The Australian Research Council acknowledges the Traditional Owners and custodians of Country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to them, their cultures and Elders past, present and future. Please note: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this publication may contain names and images of deceased persons. The ARC is also responsible for administering the Engagement and Impact (EI) assessment. EI assesses the engagement of researchers with research end-users and shows how universities are translating their research into economic, social, environmental, cultural and other impacts. Assessments are made by expert panels of researchers and research end-users using narrative studies and supporting quantitative indicators. THE AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL The Australian Research Council (ARC) is a non-corporate Commonwealth entity within the Australian Government. The ARC’s purpose is to grow knowledge and innovation for the benefit of the Australian community through funding the highest quality research, assessing the quality, engagement and impact of research and providing advice on research matters. The ARC funds research and researchers under the National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP). The NCGP consists of two elements—Discovery and Linkage. Within these elements are a range of schemes structured to provide a pathway of incentives for researchers to build the scope and scale of their work and collaborative partnerships. The majority of funding decisions under the NCGP are made on the basis of peer review. The ARC evaluates the quality of Australian university research through the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) program. ERA is an evaluation framework that identifies research excellence in Australian universities by comparing Australia’s research effort against international benchmarks. ERA assesses quality using a combination of indicators and expert review by research evaluation committees.
A MESSAGE FROM OUR CEO
Welcome to the third edition of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Making a Difference publication, featuring a snapshot of ARC-supported research projects that have delivered notable outcomes in 2018–19. Anyone with a natural curiosity will find the diverse research stories in this publication to be fascinating—from bull ant venom pain remedies, to a performance-based research laboratory staged at sites across the Kimberley, to a blast simulator that will test the frontiers of explosives protection—and it is with great pleasure that we share them with you. The ARC proudly supports some of the world’s greatest fundamental and applied research, and we take care in this publication to feature a sample drawn from a wide range of universities, and across a wide range of disciplines. This includes research that is pure ‘blue-sky’ knowledge creation, as well as industry-ready commercial outcomes, and a spectrum of projects that are conducted by early career researchers, through to some of Australia’s most well-known research leaders. The ARC is unique in Australia for its support of such research diversity. Australia’s innovative strength is well known overseas, and this strength is underpinned by the excellence that is found across all research disciplines and in
universities all around the country—as we know, from measuring Australian research against world-standard benchmarks in our State of Australian University Research 2018–19: ERA National Report . The impact of this research on the lives of ordinary Australians is also significant, as is illustrated in so many more stories also available to explore, drawn from our inaugural 2018 Engagement and Impact Assessment. The Australian research sector is a wonderful community to support, with new incredible stories of innovation and discovery year on year. Our lives and culture are much richer for the work of our research community, and I thank them for what they give back to us all.
ISSN (Print) 2209-6000 ISSN (Online) 2209-7414 Published: July 2019 © Commonwealth of Australia 2019
All material presented in this publication is provided under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence www.creativecommons.org > Licenses > by-nc-nd/4.0 with the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, the Australian Research Council (ARC) logo, images, signatures and where otherwise stated. The details of the relevant licence conditions are available on the Creative Commons website as is the full legal code for the CC Attribution BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence www.creativecommons.org > licenses > by-nc-nd 4.0 legal code. Requests and enquiries regarding this licence should be addressed to ARC Legal Services on +61 2 6287 6600. Front cover image: A scene from Cut The Sky. Image courtesy: Rob Maccoll. See story ‘Listening to Country’; page 43. Inside cover image: Stock image—Golden hour in the bush. Image courtesy: iStock.com/shells1. Back cover image: Post-fire Warrumbungle NP in 2013. Image courtesy: Fritz Geiser. See story ‘The burning question—the effect of torpor on mammals during and after bushfires’; page 45.
Professor Sue Thomas Chief Executive Officer Australian Research Council
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