UQ Ipswich has developed an impressive research record with a number of individual academic research projects, supervision of student research, and collaborative research projects attracting a wealth of grants and funding.
BUSINESS
The UQ Business School Ipswich Campus staff are involved in many varied business and community research projects.
Dr Neemi Avkiran is the only Australian academic in a project team that includes academics from Japan, USA, Korea and India that recently received a grant worth (YEN 15 million) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The project's 'Network DEA and Its Applications', main purpose is to develop methods to identify relative profit inefficiencies within bank division that the current data analysis is unable to capture. Developing new methods to identify inefficiencies will help increase the stability of the banking sector and wider community by decreasing the high level of non-performing loans amongst Japanese regional banks.
Professor Peter Green in involved in an ICAA funded research project, "The costs of Independence", working on the issues of identifying the "hidden" costs of auditor independence for small-to-medium businesses in both central and regional areas following the introduction of the CLERP 9 reforms to the Corporations Act. These reforms were introduced as a consequence of several high-profile corporate collapses in both Australia and overseas.
Dr Liz Ferrier and Dr David Rooney are chief investigators on an ARC Linkage project "EdgeX Expo, Mapping the Missing Grassroots", with the Ipswich City Council. The project will research the fast-growing and popular area of amateur digital content as viable media content. It will involve the development of a new website to allow local schools, community groups, and the general public to create, upload, exhibit, and use local amateur digital creations such as music, arts, crafts, stories, short films, photos, history and the like.
SOCIAL AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES
Researchers from the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at UQ Ipswich are involved in leading edge research, particularly in the areas of social change, development communication, youth issues and education (middle years of schooling).
Academic staff are leaders in the middle years field and developed the first dedicated program for teachers in Australia in 2001. Many of these staff have and continue to play a pivotal role in key projects investigating middle school reforms around the country.
HEALTH
Health education, promotion and positive health outcomes in the local community are the key focus areas currently being investigated by researchers within the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the Ipswich Campus. The School was fortunate in 2005 to secure five-year funding from the Ipswich Hospital Foundation for a health research program focusing on issues surrounding health education and prevention and health capacity building within the Ipswich region. The project will prompt a new era for the Ipswich region as a hub for health research and education, making the region more attractive to health experts and boosting infrastructure.
Australian Research Council funding of more than $700,000 has also been secured for five years to establish the nurses and midwives e-cohort, a longitudinal, population-based study that will examine workforce and health outcomes among nurses and midwives in Australia and New Zealand. Funding was obtained through the linkage grants scheme and the e-research strategic initiatives program. A further $750,000 over five years has been committed by industry partners (including Queensland Health) towards the research project with additional in-kind support from nursing councils.
The School is also active in research into clinical practice development through the discovery of new and improved approaches to the health care of individuals, as well as the optimisation of health education and service delivery through the discovery of improved approaches to the educational preparation of health professionals.
COMMUNITY
The UQ Boilerhouse Community Engagement Centre is at the focal point of community interaction, engaging with diverse stakeholders from the private, public and community sectors in developing informed and collaborative responses to both existing and emerging community issues.