The red belly blockchain: a scalable blockchain for internet of things. This project aims to offer a blockchain that scales with the number of participants. There have been major investments in blockchain technologies during the last year as blockchains promise to disrupt industries like supply chains. Unfortunately, blockchains cannot solve this problem in their current form, because they cannot scale. They require resources that grow with the number of participants and yet fail at providing in ....The red belly blockchain: a scalable blockchain for internet of things. This project aims to offer a blockchain that scales with the number of participants. There have been major investments in blockchain technologies during the last year as blockchains promise to disrupt industries like supply chains. Unfortunately, blockchains cannot solve this problem in their current form, because they cannot scale. They require resources that grow with the number of participants and yet fail at providing increasing performance. The project will leverage many devices of limited resources to offer higher performance and will impact the distributed computing field by establishing a new connection between energy efficient systems and highly scalable distributed algorithms.Read moreRead less
Expectations and commitments in the Australia-USA alliance. This project aims to investigate the gap between the high expectations of mutual support and the lack of detailed security commitments in the Australia-US Alliance. The project intends to use a focused approach that captures thematic aspects of the alliance through project frames and historical slices across time. Expected outcomes can advance understanding of how alliances operate as security institutions. The outcomes can help to prom ....Expectations and commitments in the Australia-USA alliance. This project aims to investigate the gap between the high expectations of mutual support and the lack of detailed security commitments in the Australia-US Alliance. The project intends to use a focused approach that captures thematic aspects of the alliance through project frames and historical slices across time. Expected outcomes can advance understanding of how alliances operate as security institutions. The outcomes can help to promote a more informed national conversation about the costs and benefits of Australia's security relationship with the United States of America (USA) and contribute to debates over the future of the Australia-USA Alliance during a period of strategic uncertainty.Read moreRead less
Discerning China’s Foreign Policy Playbook: Goals and Strategies. This project aims to unpack China’s foreign policy decisions and policy making through exploring the agency of Chinese scholars. By conceptualising a new theoretical model of Chinese scholars’ perceptions, signals and debates, this project expects to generate new knowledge on the goals and strategies of China’s foreign policy in the economic, trade, political, and security dimensions through elite interviews, textual analysis, an ....Discerning China’s Foreign Policy Playbook: Goals and Strategies. This project aims to unpack China’s foreign policy decisions and policy making through exploring the agency of Chinese scholars. By conceptualising a new theoretical model of Chinese scholars’ perceptions, signals and debates, this project expects to generate new knowledge on the goals and strategies of China’s foreign policy in the economic, trade, political, and security dimensions through elite interviews, textual analysis, and focus group research. The outcomes will include analyses for use by Australian policy, academic and business communities. During times of difficult communications, attaining a realistic understanding of China’s current and future policy orientations can enable more constructive and effective China policy.Read moreRead less
Managing the risks posed by Artificial General Intelligence. It is widely acknowledged that a failure to implement appropriate controls for the next generation of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), could have catastrophic consequences, including in the worst case - the extinction of the human race. This research aims to forecast the risks associated with AGI systems and identify the controls required to ensure that risks and existential threats are minimised. The exp ....Managing the risks posed by Artificial General Intelligence. It is widely acknowledged that a failure to implement appropriate controls for the next generation of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), could have catastrophic consequences, including in the worst case - the extinction of the human race. This research aims to forecast the risks associated with AGI systems and identify the controls required to ensure that risks and existential threats are minimised. The expected outputs will provide designers, organisations, regulators and governments with a framework to support the design, implementation, and management of safe and efficient AGI systems. This will ensure that the potential far-reaching benefits of AGI are realised without undue threat to society.Read moreRead less
Smart design technology enabling the mid-infrared revolution. While mid-infrared (MIR) lasers have become indispensable to key industries ranging from research and healthcare to defence, industrial deployment of this technology has been hampered by the lack of cost-effective MIR optical fibres. This project aims to overcome this barrier through the creation of an innovative design toolkit for the fabrication of complex optical fibre structures. This efficient and commercially viable concept-to-m ....Smart design technology enabling the mid-infrared revolution. While mid-infrared (MIR) lasers have become indispensable to key industries ranging from research and healthcare to defence, industrial deployment of this technology has been hampered by the lack of cost-effective MIR optical fibres. This project aims to overcome this barrier through the creation of an innovative design toolkit for the fabrication of complex optical fibre structures. This efficient and commercially viable concept-to-manufacture development process will pave the way towards the MIR fibre technology revolution and will yield significant economic benefits spanning industrial process controls and environmental monitoring to hazardous chemical detection and biological sensing.Read moreRead less
Characterising satellites using un-resolved optical observations . Space situational awareness is a critical priority for Australian national security and the commercial space sector as the economy is investing in space. Space debris is a growing international threat to all major economies that rely on space for communications and defence. This project will understand how defunct satellites degrade over time to produce space debris. To accomplish this the project will collaborate with the Polish ....Characterising satellites using un-resolved optical observations . Space situational awareness is a critical priority for Australian national security and the commercial space sector as the economy is investing in space. Space debris is a growing international threat to all major economies that rely on space for communications and defence. This project will understand how defunct satellites degrade over time to produce space debris. To accomplish this the project will collaborate with the Polish Space Agency to employ low resolution spectroscopy to measure the surface degradation of geostationary satellites. Read moreRead less
Paths to primacy: How rising powers win domination in Asia, 1500-present. This Fellowship aims to investigate how, when and why rising powers have historically won regional domination in Asia from 1500CE-present. China today threatens to displace America as Asia’s pre-eminent power. This study will comprehensively examine Asia’s historical geopolitics since 1500, and expects to to produce a new conceptual framework that explains how, when and why rising powers either succeed or fail to seize reg ....Paths to primacy: How rising powers win domination in Asia, 1500-present. This Fellowship aims to investigate how, when and why rising powers have historically won regional domination in Asia from 1500CE-present. China today threatens to displace America as Asia’s pre-eminent power. This study will comprehensively examine Asia’s historical geopolitics since 1500, and expects to to produce a new conceptual framework that explains how, when and why rising powers either succeed or fail to seize regional primacy from their Great Power rivals. The project expects to significantly improve Australia’s historical understanding of the power contests that have made modern Asia, and enhance policymakers’ ability to learn from this history in understanding and responding to modern struggles for regional supremacy.Read moreRead less
Decoding Revisionist Challenges to the International Institutional Order . This project aims to systematically examine the policy strategies that great powers can employ to challenge international institutions during a period of international order transition. This project expects to develop a new theoretical framework to shed light on how the United States and China compete and cooperate in the different issue areas of global governance. The outcomes of this project will be an in-depth understa ....Decoding Revisionist Challenges to the International Institutional Order . This project aims to systematically examine the policy strategies that great powers can employ to challenge international institutions during a period of international order transition. This project expects to develop a new theoretical framework to shed light on how the United States and China compete and cooperate in the different issue areas of global governance. The outcomes of this project will be an in-depth understanding of revisionism in world politics and practical policy recommendations to cope with the dynamics of international order transition. This knowledge should provide significant benefits to Australia’s policy community for making sensible policies against the background of US-China competition in the 21st century. Read moreRead less
Behaviour Bootstrapping for Ad Hoc, Heterogeneous Robot Swarms. This project aims to develop algorithms to permit groups of robots to evolve coordinated, collective, swarm behaviours. Groups of robots will be conceptualised as developmental swarm organisms with an initially limited set of behaviours, but equipped with structures and processes to permit them to evolve new behaviours. This project expects to deliver the next generation of computational intelligence technologies to enable humans to ....Behaviour Bootstrapping for Ad Hoc, Heterogeneous Robot Swarms. This project aims to develop algorithms to permit groups of robots to evolve coordinated, collective, swarm behaviours. Groups of robots will be conceptualised as developmental swarm organisms with an initially limited set of behaviours, but equipped with structures and processes to permit them to evolve new behaviours. This project expects to deliver the next generation of computational intelligence technologies to enable humans to harness large groups of robots for new kinds of transport and inspection tasks in smart cities, smart farming and defence. The expected outcomes of the project include new software frameworks for distributed developmental learning, extending developmental robotics to evolutionary robot swarms. Read moreRead less
Leveraging power and influence on the United Nations Security Council. This project examines the fundamental problem of how elected members on the Security Council can influence Council decision-making and norm development. Assembling a research team of international lawyers and political scientists, the project seeks to provide a rigorous, multi-disciplinary evaluation of why and when non-permanent Council members have succeeded in having impact on the Council's decision-making process. Drawing ....Leveraging power and influence on the United Nations Security Council. This project examines the fundamental problem of how elected members on the Security Council can influence Council decision-making and norm development. Assembling a research team of international lawyers and political scientists, the project seeks to provide a rigorous, multi-disciplinary evaluation of why and when non-permanent Council members have succeeded in having impact on the Council's decision-making process. Drawing on recent experiences of elected members, including Australia, the project is expected to advance evidence-based and empirically grounded policy proposals designed to increase the capacity of elected members to exercise power and influence over the Council's agenda and policy.Read moreRead less