Achieving Excellence - Professor David Siddle, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)

Professor David Siddle, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)

The University of Queensland takes pride in its research intensiveness
and recognises the pursuit of excellence in research and research training
as being central to its mission.

In 2005 the University continued to build on its outstanding profile in the Australian and international research community.

On the basis of most widely accepted measures, our research performance continued its upward trend, confirming our place in the top two or three universities in the nation.

UQ recognises that excellence in research underpins both excellence in teaching and the ability to interact with and to provide benefit for our community.  We are proud of our record of achievement in research and 2005 has proven to be yet another year of tremendous highlights. We have continued to grow our success through the establishment of strategic new world-class research centres and programs; the implementation of innovative research, research training and commercialisation initiatives; and, of course, an abiding commitment to quality.

UQ is dedicated to providing an environment that allows its academic staff and research students to reach their full potential.  Our strategies recognise the need to build critical mass, the benefits of collaboration and interdisciplinary research, and the importance of rewarding excellence.  We also acknowledge that leading infrastructure attracts and retains high quality staff.

In May 2005, Premier Peter Beattie officially opened the $60 million Sir James Foots Building at the University’s St Lucia campus. This state-of-the-art building, which will house the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI), the Earth Systems Computational Centre (ESSCC) and the Collaborative Learning Centre, is one of a suite of exciting new developments at UQ.  These include:

• the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), which in 2003 moved into the $105 million state-of-the-art Queensland Biosciences Precinct;
  
• the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), for which a $60 million purpose-built facility is currently under construction; and
  
• the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), which will be housed in a new $55 million facility from 2008.

The University this year also announced plans for a $60 million UQ Centre for Clinical Research (CCR) to be located at the Royal Brisbane and Women`s Hospital (RBWH).  The Queensland Government will contribute $20 million from the Smart State Research Facilities Fund, Atlantic Philanthropies will contribute $20 million, with a further $20 million coming from UQ.  The Centre will provide a focus for world-class clinical research by bringing together leading medical researchers in ultra-modern facilities.

Smart State Research Facilities funding will also contribute to the establishment of the $17 million Queensland Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Network (QNN).  QNN will establish a network of state-of-the-art high field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) equipment, including the most powerful machine of its kind in the southern hemisphere – a 900 MHz high-resolution spectrometer.  The Queensland Government recently announced it will contribute $5 million to the QNN as part of its Smart State strategy.

Our successes in international funding were conspicuous.  UQ attracted one of the largest international projects on coral reefs and climate change to Australia, headquartering the ‘Coral Reef Targeted Research and Capacity Building for Management’ (CRTR) project.  The project’s first five year phase involves over $20 million in direct funding.  UQ also attracted major support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for internationally important projects by Professors Alan Lopez and Scott O’Neill.

The University continued its success in the prestigious Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellowships scheme with the awarding of 2005 Fellowships to two current UQ staff members, Professor John Mattick, Director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, and Associate Professor Bostjan Kobe from the School of Molecular and Microbial Sciences. They will join 10 ARC Federation Fellows already based at UQ. This is a clear acknowledgement of the quality and international standing of UQ research.

The University achieved outstanding results in the 2005 ARC Linkage Projects, securing 42 grants representing 11 percent of ARC funding distributed under the scheme.  Our 2005 projects will bring in a total of $38.6 million in combined ARC and industry partner contributions to rank UQ first in the nation, more than $12 million ahead of the second ranked institution. This comes on top of the University’s success as the national leader in ARC Linkage Projects in 2004 and continues to affirm UQ as a leader in terms of industry interactions.  An additional $25 million of research income was won from the ARC Discovery Scheme in 2005 for 88 successful project applications.

We also achieved significant success in the National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) competitive schemes.  Our researchers were awarded 35 new projects under the NHMRC Project Grants scheme, representing eight percent of the national total. These grants will underpin an exciting array of leading-edge research being conducted across all areas of health and biomedical science at UQ. The University will also share in more than $1.2 million in funding from the latest round of the NHMRC Enabling Grants scheme with the establishment of the Australasian Kidney Trials Network (AKTN). The Network will improve the health and quality of life of people suffering from kidney disease.

The highly competitive and increasingly focused international environment in which we carry out our research requires a continuous and increasing emphasis on research quality.  In 2005, UQ expanded its quality performance mechanisms by piloting an Assessment of the Quality of Research Outcomes exercise.  This peer-review exercise is focused at the School level and provides additional information describing the quality of research conducted by staff within the School over the last five years.

UQ is quite clearly a graduate destination of the highest standard.  The UQ Graduate School has a key role to play in promoting graduate study, fostering intellectual and professional academic growth, and developing initiatives to enhance the graduate student experience.  It has coordinated skills development programs for both graduate research students and their advisors, and focussed on initiatives to enhance the quality of our research training programs, such as travel, exchanges, internships, and industry collaboration.

Our model of support for Graduate Students was recognised with an Institutional Award at the 2004 Australian Awards for University Teaching for “Harnessing Support for Research Students’ Learning”.

Some further indicators of our research training successes are:

• UQ enrolls the second largest number of PhD students and the largest number of international PhD students of any university in Australia;
  
• UQ consistently ranks between first and third in Australia in numbers of PhD student completions and nationally competitive scholarships awards (APA and IPRS); and
  
• The number of PhDs awarded continues to rise, from 224 in 1995 to 418 in 2004.

Professor David Siddle
Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)

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