The University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney topped the nation by receiving funding for the most university research projects through the latest round of the Australian Research Council (ARC) funding.
According to a recent report, the University will be receiving A$ 45 million for its 114 projects that span climate change and coastal ecosystems, genome editing, cyber-attacks and low-cost technology.
For the third year running, UNSW received more Discovery Project grants than any other institution in the country, receiving 88 in this year’s announcement worth A$ 34.9 million.
With this distinction, the University’s researchers have been recognised again as being at the very top of their game.
This also highlights their exceptional contribution to tackling some of society’s biggest challenges in order to achieve relevant outcomes for Australia and the world.
Among the projects chosen to receive funding are:
- Provable elimination of information leakage through timing channels with A$ 660,000.
The project will develop techniques to solve the issue in information security of unauthorised information flow resulting from competition for shared hardware resources.
It will combine operating systems design, formal hardware models, and information-flow reasoning to create a system that prevents leakage of information, such as encryption keys.
This should prevent sophisticated attacks on public clouds, mobile devices and military-grade cross-domain devices.
- Design automation for secure, reliable and energy efficient embedded processors with A$ 490,000.
This project seeks to create a methodology to design and generate processors which are both secure, reliable and energy efficient for deployment in Internet of Things (IoT) systems, which require little on-going maintenance.
It will use an open RISC-V processor which is sufficiently flexible to function as a base processor, with a myriad of tools such as compilers and debuggers available.
Reliable computing machinery will enable systems to work in hostile environments and be functionally correct for longer.
- Energy big data analytics from a cybersecurity perspective with A$ 385,000.
This project aims to develop a framework on energy big data analytics from security and privacy perspectives.
Energy big data analytics involve research challenges on how to cope with real-time tight cyber-physical couplings, and security/safety of the smart grid system.
It will develop advanced data-driven algorithms that are capable of detecting coordinated cyber-attacks that will potentially lead to catastrophic cascaded failures.
Moreover, it will develop new solutions in detecting the false data-injection attacks that are conventionally considered as unobservable.
- Digital nomadism: How IT enables new forms of working and organising with A$ 390,000.
This project aims to gain a better understanding of digital nomadism. Digital nomads use IT platforms to work remotely over the Internet while perpetually travelling.
It will develop new knowledge by better understanding of how IT transforms work and enable digital nomadism.
This will also involve the motivations and values of workers and their clients/organisations engaged in digital nomadism as well as the implications and consequences of digital nomadism for workers and clients/organisations.
More information and the full list of recipients can be found here.
The ARC is a Commonwealth entity within the Australian Government and was established as an independent body under the Australian Research Council Act 2001.
Its 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.
