Formula for Success - Professor Max Lu, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)

By any reasonable measure, The University of Queensland can be considered as one of Australia’s leading, research-intensive universities. We strive to achieve excellence in research and scholarship, and to make a significant contribution to intellectual, cultural, social, and economic life at a local, national, and international level. The success of the University’s major strategic initiatives demonstrates our commitment to achieving these goals.

Our key strategies organise the University’s research activities around

• building large research institutes to develop a critical mass of expertise and an uncompromising focus on research of the very highest quality;
• supporting our academic staff to develop active research profiles and to pursue national and international research collaborations;
• recognising and rewarding outstanding performance in research and research higher degree supervision; and
• encouraging knowledge transfer and commercialisation wherever appropriate.

UQ’s research matters to people in the community, to businesses and industries, and governments. Whether it is the solution to health care, environmental issues or smarter technologies that underpins a better quality of life, UQ research provides the fundamental inspirations and lead to innovative outcomes. We seek knowledge both for enriching our intellectual capital and to measurably improve the communities in which we live.

A central plank of UQ’s strategy over recent years has been the creation of large research institutes that have allowed us to develop a critical mass of expertise and an uncompromising focus on research of the highest quality. The Institute for Molecular Biosciences, the Sustainable Minerals Institute, the Queensland Brain Institute, the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine, and Institute for Social Science Research have each become recognised as world-leading centres of excellence within their fields. The Diamantina Institute is leading the development of the $354 million Translational Research Institute Queensland being built as the biggest biomedical research capability in the southern hemisphere. The University’s research engagement and collaborations will be further enhanced through the establishment of the Global Change Institute, the Queensland Alliance for Agricultural and Food Innovation, the Confucius Institute and the Centre for Advanced Imaging in 2009.

Facilities such as the recently completed UQ Centre for Clinical Research (UQCCR, located at Herston) and the Centre for Advanced Animal Science (CAAS, based at our Gatton campus) plus a range of National Cooperative Research Infrastructure Scheme funded facilities, are typical of the key infrastructure projects that will continue to draw leading researchers to Queensland and add to UQ’s portfolio of state-of-the-art infrastructure.

The University understands that excellence in research underpins both quality in teaching and the ability to develop depth in its community partnerships. Thus, our success in attracting competitive research funding is crucial and our results in schemes such as the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Projects scheme and prestigious fellowship schemes, and health and medical research funding, including the highest amount awarded in a single grant, are most gratifying and testament to the high quality of our researchers.
This website has been organised to include highlights from the latest copy of UQ’s Research Report as well as access to all of our excellent researchers and information about their world-leading research. I invite you to spend some time with us through these webpages and in person.
 

Professor Max Lu, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)

On this site