Associate Professor Edwina McGlinn and Dr Maté Biro have each been awarded grants for their respective projects investigating genome structure and regulation and biological mathematics.
The Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project grants will provide three years of funding, commencing in 2018.
A/Prof McGlinn’s project, in collaboration with researchers from the Pablo de Olavide University, Spain, looks at the regulatory architecture of the trunk-to-tail transition in embryonic development. The project aims to elucidate gene regulatory mechanisms that control how the head-to-tail axis is laid down during development, capitalising on unique pluripotent stem cell resources and cutting-edge genomic technology developed by the team. It’s expected the research will generate new knowledge in the area of developmental biology and gene regulation that is anticipated to have wider application to the understanding of evolutionary mechanisms and, ultimately, regenerative medicine.
The work of Dr Biro – in collaboration with researchers from the University of Sydney, University of Waterloo (Canada), the University of York (UK) and King’s College London – focusses on search strategy optimisation by theory, functional analysis and simulation. The project aims to develop a novel computational platform, based on mathematical, statistical and physical theory, as well as advanced simulations, enabling the quantitative prediction of the optimal search strategy to be adopted by populations of agents searching for scarce targets in any given environment. This could lead to significant impacts on breakthrough developments in cancer immunotherapy, search and rescue robotics, ecological and environmental management, and developmental biology.
We wish the group leaders every success with these exciting projects.