ARC Grants Awarded
01 Nov 2016

This morning the results of the latest Australian Research Council (ARC) funding round were announced. We are very pleased to announce that the lab and our collaborators have been awarded two grants totalling $1,320,500.

The first is an ARC Large Infrastructure and Equipment Funding (LIEF) grant titled Australian Acoustic Observatory: A network to monitor biodiversity (LE170100033) is a $900,000 effort that aims to create a terrestrial acoustic sensor network comprising 450 listening stations across Australia. Acoustic sensing transforms environmental science by recording vocal species 24/7, providing spatial and temporal data for ecosystem monitoring and research. Australia has leading research expertise in this emerging field, which is relevant to its fragile and mega-diverse environment. This project is expected to enable and develop continental scale environmental monitoring, and the data generated will be made freely available to all online, enabling new science in understanding ecosystems, long-term environmental change, data visualisation and acoustic science.

We have a great collection of collaborators involved with this grant from a number of institutions across Australia, including: Professor Paul Roe; Professor David Watson (@D0CT0R_Dave); Associate Professor Richard Fuller (@RichFullerUQ); Professor Stuart Parsons (@walkingbats); Associate Professor Tomasz Bednarz (@tomaszbednarz); Professor Margot Brereton; Professor Lin Schwarzkopf (@LinSchwarzkopf); Dr Dale Nimmo (@BiodiversityGuy); Dr Berndt Janse van Rensburg; Associate Professor Martine Maron (@martine_maron); Professor Marcus Sheaves; Dr Paul McDonald; and Professor Gary Luck.

The second grant (DP170104004) is a $420,500 ARC Discovery Project grant titled Earth soundscapes: A human-computer approach to environmental sound analysis. The project aims to visualise and analyse big sound data, to detect patterns of animal and bird calls at different temporal and spatial scales. Ecoacoustics are important for scaling environmental monitoring; since the resulting big sound data is opaque and its fully automated analysis is intractable, human-computer methods are needed to interpret the data. The project expects to deliver multi-scale sound visualisation, end-user analytic tools and annotation and management methods so people can monitor the environment with insight and accuracy.

This grant was awarded to our very own Professors Paul Roe and Margot Brereton of QUT.

We are excited to be working with everyone involved in these two great projects!

QUT Media article: Funding boost for QUT researchers

Photo Credit: Sturt Desert, Paul Roe