SCU research funded by ARC

Southern Cross University (SCU) has received $1.21 million in funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC). This follows Minister for Education Christopher Pyne’s announcement that the council will provide $522 million to fund 1177 research projects around Australia.

“If Australia is continue to produce groundbreaking research outcomes, ‘eureka’ moments and Nobel Laureates, then a strong investment in research is needed,” Pyne said.

SCU has received its funding through the ARC’s Discovery Projects, Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities scheme and the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award scheme.

Associate Professor Isaac Santos, from the university’s Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry Research, has been awarded $395,220 over three years for a project investigating carbon pathways in mangroves using a combination of new experimental approaches.

“Currently we know how much carbon is being absorbed by the mangrove trees, but we don’t know how much is subsequently lost to the ocean and how it may occur,” Professor Santos said.

“We are testing a hypothesis that the carbon is going to the soil of mangroves, into the groundwater via crab burrows and then seeps into the ocean. We suspect that the magnitude of this process is comparable to carbon uptake by mangrove trees.”

Professor Santos is also leading a project to develop a new gamma spectrometry facility, which can perform high-precision radionuclide measurements to resolve complex environmental processes such as sediment accumulation, soil erosion and marine carbon scavenging. This project has received $155,000.

Several researchers at Southern Cross GeoScience have also benefited from the funding. Associate Professor Ed Burton is leading a project which aims to provide new perspectives on arsenic geochemistry in anoxic soils, sediments and groundwater systems. He has received $210,000 over three years.

Dr Renaud Joannes-Boyau is the lead investigator on a project which will enable the reliable direct dating of key modern human fossils. Aimed at helping to understand modern human expansion - critical for developing and testing evolutionary hypothesis - the project has received funding of $121,059.

“The newly developed direct dating technique applied to human fossil is virtually non-destructive and allows for the first time to establish a reliable and consistent chronology of modern human occurrences throughout Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia,” Dr Joannes-Boyau said.

Finally, Associate Professor Andrew Rose is leading a team of researchers who have received $330,000 to develop a state-of-the-art facility for determining particle size, concentration and surface properties for a wide range of environmentally occurring particles in rapid succession.

Pyne said, “The Coalition government is committed to enabling our researchers to investigate, explore and discover and to deliver outcomes that benefit the nation.”

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