Biotechnology boost for Queensland in ARC Special Research Centres round

Biotechnology boost for Queensland in ARC Special Research Centres round

The University of Queensland will share in more than $7 million funding for Special Research Centres in the Australian Research Council's 2000 grants round.

The University has also topped the nation in the ARC's Research Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities (RIEF) scheme with seven grants valued at $2.77 million.

Vice-Chancellor Professor John Hay said the University of Queensland had achieved "fantastic success" in the Special Research Centres round and the RIEF scheme and congratulated University researchers on their awards.

"Both schemes vindicate the University's strategic directions in such areas as biotechnology, state-of the-art computation and international leadership in aerospace research," he said .

"The Special Research Centre in Functional and Applied Genomics will further boost the research capabilities of the $100 million Institute for Molecular Bioscience to be built at the University next year."

The University of Queensland is the sole institution involved in the SRC for Functional and Applied Genomics. (Genomics is the study of the total genetic content of living organisms).

Funding of $3.6 million has been confirmed for the genomics centre for the first three years of its nine-year term. The Centre will bring together researchers from existing research centres to create an integrated environment for computational biology, gene discovery, functional analysis, structural biology and biological chemistry.

The Centre will aim to understand the complexity of vertebrate biology and will use this knowledge to develop new industries

The second Special Research Centre in which the University will join is the $3.48 million SRC for Quantum Computer Technology, which could position Australia internationally in the development of the next great leap forward in computation, the quantum computer.

The Centre, which is headed by the University of New South Wales, also has as its partners the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne. It will focus on the fundamental physics and technology of building at the atomic level a revolutionary prototype solid state quantum computer in silicon.

Quantum computers, by exploiting properties of quantum information, make many attempts to solve hard problems at the same time, speeding up the process considerably.

They will allow scientists to do calculations within a matter of seconds which now take weeks to achieve.

Overall ARC results showed that the Big Four universities (Melbourne, Sydney, UNSW and Queensland) continued to dominate all schemes.

Other major Australian Research Council schemes in which The University of Queensland were successful included:

o UQ was awarded 28 new grants valued at $1.3 million in the Strategic Partnerships with Industry - Research and Training (SPIRT) scheme (3rd nationally) with total funding over three years of $3.7 million;
o 48 new grants valued at $2.5 million in the ARC large grants scheme (4th nationally) with total funding over three years of $7.2 million;
o $2.365 million in the ARC small grants scheme (4th ranking).
o One ARC Senior Research Fellowship to Professor David Craik, five Australian
Research Fellowships/Queen Elizabeth II Fellowships/Australian Postdoctoral Research Fellowships and five reserve fellowships.
o 30 International Postgraduate Research Scholarships (2nd national ranking);
o 142 awards in the Australian Postgraduate Awards scheme (3rd national ranking);

Further information: Ms Nicky Milsom, Office of UQ Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) 07 3365 4445.