Australia’s Minister for Education Dan Tehan announced $280 million in funding for new research collaborations to start next year. This month’s ARC Discovery Project and Linkage Project funding announcement includes eight grants for projects and facilities led by or involving FLEET researchers. While these projects are distinct from FLEET’s mission to build low-energy electronics, they testify to the capacity FLEET has helped build in Australia to study and exploit quantum and topological phenomena in materials.
FLEET’s Deputy Director, while congratulating members receiving funding, also provided support and encouragement to those unlucky enough to miss out, after significant work in preparing grant applications.
“Congratulations to all those funded in this round – but I find these announcements are always bittersweet, as there are so many fantastic proposals which there just isn’t enough money to fund. My commiserations to those who were not successful this time. Please don’t give up. There is always an element of luck – just as with getting nice referees when trying to get into PRL, the same happens with grant proposals. In practice there is little to differentiate the applications in the top 40% of the pile, even though only 20% or so are funded. “
“Like democracy, peer review is not perfect, but it is the least-bad system available. We can help by providing high-quality reviews, and encouraging public investment in research by promoting the fantastic science that the ARC funds.”
—Prof Alex Hamilton, UNSW
Deputy Director, FLEET
See the full list of funded projects on the Australian Research Council website.
Discovery projects involving FLEET researchers were:
David Cortie (University of Wollongong) $315,000 Hot topic: Quantum design of phononic heat filters. New mechanisms for phonon transport in solids modified with embedded nanoparticles, operating as phononic filters, towards critical heat management and ultra-low thermal conductivity in thermoelectric generators and heat-resistant materials.
Susan Coppersmith and Alex Hamilton (UNSW) $580,000 Topological superconductivity and spin electronics in silicon and germanium. Building a new platform for future quantum devices and topological quantum computers using hybrid superconductor-semiconductor devices with conventional silicon and germanium semiconductors. Hosting topological modes in a scalable architecture towards topological qubits.
Christopher Vale (Swinburne) $428,000 Transport and impurity dynamics in a unitary Fermi gas. Studying impurities in an ultra-cold Fermi gas to map elementary excitations in superfluid and normal fluid phases. Establish new theories of strongly-correlated quantum matter. With Sascha Hoinka and Jesper Levinsen (Monash).
Jan Seidel (UNSW) $437,000 Topotactic control of magnetism in multiferroic and skyrmion materials. Study topotactic transitions (reversible stoichiometric changes in materials that lead to changes in the crystal structure) towards design of controllable multiferroic and skyrmion host materials for future nanoelectronics.
Jan Seidel (UNSW) $240,000 Multiferroic skyrmion materials for next-generation nanoelectronics. Investigate multiferroic skyrmion materials whose control via external electric/magnetic fields, strain and light could allow applications in nanoelectronics and data storage.
Jeff Davis (Swinburne) $410,000 Multidimensional coherent spectroscopy of strongly-correlated materials. Spectroscopic study of macroscopic properties such as superconductivity emerging from fundamental interactions in strongly-correlated electron materials. Combining theory and experiment to disentangle and control competing interactions and interplay, towards new, controllable quantum materials for future technologies.
A/Prof Laure Bourgeois (Monash) $470,000 From One Structure to Another for Improved Materials Design. Characterising a new way of generating strengthening precipitate structures for lightweight aluminium alloys, particularly valuable for structural applications. Greater fundamental understanding of precipitation mechanisms, plus experimental and computational methods for 3D characterisation and simulations at the atomic-scale of embedded nanostructures.
Two Linkage projects involving FLEET researchers were also funded:
Alex Hamilton and Dimitrie Culcer (UNSW) $420,696 Developing hole-spin quantum bits in industrially-fabricated silicon chips. Combine expertise in silicon chip fabrication and quantum devices towards industrial-scale silicon-based hole-spin qubits. Open up new routes to spin-based quantum computing based on holes.
Lincoln Turner (Monash) $451,265 Agile synthesizers for quantum computing, simulation and sensing. Seeking breakthrough technology for generating complex radio and microwave pulses underpinning quantum computing and quantum sensing, enabling the translation of quantum technology to commercial practicality (eg, neural imaging, defence surveillance, and mining exploration. With Kris Helmerson.