Monash University > e-Research > Showcase

Research Showcase

We are working to apply e-Research techniques and services to key research groups across many disciplines at Monash.

Art & Design

Artery Project, Matthew John Perkins, Department of Multimedia and Digital Arts.
This project is founded upon the work conducted in a 2006/2007 pilot project called the "Australian Video Art Archive" (AVAA) Project, and seeks to use e-Research tools to distribute information via an online video documentary databank.

Arts

	Asian music cultural archive, Prof. Margaret Kartomi and Bronia Kornhauser, School of Music Sound Footings is an ARC LIEF funded project in collaboration with the University of Western Australia and the National Library of Australia to digitize and preserve field recordings collected from South East Asia, in particular Sumatra and Aceh. The digitised collection is accessible on-line to the research group via LaRDS, and subject to copyright constraints is being published via the Monash ARROW repository and MusicAustralia.
	Climate and meteorology of Earth's polar regions, Prof. Amanda Lynch and Dr Petteri Uotila, School of Geography and Environmental Science. This project currently explores small (less than 2000km across) cyclones over the Southern Ocean, which represents an important element in the global circulations of heat and moisture, and therefore the maintenance of Southern Hemisphere climate. The primary objectives of this project are to advance the understanding of atmospheric processes responsible for the development and decay of small Southern Ocean cyclones, and to explore the interactions between these cyclones and the underlying surface conditions, including sea ice extent, thickness, concentration, motion and temperature.
	Geographic Information Systems, A. Prof. Jim Peterson, School of Geography & Environmental Science.
	Gippsland Picture Collection , Dr Meredith Fletcher, Centre for Gippsland Studies. The photographs of the Gippsland Picture Collection, which capture the history and heritage of Gippsland from the early 1900s, are a hallmark of the Monash Centre for Gippsland Studies. They have been well used to date by scholars and historians in print format and their new availability on-line through the Monash ARROW repository and PictureAustralia has been welcomed as a crucial step for increased use and improved accessibility.
	Integrating Ecosystem Modelling and Observational Research Using Ecoinformatics Project, Dr. Jason Beringer, School of Geography and Environmental Science.
	Japanese Studies, A. Prof. Alison Tokita, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. The Japanese Studies research team includes collaborators that span Monash, the University of New England and Japan. The project utlises the Sakai VRE as a general purpose collaboration and file-sharing environment.
	Jewish music cultural archive, Prof. Margaret Kartomi and Bronia Kornhauser, School of Music. Preserving Australia’s Sound Heritage (PASH) is an ARC LIEF funded project in collaboration with the University of Western Australia and the National Library of Australia to digitize and preserve the Australian Archive of Jewish Music, comprising works collected from Australia and Asia. The digitized collection is accessible on-line to the research group via LaRDS, and subject to copyright constraints is being published via the Monash ARROW repository and MusicAustralia.
	Shoah Foundation - Visual History Archive, A. Prof. Mark Baker, Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization. The Shoah Foundation Institute collection of nearly 52,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, in 32 languages and from 56 countries, comprises the largest visual history archive in the world. At Monash, we have established on LaRDS a local copy of approximately 10TB of this collection, comprising all interviews recorded in Australia, plus others of interest to Monash researchers and students.

Business & Economics

General Equilibrium Modelling Software (GEMPACK), Prof. Mark Horridge, Centre of Policy Studies.
GEMPACK is a suite of general-purpose economic modellilng software especially suitable for general and partial equilibrium models and can handle a wide range of economic behaviour.

Education

Indigenous studies cultural archive, David Solly

Engineering

	Bioreactor, Prof. Kerry Hourigan, Biological Engineering
	Computational Fluid Dynamics, Prof. John Sheridan, Mechanical Engineering
	Virtual Modelling of Cell and Tissue Growth in Bioreactors, Prof. Mark Thompson, Department of Mechanical Engineering. This project will explore the ways in which recent advancements in computer based modelling can be extended and allow researchers to analyse the molecular and biochemical regulators which form the building blocks of cells and tissues.
	Wind tunnel imaging, Andreas Fouras, Mechanical Engineering

Information Technology

	A Bioinformatic Approach to Infer Functional Interactions Within Protein Sequences Project, Prof. Geoff Webb. This project will develop and evaluate novel computational techniques to infer functional interactions between amino acids within proteins, and will be assisted by the Monash e-Research Centre which will assist by helping researchers to develop efficient computational techniques for identifying the appropriate subtle patterns in large datasets.
	Ant Colony Optimisation , Dhananjay Thiruvady, Clayton School of Information Technology. This project explores the estimation of distribution algorithms, constraint programming and branch and bound techniques (beam search) for combinatorial optimisation problems. the Monash Sun Grid and the east enterprise grid. By utilising the computational power of Monash's Monash Sun Grid and East Enterprise Grid HPC infrastructure, the researchers involved with this project are able to conduct large numbers of experiments effectively, and with considerable speed.
	Participatory Community e-Research: User Needs, A. Prof. Graeme Johanson, Caulfield School of Information Technology. The project will build on existing work undertaken by staff from COSI (Centre for Organisational and Social Informatics) and Monash University, in particular three Content and Rights work packages of the Dataset Acquisition, Accessibility, and Annotations e-Research Technologies (DART) project, and the ARC ‘Trust and Technology’ Project which raised important questions about who controls community e-Research repositories.

Law

Researcher practice - research data management.
A whole-of-faculty project to migrate all research information, from raw data and working drafts through to final works, results and records, from individuals' PC c:\ drives and bookshelves to the LaRDS Novell service.

Medicine

	Australian Mouse Brain Map, Prof. David Reutens and Dr Richard Beare, Department of Medicine
	Bioinformatics in Protein Crystallography, Steve Androulakis and Dr Ashley Buckle, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology This project uses bioinformatics to assist in protein crystal structure determination, by comparing new structures against the entire Protein Data Bank library, which comprises over 70,000 structures. To do this, the research team uses the Nimrod parametric sweep job dispatcher to run CPU-intensive, embarrassingly-parallel molecular replacement operations using the Phaser software tool running on grid HPC resources including Brecca.
	Crystallography, Prof. Jamie Rossjohn, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
	Methods and Ethics in Public Health e-Research, Craig Fry, School of Primary Healthcare. This project aims to develop research ethics and governance resources to support development and application at Monash University of public health e-Research with vulnerable populations, and establish research to address the methodological questions in public health e-Research around sampling biases and data reliability and validity.
	Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Cyril Reboul, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology This project uses molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the mechanistic molecular details of GAD, an essential enzyme involved in the production of a major neurotransmitter inhibitor. The research team uses the Brecca HPC to perform the MD simulations which are computationally intensive and can only be run on large scale parallel computer clusters.
	Molecular Replacement, Jason Schmidberger and Dr. Ashley Buckle, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. One of the major challenges for Protein Crystallographers is to solve the ‘Phase Problem’ for the diffraction data that they collect from their protein crystals, thereby solving their three dimensional structures. A very useful and common method of doing this is Molecular Replacement (MR), where a homologous protein’s structure is used as a ‘starting point’ in the structure determination process.
	Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories (MISCL)
	Novel Web-based Software Tools for Protein Structure Determination Using X-ray Crystallography, Dr Ashley Buckle, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. This project aims to develop software applications for subsequent computational stages, namely structure elucidation using the technique of molecular replacement and, by using Web 2.0 technologies, integrate these applications into a portal, providing users with a dynamic, collaborative, configurable workspace that will provide novel means of performing crystallographic research.
	Predicting the Substrate Specificity of Proteases, Prof. James Whisstock, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. This project will investigate whether the protease structures in an effort to determine whether or not such structures can improves researchers' abilities to predict substrate specificity.
	Victorian Bioinformatics Consortium, Prof. Ross Coppel, Department of Microbiology

Pharmacy

	Chemistry Literate Electronic Data Management in Drug Discovery, Dr Philip Thompson. This project aims to develop chemical-structure literate data management systems that offer a chemical inventory of over 5000 stored chemicals, conduct a trial of Electronic notebooks for participating research staff and students, and look into the development of secure databases for high value chemicals synthesised in-house and linked to biologically literate data management systems.
	Electronic Laboratory Notebook Project, A. Prof. Susan Charman. This project aims to support a pilot project to examine the utility of a data management system and selected eNotebook for use within certain departments within Monash, assess the feasibility and challenges associated with its implementation and determine its applicability to other related groups within the faculty. The e-Research Centre has provided minigrant funding to support this activity, and ITS has provided the database platform for the eNotebook using LaRDS.
	Medicinal Chemistry, Dr David Chalmers, Medicinal Chemistry.

Science

	Biological Sciences, Prof. Gordon Sanson, School of Biological Sciences
	Biological Sciences, Dr Patrick Baker, School of Biological Sciences
	Latin Squares, Dr Ian Wanless and Judith Egan, School of Mathematical Sciences. This project aims to develop the theory on important substructures of 'latin squares'. Latin squares play an important role in pure mathematics and have many applications in the areas of combinatorial design, such as event programme scheduling, statistical experiments and error correcting codes. The research team uses distributed computing, including the Monash Sun Grid, Monash Green SPONGE and Brecca HPC facilities, as an investigative tool to find patterns which can then by turned into mathematical theorems by humans.
	Mathematics, Louis Moresi, Mathematics