Antennas, batteries and AI in early career funding boost

UTS Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Kate McGrath, congratulated the researchers and their contribution to the impact UTS research makes to our communities. 

“This is well deserved recognition. The success of these eight talented early career researchers highlights UTS’ excellence in delivering knowledge and practical solutions that will make a difference in improving the lives of Australians,” said Professor McGrath. 

The eight early-career UTS academics will explore a range of cutting-edge technology and science including clean energy battery technologies, antennas for future wifi, artificial intelligence and recycled materials for railway systems. 

The Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award scheme provides three-year funding for researchers to foster collaboration, address knowledge gaps, and deliver solutions that improve quality of life and drive sustainable progress. 

The funded research projects are: 

Dr Yaojie Lei (Faculty of Science) – develop solid-state sodium-sulphur batteries for renewable energy storage. Innovating solid-state electrolytes with high ionic conductivity and enhancing the stability of interfaces between solid electrolyte and electrodes. 

Dr Jing Li (Faculty of Engineering and IT) - mobility-aware digital twin-empowered services in edge computing. Developing a suite of innovative solutions to digital twin-empowered internet of things services in mobile edge computing.  

Dr Yanbin Liu (Faculty of Engineering and IT) – agile vision: adapting vision foundation models in real-world contexts. Developing an adaptive framework for vision foundation models to operate effectively in data-scarce, resource-constrained and evolving environments. 

Dr Yujie Qi (Faculty of Engineering and IT) – sustainable future railways built with recycled tyres and mine waste. Developing a novel energy-absorbing capping layer, a carbon-friendly mix of recycled tyre fibre and coal rejects, for rail foundation expected to alleviate track deterioration, buckling and ground vibration. 

Dr Xiang Shi (Faculty of Engineering and IT) – integrated electronic textiles with miniature soft actuators. Realizing haptic textiles by building miniature actuators at fibre interweaving points and creating new knowledge in tuning fibre heterostructures at the micron scale. 

Dr Lizhao Song (Faculty of Engineering and IT) - adaptive multi-beam lens antennas for future wireless communications. Developing an adaptive multi-beam lens antenna system to advance wireless communications by improving speed, capacity, and flexibility.  

Dr Tianyi Wang (Faculty of Science) – innovate aqueous zinc metal batteries for grid-scale energy storage. Leveraging bio-based materials, this research will enhance battery lifespan, efficiency, and safety while reducing environmental impact. 

Dr Mengjia Wu (Faculty of Engineering and IT) – reliable knowledge discovery system on dynamic academic graphs. Developing a reliable knowledge discovery system that analyses dynamic academic data to reveal novel knowledge insights, for example, predicting emerging research topics, novel gene-disease associations, and impactful scientific collaborations.