More than 1200 new projects funded in latest ARC round

A total of 1252 new projects are to receive Australian Research Council (ARC) funding, totalling $289.5 million over the next three years, it was announced today.

Education, Science and Training Minister Dr Brendan Nelson told a briefing in Sydney that increased funding across the spectrum was a result of the Federal government's Backing Australia's Ability initiative.

"This is a big day for research," Nelson said, "but as a lay person and the minister, on behalf of the 19 million Australians who can't be here today, it's actually a more important day for us -- every one of these research projects has the potential to change every single one of us."

Nelson said all Australians had "an intense and personal stake" in determining future directions for research. "If we are too prescriptive, we have the potential to do enormous damage," he said. "But if we look at the things we're good at, and want to be good at, then there is enormous potential," he said.

"As difficult as science is, much more important is that we understand the science."

Biotechnology-related projects figure highly in the grants -- one of the biggest grants, of $1.22 million over the next five years, is to Prof Gottfried Otting's group at the Australian National University, which is developing new applications for nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in conjunction with other schemes to identify and characterise protein-ligand interactions more quickly and accurately.

Dr Vicki Keast, of Sydney University's electron microscopy unit, was awarded a total of $337,000 over the next three years to continue her work in mapping electronic structure and material properties with atomic resolution.

Keast said she had recently returned to Australia and begun a lectureship at Sydney, after completing her PhD in the US and postdoctoral work in the UK.

"This is a dream come true for me," she said. "I wanted to come home and be a part of the Australian scientific community. To be a success, and on a par with the rest of the world, is going to take some money. [Now that I have the grant] it's back up to me to make a success of it."

Another grantee is the University of Technology, Sydney, which will receive $180,000 over the next three years to develop vehicle-based advance warning devices for driver fatigue in partnership with Melbourne company Compumedics.

Prof Vicki Sara, the ARC's chief executive, said the ARC had two key objectives when determining grants -- discovery and partnerships. She said that through Backing Australia's Ability, the government had shown that it was getting behind Australian research.

Complete information on all the grants is available at www.arc.gov.au.