, they are investigating abnormal metabolism of specific lipids and the resulting intracellular chemical imbalance that is linked with metabolic diseases, as well as hyperlipidaemia (high blood concentration of lipids) and associated cardiovascular disease.

The group is also collaborating with Dr Max Massi at Curtin’s Department of Chemistry, on the synthesis and testing of new compounds for anti-cancer and anti-obesity treatments. In addition, Falasca is also working with the Head of Biomedical Sciences, Professor Philip Newsholme, on the development of nutrition-based interventions for Type-2 diabetes.

A Member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts, Falasca has published more than 100 research papers in high-ranking journals. His recent conference invitations include the 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Pancreatic Diseases in Massachusetts, USA; and as a plenary speaker at the 2016 Federation of European Biochemical Societies Special Meeting in Innsbruck, Austria.

healthsciences.curtin.edu.au/schools-and-departments/biomedical-sciences

Profile

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Professor Marco FalascaProfessor of MetabolismSchool of Biomedical Sciences

regulating several cellular functions. In recent years, our work on proteins involved in LPI mechanism of action, such as ABC transporters and G protein-coupled receptors, has revealed a novel mechanism for these proteins in cancer progression and cell signalling. LPI is a bioactive lipid that is able to activate signalling cascades relevant to cell proliferation, migration, survival and tumourigenesis,” Professor Falasca explains.

This enhanced understanding of the pivotal role that LPI signalling and its effect on G protein-coupled receptors plays in the progress of cancer, has advanced to the point where Professor Falasca and his team have been able to test various drug combinations aimed at breaking that nexus, and perhaps halting the proliferation of cancerous cells.

“We have recently discovered a very promising drug combination that is currently under evaluation for testing in clinical trials,” he says.

healthsciences.curtin.edu.au/schools-and-departments/biomedical-sciences

Finding a way to stop cancer in its tracks

An international study of custodial deaths will deliver both a foundational data repository and the first digital platform designed to stimulate comparative research into practices of racialised violence.

A t the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Professor Suvendrini Perera is coordinating a high-profile research project that could

place Australia at the forefront of innovation in the area of social justice. Perera is hoping that, more importantly, the work will also help reduce the incidence of racialised violence, a term used to describe aggression against groups marked socially as different from the state’s dominant group.

Funded by the Australian Research Council, the project is studying the characteristics of racialised, custodial violence in Australia, Canada and the US, which are major ‘settler states’ (countries established by colonisation), as well as the UK.

“These four countries share political, legal and social practices that have not been compared in relation to deaths in immigration detention centres, police cells and prisons and at controlled border sites,” Perera explains.

“These are sites where state and civil practices interlock, and where legal and administrative process are evidently failing to prevent marginalisation of, and violence against, minority groups.

“Governments devote considerable resources to addressing the problem of racialised deaths in custody; however, the problem is increasing, and the predicaments faced by refugees worldwide means the issue is becoming more complex.”

The project – titled Deathscapes: Mapping Race and State Violence in Settler Societies – will encompass media and internet studies, cultural studies, legal studies, sociology and education; with contributions from notable scholars at the University of Toronto, the University of London, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Macquarie University, Australia.

The project will deliver a world-first multimedia web platform that will enable researchers across disciplines and work sectors to visualise and analyse the information through new datasets, networks and technologies – and add new knowledge to the resource.

Linked to the project, Perera recently co-convened a public forum at the University of Technology, Sydney, into violence against Indigenous women in Australia and Canada.

“In Canada, there is more and more evidence of scandalous rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women,” Perera says.

“And although it’s been 25 years since we completed the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Australia remains one of the settler states where racialised incarceration, especially of Aboriginal women, keeps rising, and shocking cases of deaths in custody continue to occur.

“We expect the outcomes of the Deathscapes project will be influential in policy development to help address this.”

curtin.edu.au/research/aapi

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Digital Humanities

Leading an international effort to reduce racialised violenceBy Karen Green

D E A T H S C A P E S

The ‘Deathscapes’ digital platform will encourage researchers, communities, policymakers and state agencies to connect with their counterparts across other countries and create new collaborations.

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A new Australian initiative with Curtin at its core will help universities and the nation as a whole to plan for a more sustainable future.

G reater Curtin will see the emergence of the teaching, learning, research and innovation precinct of the future. Although the big picture is clear,

the detail is constantly evolving, informed by a number of sources – the latest being KIC Australia, an initiative with Curtin as a core partner. KIC stands for ‘Knowledge Innovation Community’.

Western Australia’s main representative is Professor Greg Morrison from the Curtin University Sustainable Policy Institute. Morrison has been instrumental in developing Climate-KIC Australia, based on his previous experience leading several major projects within the powerful European Climate-KIC, established in 2010.

The success of KIC depends on genuine collaboration between industry, academia and society. The right balance of business knowledge, research and innovation will generate transformative new products, services, and business models.

“Climate innovation is a positive space,” argues Morrison. “It’s not about climate change woes, it’s about creating economies, jobs, impact and innovation around climate. The KIC should become a big motor of innovation, increasing our ability to adapt to climate change. Creating a low carbon culture, improving the sustainability of our cities, boosting efficiency and reducing waste. That’s the value proposition.

“We have the opportunity to create aspirational precincts – who is going to be climate neutral first? What services will be provided? And in doing so, we provide a model to roll out these innovations across society.

“The focus areas under development include resource use and management (particularly water and agricultural land), and urban transition. We need to plan our cities better, turning them into places where people can live and work sustainably, within a sensible resource footprint.

“There are opportunities to develop new building technologies for Australian conditions, and showcase smart, precinct-wide integration of power, water, waste, transport and information systems. We could potentially lead global developments in solar generation, storage and micro grid distribution.”

KIC activities will include supporting the development of accelerators, incubators and maker spaces: places to help people connect, create, design, innovate, and bring their clean-technology ideas to market faster. But Morrison stresses the bigger picture.

“The KIC is not just about technological innovation. We also need social innovation – looking at how we behave as human beings. Social innovation will change the whole structure of common utilities and infrastructure. Transport is an example – we don’t just need technological advances to create electric buses, we need to think about our experience of using public transport. How could we more profitably use our time in stations and in transit? A bus stop could be a recharging station, an internet portal, a news service ...”

Greater Curtin is one of many development projects across Australia that will be able to link into Climate-KIC Australia, to compare, share, compete and develop as test beds and living laboratories for a range of climate-driven innovations.

With Greater Curtin representing a movement into a new innovation age for universities. Morrison would argue that Climate-KIC Australia is an integral part of that new age.

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…we don’t just need technological advances to create electric buses, we need to think about our experience of using public transport. How could we more profitably use our time in stations and in transit? A bus stop could be a recharging station, an internet portal, a news service ...

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About Climate-KIC

KICSTARTING A GREENER, SMARTER FUTURE.

Established in 2010, Climate-KIC is Europe’s largest public–private partnership addressing climate change, operating across 12 European countries and more than 250 partners.

Climate-KIC Australia builds on the European model to encourage commercial innovations in Australia to tackle climate change. The community will be formally launched on 1 July.

By Kitty Drok

With a new-generation radio telescope and supercomputing power, light from the Epoch of Reionisation and the first

stars – when the Universe transformed from an opaque realm – may soon be in the sights of Curtin astrophysicists and astronomers.

With science rapidly extending our journeys into the Universe, many of us now gaze at the twinkles of starlight emitted billions of years ago – but no more than 13.7 billion years ago – and wonder what and who else is out there.

Australia is an international leader in radio astronomy research, and, recognising the advances our scientists are making in this field, the Australian Research Council (ARC) is supporting home-grown, awe-inspiring projects for cosmic discoveries. After being awarded a $1 million ARC grant in late-2015, the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA) has hummed with the anticipation of extending their next-generation radio telescope that will bring scientists 13 billion years closer to seeing the formation of the first stars and galaxies, and the Universe’s ‘Epoch of Reionisation’.

Known as the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), the telescope is a $50 million international science endeavour from Curtin and 16 organisations across several countries. From its location within the radio-quiet zone of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), the MWA has been online and scanning the southern sky since 2012. It’s not a traditional, rotating parabolic dish, but an ‘aperture array’ telescope comprising 4,000 antennas that resemble knee-high robot spiders, coupled to a formation of receiver systems.

Precisely arranged over seven square kilometres of Australian scrubland, the antennas scan the night sky for luminous objects such as exploding supernovae, and massive flares from planets in other solar systems. And because it has no moving parts, the MWA is a highly agile instrument that can be steered to a new source of interest – a cosmic gravitational wave, for example – within 10 seconds of CIRA being alerted.

Big, fast data

The colossal volume of data from the antennas, which streams at 320 gigabytes per second (GBps), demands the supremacy of supercomputers to create a comprehensive picture of the night sky. However, because storage is unfeasible the data must be processed in real time, which leads to another challenge: the limitation on power available for computation, dictated by the observatory’s remote location. To overcome this, the MWA archive team has successfully exploited the capabilities of graphics processing units – commonly found in games consoles and smartphones – and reduced the input data rate to a manageable size of 5 GBps.

After collation at the telescope’s correlator, data are streamed to the storage facility at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth, via a 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) fibre optic link. There, the centre’s Galaxy supercomputer provides offline processing of data and its distribution to the University of Melbourne and international research centres including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and the Raman Research Institute in India.

The information is then in the hands of astronomers and physicists working to unlock the Universe’s infinite secrets. MWA-acquired data already underpins more than 30 science research papers, with the project’s impact resulting in the CIRA team in 2015 receiving a prestigious Thomson Reuters Citation and Innovation Award.

The new grant from the ARC will launch MWA phase 2, involving quadrupling the telescope’s footprint to 28 square kilometres via two new arrays of antennae tiles. These will instantly escalate the calibration and sensitivity of the telescope and improve its capability tenfold.

This also means a corresponding increase in the difficulty of data-processing, explains Dr Randall Wayth, Director of the MWA project.

“By expanding the size of the array we see the same sky but with increased resolution, which means we have to output data from the correlator at four times the current rate.”

Consequently, in addition to its engineering team that is working on the new arrays and enhancements to all components, CIRA has 12 postdoctoral researchers dedicated to science data processing and algorithm development. And necessity being the mother of invention, Wayth adds, the team is already working on innovative ways to compress, store and distribute the data.

Their mission has been made easier by the recent trial of a new 100 Gbps high-speed data link from the MRO. Completed by researchers at the Cisco Internet of Everything Innovation Centre at Curtin, the link means that once signals are converted to light at the observatory they’ll travel as light all the way to Perth. The trial also verified the digital data packets were arriving on time and in sync, which is critical for the billion-dollar Square Kilometre Array low-frequency radio telescope (SKA-low) also to be located at the Murchison observatory.

mwaRadio astronomy

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MRO high speed data link 100 Gbps

E X P A N D I N G T H E H O R I Z O N S O F S C I E N C EBy Karen Green

Each night, 4,000 antennas belonging to the MWA in remote Western Australia scan the southern sky for solar flares and other cosmic phenomena. In less than three years of operation the telescope has acquired more than seven petabytes of data – the equivalent of 90 years of HD video.

Maximum speed of Australia’s NBN 100 Mbps

Super-Fast Data: the trial MRO Data Link is 1000x times faster than the maximum speed of the NBN

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Phase 2 and the Epoch of Reionisation

Following the Big Bang, the Universe was briefly in an ionised state before cooling into clouds of hydrogen gas, and the ‘dark ages’ descended. About 500 million years later, Wayth explains, the first luminous objects began reionising the Universe into the transparent one we see today, where most of the hydrogen is ionised or locked up in stars.

The MWA is designed to detect a specific wavelength of electromagnetic radiation emitted during this Epoch of Reionisation (EoR), which will lead to a fount of discoveries about the entire cosmic dawn.

Between the Earth and the feeble light of the first stars, however, lies the entire Universe – 13.7 billion years of astrophysical objects and their radio emissions. Black holes at the centres of radio galaxies accumulate and swirl matter around them in accretion discs, and eventually eject the matter in jets larger than their host galaxies. And old stars are exploding here and there, leaving glowing remnants of their former glory.

“The EoR signal is less than one millionth the size of the foreground noise,” explains CIRA researcher Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker. “And right on our doorstep there’s the Milky Way, giving off a constant radio glow as its huge magnetic fields arc through the interstellar plasma.”

Hurley-Walker’s work for the past three years has been the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA (GLEAM) survey that is identifying the radiation that camouflages the EoR. The project’s statistics are staggering: two million CPU-hours spent processing 500 terabytes of data. Because “one astronomer’s foreground is another’s science”, the survey is the most downloaded and processed set of observations.

“GLEAM has led to a catalogue of 300,000 newly observed galaxies, and given us a better look at bubbles that encapsulate young stars, for example,” she says.

Another major advantage the MWA has over dish telescopes is its wide field of view – the entire Southern Hemisphere sky. Together, this feature and the MWA’s high sensitivity enable in-depth studies of compact objects that emit radio signals of precise regularity.

Internationally recognised in pulsar astronomy, CIRA astrophysicist Dr Ramesh Bhat is studying intergalactic phenomena that last only milliseconds – such as radio emissions from fast-spinning pulsars, which will help lead to the detection of ‘ripples’ in the fabric of space–time known as gravitational waves.

The study of such exotic objects require recording and processing data at very high time resolution, and with aggregate data rates of 30 terabytes per hour, it’s the most data-intensive functionality of the MWA. This is, however, an important investment, says Bhat. “Pulsars and gravity is a headline science theme for the SKA, given its potential to uncover new vistas in extreme physics,” he says.

While the MWA is in itself a science celebrity, the SKA is the long-awaited main attraction – the largest and most progressive telescope ever conceived – with the global science community anticipating the SKA’s venture into the ‘Cradle of Life’. With an ability to peer inside dust rings that surround young stars and see how other Earth-like planets form, the SKA could detect sources of radio transmissions that indicate the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe.

However, the SKA cannot proceed without the accomplishments of the MWA. In addition, the MWA will be operating in conjunction with the Aperture Array Verification System – an international SKA-Low prototype spearheaded by Curtin. According to Professor Peter Hall, Co-director of CIRA and Engineering Director at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, this will enable Curtin to deliver critical design review information for the SKA.

Curtin’s end-to-end capability is rare and valuable in the international SKA community, says Hall.

“We’ve pursued a carefully planned and successful path in low-frequency astronomy and engineering, marrying the development and operation of the MWA with science and technology trailblazing for the SKA-low.”

Radio astronomy T DB D Sustainable developmentT DB D

Big area. Big data.

Quadrupling of telescope area from 7 to 28km results in a quadrupling of data volume.

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28km

The Kimberley Development Commission is using Curtin’s iFutures service to evaluate the impacts and consequences different growth strategies in the region.

D evelopment of the Kimberley region in Western Australia is being assisted by a fast, powerful, web-delivered GIS and land use modelling tool and simulator, which underpins improved understanding of

alternative development scenarios in industry and resource use, land planning and human interaction.

Delivered as part of Curtin University’s iFutures service, the Kimberley Development Commission is using the software to demonstrate development scenarios at a range of key forums, and to set development targets and related indicators of progress of the key plans for the region, particularly the Blueprint development plan.

Chief Executive Kimberley Development Commission, Jeff Gooding, said the Commission’s expectations of the capability had been exceeded as it was progressively exposed to stakeholders and enhanced by their input.

“The Blueprint development plan is comprehensive and evidence-based, but requires key decision-makers in the region to consider alternative development futures and their attendant implications and trade-offs,” he says.

“For development of the Kimberley, impact simulation modelling and the systems-thinking approach that it relies upon, is a development ‘game changer’ for the region.”

The model currently produces a range of outputs including dynamic heat maps, which overlay a wide range of base mapping including recent satellite imagery that is not widely available, depicting changes in the landscape into the future. Similarly, for the other developmental criteria, the model analyses downstream infrastructure and services costs, and simulates future cost impacts across a wide range of user defined policy settings.

“Landscape, human and economic impacts are depicted and can be cumulatively shown over a time series out for 50 years. Complex scenarios and sensitivity analyses are calculated at computational speeds of just a few seconds due to the cloud-based methodology it uses. Elements can be readily and quickly modified to take account of stakeholder input and questions,” says Mr Gooding.

The capability will be progressively deployed as a support into key development projects such as the growth centre plans in Broome and Kununurra, and the identification of prospective new development opportunities in agriculture, aquaculture and tourism.

“The Commission can now bring the simulation-modelling tool into stakeholder planning sessions that are considering the range of alternative development trajectories,” says Mr Gooding. “Many of the lessons learned would be readily transferrable to other regions and development settings.”

By Anita Shore

Regional predictions

A data science research collaboration between academics and industry is boosting the productivity of Australian oil and gas operations in the North West Shelf region.

For Woodside, Australia’s most experienced LNG operator and largest independent oil and gas company, scheduling cargo delivery and off-take

operations of its vessel fleet is critical to business productivity.

The company operates eight offshore oil and gas facilities in the North West Shelf region of Western Australia, that all require regular visits by support vessels to deliver essential commodities and to assist with the transfer, or off-take, of oil to tankers.

To optimise scheduling of support vessels, Woodside’s Marine Division worked with Associate Professor Ryan Loxton, Dr Elham Mardaneh and Dr Qun Lin from Curtin’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

Their goal was to answer a specific question: At what times and in what sequence should the vessels visit each facility in order to minimise operating costs, and ensure all cargo delivery and off-take support requirements are completed?

“We developed customised mathematical models that consider key operational factors such as vessel speeds and capacities as well as facility cargo demands,” Loxton says.

“And there are many additional considerations, such as which vessels have the necessary equipment to assist with off-takes, restrictions on night-time loading and facility closing times.

“The large number of factors lead to large-scale models with millions of variables and constraints, so it’s impossible to manually construct the optimal schedule,” Loxton explains.

“Even the latest computers struggle to tackle big-data optimisation challenges of this size. We needed to create smart algorithms that utilise the structure and mathematical properties of the models.”

The team worked closely with Woodside’s engineers to ensure the models accurately reflected real-world conditions.

The outcome was not just the best vessel routes in each operating scenario, but also a business case for reducing the vessel fleet from four to three vessels, with a cost saving of around A$10 million per annum across the Woodside-operated North West Shelf facilities.

The team is now working on a scheduling tool for day-to-day decisions on vessel routes.

“This will help enable Woodside to update the vessel schedule quickly to respond to new circumstances such as cyclones or equipment break down,” Loxton says.

“From a broader research perspective, the project demonstrates the potential of exploiting advanced optimisation techniques for big-data challenges in the oil and gas industry.”

scieng.curtin.edu.au/science/mathematics-and-statistics

NOWR&D 15

Mathematics T DB D

By Karen Green

Winner of the Western Australian Early-Career Scientist of the Year Award in 2014, Associate Professor Ryan Loxton develops new mathematical techniques for solving real-world optimisation problems arising in industry, with the aim of determining strategies for maximum efficiency.

R U N N I N GA T I G H T

S H I POPTIMISING LNG VESSEL SCHEDULING

Named the Digital China Lab, the program is an initiative of Professor Michael Keane from Curtin’s Centre for Culture and Technology. An expert

in Chinese media policy and creative industries, Keane expects the Digital China Lab is expected to be a major centre for research into Chinese media and for facilitating Sino–Australian creative alliances.

The initiative is timely, with China on a mission to shed its manufacturing persona. The approach, Keane explains, is being driven by the country’s three big internet companies that are delivering innovations in big data, cloud computing and the internet of things.

“Influential Chinese media enterprises have convinced the government that it’s been slow to act on the capabilities of the internet, and to push Chinese business and culture out into the world.”

“The ‘Made in China’ model was successful for two generations, but they want to progress to a ‘Created in China’ era.

“Consequently, there’s been a policy shift, and the development of internet technologies in China is now revolutionising its manufacturing, agriculture and health sectors.”

Describing the change in mindset as ‘the uberisation’ of China, Keane says the Chinese government has begun sharing its economy with the global digital marketplace.

The aim is to drive mass entrepreneurship and by 2020 have China branded as an ‘innovative nation’. One initiative has been the creation of Hangzhou Science City as a centre of IT research and development.

“China has been developing in this area but the government has recognised the potential of e-commerce to boost the economy and created a national ‘Internet Plus’ (Internet +) strategy. It will enable China to expand its global reach.”

“Science City is a dream town for start-up businesses dealing with big data – 3D printing, film industries, games industries. However, business, policy and academic circles all over China are abuzz over the potential of Internet Plus.”

The Digital China Lab is the first Australian academic group to identify and explore the potential of this major cultural shift. Keane has also been approached by several Chinese universities interested in establishing a partnership ‘node’ in China.

“Curtin has considerable know-how in Chinese culture and business, which can assist Australian companies to engage in creative and communication industries in China,” Keane says.

The Digital China Lab initiative has in part developed from Keane’s current study, ‘Willing Collaborators: Negotiating Change in East Asian Media Production’, funded by the Australian Research Council.

ccat-lab.org/program/digital-china-lab

Culture and media

NOWR&D 17

Describing the change in mindset as ‘the uberisation’ of China, Keane says the Chinese government has begun sharing its economy with the global digital marketplace.

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By Karen Green

CURTIN RESPONDS TO ‘CREATED IN CHINA’

H

H

H

HHH

Traditional Chinese industries are emerging from their ‘Made in China’ model into the ‘Created in China’ generation.

A new program at Curtin will strengthen the relationship between China’s and Australia’s creative industries, as both

nations look to lessen their reliance on traditional industries.

Data mining in agriculture has the potential to be extremely big business. As Dr James Hane explains, the approach is leading researchers to a better understanding of crop protection.

D r James Hane, from the Centre for Crop and Disease Management, uses bioinformatics to analyse how fungal pathogens infect and adapt.

“Certain fungal genes produce proteins called effectors which suppress plant immunity, promote disease symptoms, and ultimately cause cell death,” explains Hane. “But if you can isolate the effector proteins, you can test them against a range of crop cultivars and rapidly determine whether they will be resistant or susceptible to the fungus.”

First, you need to identify the handful of effector genes among the several thousand genes encoded by a fungal genome. Whole-genome sequencing has massively sped up this process. In the mid-2000s it cost several million dollars to sequence a fungal genome, so only a few important species were sequenced – now it costs less than a thousand dollars.

“We’re moving from studying a single reference genome for a single species, to comparing hundreds of genomes of the same species. Comparative genomics can then pinpoint DNA regions with abnormal mutation levels. When the host crop is developing resistance, there’s pressure for the pathogen to evolve, so sites of higher variability between genomes may suggest that we’ve found an effector gene,” says Hane.

“We have also developed a range of other techniques that can sift through huge amounts of genome sequence data to quickly identify genes likely to cause plant disease.”

The aim is to fast-track effector gene information to molecular biologists for testing, and ultimately to growers, allowing informed decisions about which cultivars to grow to maximise disease resistance.

“We’re now extending our comparative genomics approach to comparing geographic regions. Spatially mapping the distribution of fungal strains, effectors and other useful data such as fungicide resistance, will allow growers to choose cultivars and fungicide applications tailored to their region, providing optimal resistance at the lowest cost.”

Professor Sam Spearing joined the Western Australian School of Mines as Deputy Director in September 2015 and has since been appointed Acting Director from the

beginning of 2016, on Steven Hall’s move to Mining Education Australia as the Executive Director. The school consists of the Departments of Applied Geology, Spatial Sciences, Exploration Geophysics, and Mining Engineering and Metallurgical Engineering.

Spearing comes from an eight-year appointment at the Department of Mining and Mineral Resources, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and brings with him more than 30 years industry experience. Rather than focusing on production, Spearing has built a reputation in project development and management, with a focus on mine and support design, rock mechanics, training and safety.

His research interests include ultra-deep mining methods, backfilling placement, monitoring seismicity and the development of mine support technologies. He holds several patents for the design of various steel props and rock bolts, most of which are in commercial use internationally.

The Western Australian School of Mines is transforming, with the refurbishment of the undergraduate metallurgical and mining laboratories, and development of a new library and student accommodation at the Kalgoorlie campus.

Spearing is focused on closing the gap between the two campuses to create a united school and improving the research synergies between the departments regardless of location.

The school is one of the few centres in the world to cover every aspect of mining resources, from finding a deposit to extracting the target material, processing it to a product and dealing with the waste created. Building closer ties with the Kalgoorlie community, alumni in industry and regional mines remains a key priority.

The connection to industry has always been crucial, both historically and for the future of the Western Australian School of Mines. Its reputation is built on well-rounded graduates who are not just job-ready, but genuinely mine and site-ready.

scieng.curtin.edu.au/wa-school-of-mines

Profile

NOWR&D 19

Professor Sam SpearingDirector Western Australian School of Mines

Bioinformatics

Fast-tracking

T DB D

The next step is to move beyond the isolated consideration of a single species at a time. Metagenomics studies DNA from all species present in an environmental sample – not just the pathogen of interest. Next-generation sequencing ‘reads’ millions of short DNA sequences in these mixed samples, making it possible to not just identify, but also measure relative abundances of microbial species present in agricultural soils or infected plant samples.

Metagenomic analysis across regions and seasons will allow Hane to map the changing distribution of pathogens, effectors and resistance, and identify patterns where species co-occur. This will help growers decide which cultivars to grow, which fungicides to apply (and when), and even which microbial populations may be worth introducing into their soils.

By Kitty Drok

In the mid-2000s it cost several million dollars to sequence a fungal genome, so only a few important species were sequenced – now it costs less than a thousand dollars.

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fungal disease resistance

NOWR&D 21

Health econometrics

When surveyed about sensitive topics such as sexual health or drug use, it’s understandable that some participants may provide unreliable answers, skewing survey results. Professor Mark Harris is using econometrics to address such misreporting.

Some datasets are objective, like recorded clinical incidences of diabetes. Others are compiled from self-assessed surveys, and the data is inherently subjective. Misreporting

is well known for such self-reported data: when comparing the difference between measured and self-reported height and weight, women tend to under-report their weight; and younger men over-report their height more than women the same age, for example.

More significantly, around 75 per cent of the Australian population self-assess their health as ‘good’ or ‘very good’. But clinically more objective measures of health find that 60 per cent of Australians are mildly overweight or obese, 50 per cent have elevated cholesterol, and almost 25 per cent have either diabetes or impaired glucose metabolism.

The propensity for misreporting and skewing datasets increases with sensitive topics such as sexual and mental health, or topics with social stigma such as smoking, alcohol and drug use.

Professor Mark Harris from Curtin Business School is using econometrics, the application of probabilistic models to describe real-world trends, to address misreporting in large health surveys.

When modelling social ‘bads’ such as illegal drug consumption, researchers often see an excessive amount of ‘zero’ (no consumption) observations. Harris uses statistical methods to assess survey participants’ individual reporting behaviour, gleaned from their answers to (superficially) unrelated, non-sensitive questions. He uses this information to calculate the likelihood that their zero answer genuinely represents non-participation, deliberate misrepresentation (lying about participation), or infrequent participation (those who have participated at other times or in other circumstances).

“You can calculate the different probabilities all leading to the same zero result, based on other survey variables,” explains Harris. “We can’t validate our analysis against hard data, but the confidence intervals around our results are very tight. We work with very large survey sets to ensure the results are statistically relevant.”

In the case of illegal drug use in Australia, the reported participation rates of 12.2, 3.2 and 1.3 percent for marijuana, speed and cocaine respectively, mask true participation rates estimated to be almost double for marijuana (23 per cent), and more than double for speed (eight percent) and cocaine (five per cent).

Harris is blunt about the bottom line: “It’s not sensible to look at these raw, self-reported aggregate numbers and assume they accurately represent what’s going on in the population. Even small differences in corrected percentages can translate into large numbers of people. Systematic misreporting has significant implications when this data is used as a basis for policymaking or health funding decisions.”

business.curtin.edu.au

Economical with the truthT DB D

Marijuana

Speed

Cocaine

REPORTED USE

REPORTED USE

REPORTED USE

EST TRUE PARTICIPATION

EST TRUE PARTICIPATION

EST TRUE PARTICIPATION

12.2% 23%

3.2% 8%

SELF-ASSESS THEIR HEALTH AS GOOD OR VERY GOOD

ARE MILDLY OVERWEIGHT OR OBESE

HAVE ELEVATED CHOLESTEROL

HAVE DIABETES OR IMPAIRED GLUCOSE METABOLISM

75% 60% 50% 25%

The propensity for misreporting and skewing datasets increases with sensitive topics such as sexual and mental health, or topics with social stigma such as smoking, alcohol and drug use.

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By Kitty Drok

Illegal drug use: the truth

Overstating our health

1.3% 5%

There is so much useful information out there, if only you know how to connect the dots. Dr Gavin Pereira, a perinatal epidemiologist, environmental health researcher

and biostatistician in Curtin’s School of Public Health, is using geospatial health analytics to identify correlations between environmental factors and health outcomes to better target medical interventions.

“Having a spatial connection between datasets allows us to link information that hasn’t been connected before,” explains Pereira. “There is so much data available: the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Health, hospital admission statistics, satellite imagery, web scraping and commercial datasets. Individual researchers are producing their own specialised datasets all the time too. There are so many different questions we can look at.”

Pereira’s investigations have ranged just as widely as the datasets he links. A current project is creating predictive models for particulate air pollution using satellite remote sensing, as a result of previously identifying a small correlation between air pollution and preterm birth.

“One of the big issues with air pollution and health outcomes is that the poorest people live in the most polluted areas,” notes Pereira. “But we still see this correlation in different countries, with different levels of air quality and socioeconomic disadvantage – it’s the most causal evidence we have so far.”

The true power of geospatial health analytics lies in providing information to target interventions and treatments. A recent study by Pereira and Curtin School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine Spatial Epidemiologist Dr Stephen Ball, investigated patterns in the incidence of preterm birth and small-for-gestational-age (SGA) babies across Western Australia from 1987 to 2006.

In this case, data was not only assessed spatially, but also temporally. As Pereira points out, “If the data clusters and a hotspot is identified, is it a big issue if it disappears again after a year or two?”

But Ball and Pereira showed overwhelmingly that there was a problem in the Kimberley, with hotspots persistent over time. Where the mean 20-year probability of preterm birth was 5.7 per cent and the mean probability of SGA was 5.1 per cent, areas in the Kimberley routinely had probabilities of 9 per cent or more for both outcomes.

“That’s a long period of time with no improvement,” says Pereira.

“We know about health disadvantage in the region from other studies on Indigenous health, but this study specifically highlights pregnancy outcomes. And preterm [birth] and SGA are known to increase the propensity for chronic disease later in life.”

Being able to identify consistent high-risk areas offers great potential to target interventions and treatments. The cost-benefit analysis is straightforward when a high-incidence population is targeted and can improve local outcomes, especially in the early stages of life.

“We shouldn’t restrict ourselves to cause and effect, but also look at correlation, intervention and prevention. Loosening our grip on the data can sometimes give us a much better question to answer. We may not be able to answer it perfectly or explain the ‘why’, but we can still use it to improve health outcomes.”

Geospatial health analytics

NOWR&D 23

T DB D

USING GEOSPATIAL DATA TO IDENTIF Y PATTERNS IN PRE-TERM BIRTH By Kitty Drok

5.7%

5.1%

9%

MEAN PROBABILITY OF PRETERM BIRTH

MEAN PROBABILITY OF SGA

OR MORE FOR BOTH OUTCOMES

Sometimes you don’t need to prove or imply causality – just showing that a correlation exists is enough to inform health interventions.

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In July 2015, Professor Rachel Huxley was appointed Curtin’s new Head of School of Public Health. Having trained at Oxford and with a research background in cardiovascular

epidemology, she was previously the Chair of Epidemiology, Head of the Research and Research Training Committee and Director of the Queensland Clinical Trials and Biostatistics Centre at the University of Queensland. She has also held positions at the University of Minnesota, the George Institute for Global Health and the University of Sydney.

1. You’ve shown a willingness to move to progress your research. What attracted you to Curtin?The opportunity, absolutely. I previously knew of the School of Public Health as an excellent place to receive an education and undertake training in various public health disciplines, and was impressed by the opportunities that the soon-to-open School of Medicine would provide. I was also really enthused by the fact that the Faculty of Health Sciences and the School of Public Health are on a clear upward trajectory in terms of research performance. Moving here was a great opportunity to shape the direction of the school and help create something special.

2. So what are the key issues for public health in Australia in the next 5–10 years?You always have to look at where the burden of disease is, and what the major causes of disease are. So things like cancer and cardiovascular disease are always going to be high on the list. Disease prevention and the development of efficacious and cost-effective interventions will continue to be important. The school is very well placed to do this because of its recognised expertise in areas including clinical trials, occupational health, nutritional science, dietetics, health promotion and health economics. We have a strong platform to address all of the parts of the puzzle.

3. Are there any areas of expertise the school needs to build on to address future challenges?Clinical trials, data informatics and health economics, and health systems research. Our healthcare expenditure is going through the roof, with increasing treatment costs, availability of new treatments and drugs, and an ageing population. We really need solid evidence about both the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of treatments. That evidence base just doesn’t exist for about half of the treatments used in clinical practice. We need to strengthen that capability.

4. We’ve recently seen several high-profile academics come to Curtin from the University of Queensland. You can’t all just be in search of sunshine and beaches?The Vice-Chancellor had a very strong reputation in leadership at the University of Queensland, and I’ll admit having her here was a big drawcard. And I’m looking forward to meeting with the new Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research soon.

Curtin’s upwards trajectory in Health Sciences is attracting a lot of high-calibre people. And it’s a fantastic place to work. Without exception the staff in my school are committed to providing the best learning experience to our students as well as undertaking important research that has the potential to have a beneficial impact on many people’s lives.

5. Curtin’s new Medical School will open in 2017. How will this impact on the School of Public Health?It’s very hard to have a leading School of Public Health without an affiliation with a strong medical school. We have the opportunity to create something unique here, with huge synergies between the schools. I’m working very closely with Curtin Medical School’s foundation Dean, Professor William Hart, to help the developing medical research align with what is already happening at Curtin across the Health Sciences.

healthsciences.curtin.edu.au/schools-and-departments/ public-health

INSTITUTES AND CENTRES UNIVERSITY RESEARCH INSTITUTESAustralia–Asia-Pacific InstituteCurtin Health Innovation Research Institute – BiosciencesCurtin Institute for ComputationCurtin Institute of Radio AstronomyCurtin University Sustainability Policy InstituteFuels and Energy Technology InstituteNanochemistry Research InstituteNational Drug Research InstituteThe Institute for Geoscience Research

UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CENTRESCentre for Culture and TechnologyCentre for Infrastructure Monitoring and ProtectionCentre for Population Health ResearchCentre for Research in Applied EconomicsCentre for Smart Grid and Sustainable Power SystemsJohn Curtin Institute of Public Policy

EXTERNAL COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH CENTRESAustralasian Joint Research Centre for Building Information ModellingAustralia–China Joint Research Centre for EnergyAustralia–China Joint Research Centre for Tectonics and ResourcesBankwest Curtin Economics CentreCentre for Crop and Disease ManagementCentre for Marine Science and TechnologyCentre for Sport and Recreation ResearchCisco Internet of Everything Innovation Centre Curtin Corrosion Engineering Industry CentreCurtin Water Quality Research CentreCurtin–Monash Accident Research CentreNational Centre for Student Equity in Higher EducationSino–Australian Joint Research Centre for Ocean Engineering

Public health

with PROFESSOR RACHEL HUXLEY

Q&A

CENTRES OF EXCELLENCEARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky AstrophysicsARC Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid SystemsCentre of Excellence for Science, Seafood and Health

MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH CENTRESAustralian Housing and Urban Research InstituteCentre for Data LinkageCentre for Exploration TargetingCentre for Microscopy Characterisation and AnalysisCRC Mining International Centre for Radio Astronomy ResearchJohn de Laeter CentrePawsey Supercomputing CentrePlanning and Transport Research CentreSustainable Built Environment National Research CentreWestern Australian Biodiversity Science InstituteWestern Australian Energy Research AllianceWestern Australian Marine Science InstituteWestern Australian Satellite Technology and Applications Consortium

COOPERATIVE RESEARCH CENTRESAntarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research CentreAustralian Seafood CRCCRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the EnvironmentCRC for Greenhouse Gas TechnologiesCRC for Infrastructure Engineering and Asset ManagementCRC for Living with AutismCRC for Remote Economic ParticipationCRC for Spatial InformationCRC MiningDeep Exploration Technologies CRCLow Carbon Living CRCLowitja InstituteWound Management Innovation CRCYoung and Well CRC

research.curtin.edu.au/about/institutes-centres

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