Research

What Tasmania’s Pencil Pine teaches us about bushfire management.

2025 Research Spotlight, Archaeology and Geoscience, Archaeology and Geosciences, Environmental Science, PGRA /

By Georgia Barrington-Smith Anthropomorphic climate change is weakening the resilience of globally significant forests by altering their temperature and aridity. Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA) is particularly at risk, with longer, more intense bushfire seasons threatening this sensitive ecosystem. Amid ongoing climatic stress and ecological decline, important questions are emerging around the ability of […]

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Historical holes: Beneath the surface, caves hold the key to Australia’s wildfire history

2025 Research Spotlight, Archaeology and Geosciences, ECRG, Research /

By Georgia Barrington-Smith & Dr Rebecca Duncan Anthropogenic-driven climate change has extended the duration of Australia’s annual fire seasons, wreaking havoc on agricultural crops, wildlife, and homes. The 2019-2020 bushfires, which scorched over seventeen million hectares and claimed the lives of over one billion animals, provide a stark example of this growing crisis. Satellite observations

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Beyond Conventional X-rays: Recovering Multimodal Signals with an Intrinsic Speckle-Tracking Approach

2025 Research Spotlight, Biotechnology and Biomedical Science, PGRA /

By Georgia Barrington-Smith & Dr Rebecca Duncan For decades, conventional X-rays have been invaluable in clinical settings, enabling doctors and radiographers to gain critical insights into patients’ health. While traditional X-rays are still widely used, they are limited in the depth of information they can provide. New, advanced multimodal techniques, like phase-shift and dark-field imaging,

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The battle between plant immunity and fungal infections: A microscopic arms race.

2025 Research Spotlight, Biotechnology and Biomedical Science, PGRA, Research /

By Georgia Barrington-Smith & Dr Rebecca Duncan The agricultural industry is constantly under threat from fungal pathogens that infect important plant crops like tomatoes, bananas, and cotton. In response, plants have developed new defence mechanisms, fuelling an ongoing arms race against these invaders as they, in turn, develop new ways to circumvent these defences. How

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Fight against the fungus: Understanding the relationship between fungal pathogens and plant infection.

2025 Research Spotlight, Biotechnology and Biomedical Science, PGRA, Research /

By Georgia Barrington-Smith & Dr Rebecca Duncan Ensuring our ongoing food availability in the face of a rising global population is a critical challenge. Infectious plant diseases pose a significant threat to our agricultural food production, costing the global economy around $220 billion USD each year. One particularly destructive disease is ‘blast disease’, which targets

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Will the rivers run dry?

2025 Research Spotlight, Archaeology and Geoscience, Environmental Science, PGRA, Uncategorized /

Understanding how decreasing rainfall is impacting river regions in South-Western Australia. By Georgia Barrington-Smith & Dr Rebecca Duncan Global rainfall patterns are changing, leading to dryer conditions in numerous biodiversity hotspots. Rivers in the Southern Hemisphere are particularly sensitive to these climate-induced changes. To mitigate biodiversity loss and manage our precious water resources, we need

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Cosmic clocks in Antarctic rocks: Forecasting future sea-levels by understanding the response of Byrd Glacier, East Antarctica, to climate change.

2024 Research Spotlight, Pathway, Research, Research Spotlight /

By Georgia Barrington-Smith & Dr Rebecca Duncan The Antarctic ice sheet holds 61% of all the fresh water on Earth. How this ice sheet is responding to climate warming remains the biggest source of uncertainty in determining future global sea levels. Interpreting clues from the past ice margins is critical to understanding the future, and

Cosmic clocks in Antarctic rocks: Forecasting future sea-levels by understanding the response of Byrd Glacier, East Antarctica, to climate change. Read More »

Beneath the Ice: Climate change is impacting the building blocks of polar marine food webs

2024, 2024 Research Spotlight, Environmental Science /

By Rebecca Duncan & Georgia Barrington-Smith The polar food web at risk from shrinking sea ice Standing on the frozen ocean, it’s hard to imagine life thriving in such a harsh environment. Yet, on the underside of the ice lies a bustling world: a community of sea ice algae and tiny animals called zooplankton. These

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Research spotlight: Caleb Stamper (Wollongong University)

2024, Materials Science and Engineering, PGRA, Research, Research Spotlight /

Improving energy materials by understanding heat flow on the atomic scale By Georgia Barrington-Smith & Dr Rebecca Duncan With advancements in technology and increases in population leading to a looming energy crisis, it is vital to optimise energy use to meet our future needs. One of the major issues in energy generation is the production

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Tiny solutions to a big problem: Targeted delivery of anti-cancer drugs using pH-responsive nanoparticles

2024 Research Spotlight, Biotechnology and Biomedical Science, PGRA, Research, Research Spotlight /

By Georgia Barrington-Smith & Dr Rebecca Duncan Cancer continues to be one of the leading causes of death worldwide, claiming the lives of millions of people each year. One of the first-line treatments of cancer is chemotherapy: powerful drugs that attack cancer cells and prevent their spread. Historically, the main drawback of chemotherapy drugs has

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