Research news

Thanks to those who’ve congratulated me on my recent appointment to the role of Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, which I’m already enjoying tremendously. I’ve already found the responsibilities this additional role provides – leading the growth of our academic culture and capacity, and shaping implementation of our institutional strategy – perfectly feed my passion for research and lifelong learning.

Enjoy your reading – as you’ll see from the variety of stories, we have some amazing things going on at Southern Cross University!

Best wishes, Mary

To make something brilliant, we need high-level technical expertise alongside lived experience from people in the Lismore CBD and its surrounding neighbourhoods – and Look Ahead is a series of community and expert meetings designed to kickstart this process.

Living Lab Northern Rivers’s job is to ensure the designers, planners, engineers and architects driving this project are deeply informed by the ideas, dreams and values of everyone across our community who wants to participate in Look Ahead.

You can join one of the community meetings at the Lismore City Bowling Club at the following times:

Thursday 15 February – 4:30-7:00pm

Saturday 17 February – 2:00-4:30pm

Register here to attend, but please note that participants should attend one meeting only.

You can find out more from the Living Lab Northern Rivers website.

Running through to Autumn 2024, Bring it on home is on:

When:    1:00-4:00pm, Tuesday-Thursday weekly

Where:   Living Lab Northern Rivers shopfront

              11 Woodlark Street, Lismore

If you can’t get to the shopfront (or can’t wait until you can!) – you can download the Bring it on home exhibition here.

Here’s the first in a series of Q & A chats with our Cluster Leads, featuring Professor Damien Maher, who heads the Catchments, Coasts and Communities Cluster. Take it away, Damien!

With a lifelong interest in science and the environment, Professor Damien Maher’s research has specialised in nutrient cycling within estuarine and coastal waters, groundwater-surface water interaction, and carbon and greenhouse gas cycling in water and on land. This has provided unique insights into nutrient cycling in aquatic systems and has assisted in constraining the global water, nutrient, carbon and greenhouse gas budgets.

The research techniques and modelling methods Damien has developed are being rapidly taken up by other researchers across the world, and his collaborative network includes scientists from across more than 40 global institutions such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the University of Hawaii, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Chinese Academy of Science.

You can view Damien’s full profile on the Southern Cross University website.

When or what was ‘the moment’ you knew you wanted to be a researcher?

Growing up on Terania Creek and taking summer holidays to Evans Head as a youngster, I loved fishing and had a strong passion for rivers, estuaries and the environment. After high school I trained and worked as an automotive engineer before realising I wanted to follow the passion that been bubbling away in the back of my mind – so I set off to work in the environment/science space.

While I find all of the areas I work across interesting and exciting, working with organisations such as the NSW Government and Sydney Water is particularly rewarding. As they use our research to manage the environments they’re responsible for, it can and does result in real, positive change.

How will the Research Impact Clusters change the way research is conducted at Southern Cross University?

The Clusters have broken down the [research] silos to provide a platform for more multidisciplinary- and transdisciplinary-type research. These types of research can have much stronger impact if they’re done well, and are what’s needed to tackle some of those ‘wicked’ type of problems we’re facing today.

A lot of the environmental issues the Catchments, Coasts and Communities Cluster focus on are multi-faceted in that they comprise environmental, social and economic aspects. With multiple factors at play, it’s very difficult to gain traction in implementing change for those issues if you’re only looking at one aspect of them.

What do you feel are the best aspects of the Research Impact Clusters?

The Clusters provide opportunities for new ways to collaborate and work on big problems. They also create a collegial work environment, with a strong focus on mentoring and support.

What sort of engagement will the RICs undertake with internal and external stakeholders (strong element of their operation)?

A lot of the RICs’ academics already have strong links to Federal and State or Territory government agencies, local councils, industry and specialised consultants, which the Clusters can leverage to build multi-agency-type arrangements to undertake bigger projects.

What would you like to see the RICs achieve?

Our Cluster has KPIs around mentoring early career researchers, and it’d be amazing if we could provide an environment for the new generation of researchers to make real-world impact within academia, industry or government. We really want to nurture and mentor those early career researchers so that can get out into the real world and implement the changes we need.

What’s your ultimate research project?

We’re wanting to look at developing a research program around Darling Baaka River system in western NSW, where there’s a suite of issues including water allocation and water quality, and environmental issues such as fish kills, algae blooms and so on.

While we’d initially be collaborating with NSW government agencies on this, we also want to include farming and industry groups as well as community groups. But as it’s only in the early stages at the moment, nothing’s been locked in as yet. Watch this space on that!

It’s easy to make your work open access – you simply load it into the Southern Cross Research Portal. Sharing your accepted versions this way is called Green OA – which the article identifies as ‘the best performing OA category in terms of providing the highest citation diversity scores overall’ (see the article’s Figure 2).

You can find out more about OA from the Library website, or you can contact library@scu.edu.au

Full reference to article:

Huang, CK., Neylon, C., Montgomery, L. et al. Open access research outputs receive more diverse citations. Scientometrics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04894-0

Image source: File:Open Access PLoS.svg - Wikimedia Commons

If you’re having trouble with downloading and/or installing EndNote, Technical Services can assist you.

You can follow the instructions / help resources in the Library Guide if you encounter any issues using EndNote. There’ll also be EndNote classes conducted throughout the year – keep an eye on Library Events for more on this.

All researchers can now recommence using the Human Ethics Module on IRMA to access old applications and to submit new (or resubmit) Human Ethics applications moving forward. This includes High and Low Risk applications, Minimisation of Duplication applications, Changes of Protocol, Annual or Completion reports, or Renewal requests.

Importantly, Human Ethics Adverse Event and Ethics Breach reports must now be submitted by completing the new coversheet on IRMA NextGen. Staff should note that the PDF report form is no longer in use.

Staff and HDR candidates can undertake training on the IRMA NextGen interface by joining the IRMA team and Ethics Office online on Zoom at either of the following times:

1. Tuesday 13 February 11am-12pm AEDT: Join the session on zoom here
2. Thursday 15 February 11.30am-12.30pm AEDT: Join the session on zoom here

Please contact the Ethics Office on (ethics.lismore@scu.edu.au) with any concerns or questions regarding Human Research Ethics or IRMA.

Ethics committees meeting dates

Here are the upcoming Ethics Committee meeting dates and submission cut-off dates – you can find the full meeting schedule for 2024 on the Southern Cross University website.

Please note that all high-risk applications must be reviewed at one of the scheduled meetings by the full HREC. For enquiries, please email: ethics.lismore@scu.edu.au

Since joining Southern Cross University her role has focused on animal ethics and research integrity within the Ethics Office, where she’s loved working as part of their dynamic team.

When not at work, Lizzie can be found doing strength training, pushing her personal limits and relaxing through different creative pursuits.

Lincoln’s role as Research Ethics Support Officer involves supporting the Ethics Committees and Ethics Officer, as well as providing advice and support to submitting researchers. This ensures that both parties encounter each other efficiently and professionally, which is what’s needed to get our important research out into the world!

Coming from country Kyogle (famous for its annual Giant Pumpkin Festival, where this year’s winner weighed an impressive 358.5kg), Lincoln loves nature – so he’s really enjoying the physical environment of the Lismore campus. He’s particularly loving the fact that the view from his office window offers the definite possibility of koala sightings.

In former roles she’s provided assistance to students in education library settings such as the University of Canberra, TAFE ACT and the Queensland Department of Education, as well as specialist repositories including the National Film and Sound Archives (NFSA) library and National Archives Australia.

Emily’s passion for learning meshes perfectly with Southern Cross University’s forward-thinking culture and ethos, and she’s inspired by the University’s current research questions – particularly the potential for that research to generate individual and community change both locally and beyond.

As an experienced Digital Research Analyst, she’s dedicated to assisting researchers at the crossroads of research and computing by offering personalised guidance tailored to their unique needs. She’s also a certified Carpentries Instructor who’s committed to knowledge-sharing through in-person and online training sessions, seminars and workshops.

Emilia’s enthusiasm for collaborative multi-stakeholder projects in research, training and data management means she’s really looking forward to working with Southern Cross University’s various departments to achieve shared research data management goals.

Reflections from the Dean of the Graduate School

In my time at SCU I’ve had the privilege of taking on  few very interesting roles: Director of the National Marine Science Centre (2010-2016); Dean of Graduate School (2016 to current); Head of Coffs Harbour Campus (2018 to current) and PVC Research Infrastructure (2020 to current). While all have been rewarding experiences, by far the most enjoyable – and at times the most challenging – is being Dean of The Graduate School.

I find the most enjoyable aspects are: approving an application for entry into a Higher Degree Research Program; providing training and advice to new and established supervisors; allocating stipends to quality candidates and highly productive researchers.

But best of all is recommending a candidate to Academic Board for the award of a higher degree after assessing their final revised thesis. Last year I had the pleasure of making 51 such recommendations – almost one per week!

The downside is dealing with attrition, where candidates don’ make it through, or fail their candidature, which are distressing outcomes for both candidate and supervisors. Over the past few years we’ve lifted our entry criteria for HDR programs – ours are now among the highest in Australia and we’re seeing positive results from that. In 2023 we halved our attrition rate from that of the previous two years. We’ll continue to improve our processes to minimise attrition and maintain our growth in successful completions.

But orangutans adapted more flexibly to these environmental impacts, leading to questions about primate resilience and extinction events – essentially, ‘Why is it so?’

Enter a collaborative team of Chinese, Australian and US scientists – including Southern Cross University’s own Associate Professor Renaud Johannes-Boyau – who undertook a five-year study into what caused Gigantopithecus black’s extinction.

Focused on 22 caves in southern China and combining radiometric dating, environmental clues and analyses of G. blacki’s teeth, the study provides valuable insights into primate resilience and extinction events, shedding light on the fate of large animals in the past and future.

You can click on the link to read more about the study, The demise of the giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki, or check out a video of the team’s work in this YouTube clip.

Associate Professor Renaud Johannes-Boyau lent his specialised expertise in direct dating methods and micro-analytical techniques in archaeological sciences to this study – you can find his full research profile on the Southern Cross University website.