Researchers from UQ’s Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences have netted more than $1 million in Australian Research Council (ARC) funding.
The Faculty was successful in applications for three projects in the latest round of Linkage Project grants, which aim to promote national and international partnerships between researchers and business, industry and community organisations and other publicly funded research agencies.
$260,000 to Associate Professor Genevieve Dingle, Professor Catharine Haslam, Professor Jolanda Jetten and Professor Alex Haslam: A community-based social identity approach to loneliness.
Loneliness across Australia is a deep concern. Social prescribing is a novel community-based approach to managing it, however it is unclear when and in what circumstances it is effective. This project aims to test a social identity approach to loneliness, incorporating longitudinal, cross-sectional, and experimental methods to understand how best to engage isolated peoples in group programs. The expected benefits are to produce a validated social prescribing model that can be implemented in multiple settings across Australia in order to reduce loneliness, strengthen communities, and guide more appropriate uses of health services.
School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences
$420,000 to Associate Professor Guy Wallis: The sensory prerequisites of effective simulator-based aviation learning.
This project aims to investigate the use of head-mounted virtual reality systems for training, with specific focus on the aviation industry. The project expects to improve our understanding of how pilots combine information from their sensory systems in order to successfully operate an aircraft. Expected outcomes include methods for specifying the optimal design of simulators intended to prepare pilots for a specific task, with the ultimate goal of developing and validating a prototype training device. The project aims to benefit many areas of pilot training by improving the design and optimising the cost of simulator technologies at a time when the aviation industry is struggling to meet the global demand for new pilots.
Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences
$362,000 to Dr Sarit Kaserzon: Passive sampling of aquatic pollutants of emerging concern.
Clean water is predicted to become the world’s most valuable asset during this century, necessitating the improved monitoring of Australia’s limited water resources. Using a new and integrated monitoring approach, this project expects to develop and implement novel passive sampling techniques to monitor a large range of water pollutants, specifically toxic ionised organic chemicals of emerging concern. Outcomes will create cost-effective tools to advance the detection of emerging chemicals in drinking, ground, surface and waste waters.
Media: Jo Hickman, UQ Communications, jo.hickman@uq.edu.au, +61 7 3346 3037.
