Masters research projects

We assume that selection pressure can act on both the biochemical and the physiological regulation of the signal from host and on the morphological and neurophysiologic filter properties of the receiver (insects). Communication is implied when the signal and the receiver evolve towards more specific matching and coordination. In other cases, receivers respond to portions of a body odour bouquet that is released into the environment unintentionally as an unavoidable consequence of metabolic activity or tissue damage. Breath, faeces, aquatic equivalents, and their bacterial and other symbiotic partners can all serve as identifiers for chemoreceptive insects interested in finding food or hosts. Understanding the biological and chemical bases for these signals could lead to new approaches to the diagnosis and biocontrol treatment(s) of insect pests.

Issues of concern with regards to post-harvest biosecurity – pest and disease control include:

1. consumer sensitivity to pesticide residues, and
2. trade disruption resulting from the incursion of new insects and pathogens. The diagnosis of insect pests, particularly exotic invasive pests, and chemical contaminants are a central function of plant biosecurity. This research project will be based around the principal of the volatiles that are released from commodities after harvest and during storage in response to infestation by pests and pathogens. The contents of volatiles are related with the history of the food (pre and post harvest conditions and treatment) product. Therefore, volatiles produced in storage can be monitored and used as diagnostic indictors of pests and pathogens involved in food, fruit and vegetable spoilage/contamination.

Understanding evolutionary processes between host plant and invasive insect pests (insects and nematodes) through the communication between insects and the host plant, chemical ecology and molecular analysis. To determine the influence of chemical signals on insect behaviour such as finding food and social communication. Understanding the biological and chemical bases for these signals could lead to new technologies in the monitoring, diagnosis and bio-treatment of these invasive pests based on semiochemicals.

There are mass (volatiles) and energy (temperature) exchanges between soil and vegetation, atmosphere and water bodies (lakes, rivers, oceans). The major exchanged masses are volatiles (gas phase substances), such as water vapor, greenhouse gases, some ozone depleting substances, sulfur (contributes to rain and odour formation)/ carbon (contribute to form greenhouse gases) / nitrogen / phosphorous (contribute to plant or soil nutrient cycles) containing volatiles. The volatiles in soil are mainly formed by bioactivity of plants and microorganisms, and fertilizer / pesticide / herbicide degradation, irrigation and chemical / biogeochemical inter-conversion. The masses are exchanged by flux (vaporization and emission), rain, irrigation and floods (H2O and water-soluble volatiles). Climate change will lead to a change in the degradation of these chemicals in soils and vegetation. Therefore, any kind of soil treatment, such as the application of chemicals (eg., fumigants, fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides), irrigation and plantation establishment will result in volatile (including odour types and naturally occurring compounds) and nutrient fluxes and sinks and the interconversion of the major volatiles. The hazardous volatile fluxes and sinks will be directly affected by climate change.

Allyl isothiocyanate (AITC), a member of the ITC family, exists in many plant species in the Cruciferae family, such as mustard, wasabi, Brassica nigra Koch and B. juncea (L.) Coss. Recently, the possibility of using AITC as a biological control agent has received a great deal of interest, with studies being focused on the insecticidal function of AITC. It could be a potential chemical for the protection of stored grain from insect infestation and contamination.

Issues of concern regarding pest control include consumer sensitivity to pesticide residues and trade disruption as a result of incursions from new insects and diseases. A central function in providing biosecurity is an ability to apply an effective biocide to the area infested with an exotic pest or disease in order to prevent its spread (for import incursions) or to achieve hygienic conditions – no insects or residues (for export and domestic insect control). Development of compounds that are effective and environmentally friendly, safe to users and consumers, to replace current pesticides such as organic phosphates (OPs) will be a significant benefit to the Australian horticultural industry and trade. This project will focus on the development of rapid technologies for disinfestation of fruit and vegetables to control exotic pests or pathogens.

Background: Domesticated chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the most important legumes with great food and nutritional values. Like many other crops, the production of chickpea can be severely limited by aluminium (Al) toxicity under acidic soils, which is prevalent in major Chickpea production countries such as Australia and India. In our previous studies, we identified a CaMATE gene encoding a multidrug and toxic compound extrusion transporter in Chickpea. We found that the expression of CaMATE gene in chickpea root tips is positively associated with Al treatment. Chickpea lines with different CaMATE expression levels display varied Al-toxicity resistance.

Research Question: Although we showed that CaMATE is likely associated with Al-toxicity resistance in chickpea, it is still unclear why some chickpea lines display relatively higher CaMATE expression while others have low CaMATE expression. Identification of genetic alleles with high CaMATE expression may allow us to improve chickpea acid tolerance in future breeding program.

Research Aims: Identification of CaMATE genetic alleles with improved acid soil tolerance in Chickpea

Methods: 1. DNA extraction, gene cloning, and sequencing. 2. Gene expression using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). 3. molecular marker design. 4. Development of chickpea crossing population for acid tolerance screening and genotyping.

Expected Research Outcomes:
1. Selection of chickpea lines with improved acid tolerance based on the identified CaMATE alleles.
2. Development of molecular markers that can be used for chickpea breeding.
3. Creation of chickpea population for acid tolerance genotype-phenotype association analysis.

Understand the impact of chemical (water, fumigants, fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides) treatments on plants and soils though:

1. volatile fluxes and sinks,
2. their role in chemical / biogeochemical (sulphur, nitrogen, carbon and phosphorous) budgets,and cycles,
3. and c) insects population dynamics and behaviors.

Project outcomes that student could expect to achieve:

• Identification of the volatile compounds that could be signals for the proper receivers
• Development of rapid methods for the analysis of the volatile compounds
• Determine the influence of the signals on the behaviour of the receivers and develop a model for describing their relationship(s)
• High quality scientific publications

Re-engineering involves the physical disruption and mixing off soil profiles to 30-80 cm depth. The re-arranged profile has a more heterogeneous distribution of topsoil and subsoil than the original profile, but commonly has increased crop yields on deep sands and deep sandy duplex soils. This study will investigate the soil characteristics of the re-engineering soils, with particular emphasis on physical properties."

Release insects marked with stable isotopes (13C or 44Ca) and then recapturing these over time along the pathways of possible insect flow to identify dispersion and migration of these insects at different developmental stages (containing 13C or 44Ca). The results will provide knowledge and understanding for monitoring insect dispersal, insect communication, guiding good agricultural practice and the management of insect resistance. This technology can become a very useful tool for the study of exotic invasive pests (insects, weed seeds and other pests), and their dispersial and migration.

Project outcomes that student could expect to achieve:

• Development of methods for marking target insects
• Analysis of stable isotopes in F1, F2 or F3 generations of insects in different development stages (adult, egg, larva and pupa).
• High quality scientific publications

Accurate identification of invertebrates is important across many industries and areas of research including biosecurity, conservation, and environmental management. For some invertebrates, it is impossible to accurately identify species or some life stages without the use of genetic tools or often time-consuming morphological assessments. Hyperspectral imaging may present a quick and easy solution to identifying invertebrates with unique spectral reflectance signatures. Subtle differences between insect cuticle reflections are not always visible to a human observer but may be contained in the information captured by a hyperspectral camera. Hyperspectral imaging provides high-resolution spectral data across hundreds of colours channels. In this project you will assess the usefulness of hyperspectral imaging for high-throughput insect identification by targeting key species of interest and determining if their spectral reflectance signatures are easily observed by a hyperspectral camera. Depending on the student’s interest, the project can focus on the technical implementation of generic hyperspectral image processing tools or on the biological analysis of specific species (such as the recent interest in Australia’s beautiful jumping spiders).

Exotic pests, diseases and weeds can hitch a ride to Australia inside shipping containers. Sea containers are demonstrated vectors to many economically important quarantinable insects, including timber pests, agricultural pests, environmental pests, and nuisance pests. The Harry Butler Institute is working with the Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries to identify hotspots within sea container for pest refuge and to redesign niches to reduce the risk of incursion into Australia. We are looking for students who are passionate about protecting Australia’s biodiversity and agriculture industry to join this project. Students can work with us to arrive at targeted projects, and examples could include:

• Matching microclimate and habitat variables within shipping containers to preferences of pest species
• Investigating the role of diapause in resistance to control measures and how this may change management approaches
• Optimising lure placement for effectively detecting pest presence/absence

The study examines the actions, perspectives and reflections of pre-service teachers (PSTs) participating in a learning program in initial teacher education to prepare them for the opportunities and challenges of professional experience placements. The learning program involves the use of a mixed reality learning environment to simulate a classroom environment and parent interviews for PSTs to conduct a condensed lesson to student avatars and to simulate a meeting between PSTs and a parent avatar. Data collected included survey data, video recordings of PSTs conducting a lesson and/or a parent conference session followed by a coaching session with a clinical practitioner, PSTs' written reflections and assessment marks. The data retrieved will be used to explore the affordances of the mixed reality learning environment, as well as its impact on PST development, to inform the strategies employed in the program to support PSTs' practice and reflections on practice.

Mapping the footprint of elite private schools: A comparative spatial analysis of the Five Eye countries.

The Australian government has prioritised the development of high valued-added manufacturing in the food and beverage, medical products, renewable energy, mineral processing, defence, and aeronautics sectors. A major challenge in developing Australia’s manufacturing capacity in these sectors is a shortage of skilled labour. Finding ways to develop Australia’s labour force is therefore essential for meeting its manufacturing priorities. One strategy for developing labour skills is through vocational secondary education and training. The aim of this study is to identify models from other countries that could provide insights for the Australian context. Using a conceptual analysis of secondary sources, vocational secondary education in “best practice” countries including Switzerland and Germany will be examined. The findings of the study will lead to specific recommendations about how vocational secondary education and training can be leveraged to meet Australia’s skilled labour needs in high value-added manufacturing.

In this project, an intelligent imaging processing and image classification method will be developed using artificial intelligence for the images taken by the installed camera from the autonomous robot in greenhouse. The images of different plants will be firstly taken and correspond to the glasshouse crop growth data via identification and classification approaches. Finally, the performance will be evaluated via site experiments.

In this project, we will design and develop an autonomous robot-based monitoring solution for Murdoch greenhouse. By using the available mobile robots in the lab, an advanced mobile robot platform will be developed suitably with camera and multi-sensors for the required monitoring tasks with testing and field trials on the greenhouse at Murdoch University to determine efficacy of the solution. Also, a reliable navigation and localisation algorithm will be designed for mobile robots to autonomously move in the greenhouse during the daytime and nightime. The offline mapping for the indoor environment should be carefully developed before the design of the path planning for the robot. Finally, the path planning and trajectory control should be simultaneously designed and achieved.

The Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP) phase 6 (CMIP6), provides the most up-to-date catalogue of climate simulations using the most up-to-date and latest climate models, and a vast library of model outputs are readily available from which many research questions can be tailored. For example, one question could be: "How well do CMIP6 models simulate southern hemisphere blocking and how do blocking patterns change in the future?". The student would need to have some background in atmospheric science, and some prior experience of using scripted programming languages such as Python/Matlab/R would be necessary. This would be a desk-only study and the availability of the data-sets makes this type of project well suited for an aRMT as no field work or data collection would be involved, but only data analysis of existing data-sets.

Phytophthora dieback caused by the invasive pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi has devastated impacted natural ecosystems in Western Australia. In mapping its presence, 70 other Phytophthora species have been recovered, some of which appear to be native, some introduced. The bridgehead effect suggests that new species arrive, become established in urban environments and then spread into natural ecosystems. However, traits of the species and environmental filtering may influence invasiveness. This project would use the extensive database and targeted sampling from Western Australia to interrogate these principals.

Phytophthora cinnamomi is a major plant pathogen causing extensive loss of vegetation cover in many parts of the world. Many jarrah forest native plant species are vulnerable to ‘dieback’. In Mundaring, infested sites have reduced shrub density and fewer grasstrees suitable as refuge for animals, and there is less digging activity by quenda (Isoodon fusciventer). This project will examine whether infested sites have a greater incidence of introduced predators (foxes and cats), and whether quenda could be more vulnerable in these sites due to loss of this protective cover.

Climate change is seeing temperatures breach exceptional thresholds that threaten global biodiversity. Places like Australia’s southwest are experiencing temperatures that are becoming both warmer and more variable. As ectotherms, freshwater fishes are particularly vulnerable to warming temperatures. But thermal acclimation could play a pivotal protective role in buffering ectothermic animals from the immediate effects of climate warming. The thermal history of an individual can markedly impact its capacity to cope with future warming, however it is unclear how prior experience with thermal fluctuation affects acclimation capabilities. This project will use metabolic physiology to understand how prior experience with thermal fluctuation impacts the capacity of native freshwater fish to acclimate to warming temperatures. This project offers exciting hands-on experience with native fish to advance our understanding of how climate thermal variability will shape our future freshwater species and ecosystems.

Due to the geographic isolation, islands are often the last refuge for many threatened and endemic species. Human activities, along with climate change facilitate the introduction of invasive alien species and disease (hereafter, IAS). Over the last decades, there has been increasing number of biosecurity plans developed aiming to minimize the impacts of IAS on economy, environment and human health. The development of new plans tends to be a sub-set of existing plans developed through neighbouring states or foreign aid. The omission of island-specific biosecurity considerations may cause inadvertent introduction of IAS and wastes limited resources. In this project, we propose to systematically discover and interrogate island biosecurity plans across the globe to create an objective standardised island biosecurity framework.

We look forward to your participation to drive aspects of quantitative risk assessment, spatial spread model, or portfolio allocation across biosecurity continuum, as branches of our current research.

Livestock guardian animals are increasingly important for the protection of livestock against predators. In Australian rangelands, Maremma sheepdogs guard sheep against predation by dingoes, therefore playing an important role in ensuring the livelihoods of livestock producers, reducing the need for lethal dingo control to protect livestock. However Maremmas could also pose a threat to wildlife in their own right. While the sheepdogs are regularly fed, they could also predate on wildlife, as has been demonstrated in South Africa (Drouilly et al 2020; Smith et al. 2020). This study will investigate the diet of free-ranging Maremmas on pastoral properties in the Southern Rangelands of Western Australia. The project will involve both field work for collection of samples, and laboratory analyses of diet.

The decline of forests worldwide is driven by multiple stressors including disease, fire and drought. Unfortunately, the interactions of multiple stressors may increase a forest’s susceptibility to future stressors. For example, a forest that has experienced drought and fire may have reduced health and vigour and thus be more prone to pathogen incursions. This project will determine how prone these stressed forests are to future pathogen incursions. We will quantify the diversity of pathogens and compare to the diversity of pathogens in healthy forest.

Lures are used to attract animals for surveillance or monitoring purposes. Historically, these lures are food-based and short-lived (2 weeks). Developments in remote communications now means that traps are becoming more autonomous and can be left out for longer periods of time with little to no maintenance required. One of the current shortfalls relating to these autonomous traps is the continuous need to replace the trap lure. Such a lure would significantly decrease operational costs associated with refreshing lures and increase the effectiveness of the control/monitoring operations by ensuring that the lures are always optimally attractive to target animals. This project will trial New Zealand-developed long-life block lures to assess the effectiveness and longevity of the lures in attracting invasive rodents in Australia.

Being able to identify individual animals is essential for population estimates. Animals such as foxes, which lack obvious distinguishing markings, can be difficult to individually identify. This project will examine novel ways to identify individual foxes from a catalogue of photographic images of a population of foxes in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Techniques developed in this project will be applicable across a wide range of species.

Habitat fragmentation has resulted in forest fragments spread throughout other land uses (i.e. farming and horticulture). The edges of these fragments are more prone to human and animal traffic and increased access for invasive species, including pathogens. This project will determine whether plant species along these disturbed edges accumulate more pathogens than plant species in the forest's interior. Roots from multiple plant species in these two distinct areas will be collected and root fragments plated on selective media for culturing of potential fungal and oomycete pathogens.

Invasive plant species can alter plant communities and pose a risk to native plants through pathogen accumulation. Invasive plant species may be less susceptible to some plant pathogens, acting as reservoirs that can increase transmission to native plant species. This project will determine the susceptibility of invasive and native plants to various plant pathogens through leaf/branch assays. The student will inoculate the various host material and measure lesion growth over time. This project will enhance knowledge of the host range of important plant pathogens and highlight possible hosts that may act as reservoirs or be less susceptible.

Plant-soil feedbacks occur when plant species affect the abiotic and biotic properties of soils which in turn can alter fitness of host plant species. Pairwise plant-soil feedbacks are informative as they measure the performance to two plant species in soils conditioned by themselves (i.e. home soils) compared to another species (i.e. away soils). There has been debate on appropriate methodologies for these types of experiments. Therefore, this project aims to test different approaches to plant-soil feedbacks; specifically this project will compare using a complete sample of home and away soils to using a small proportion of home and away soils (inoculated into sterilised soils).

Dryandra Woodland National Park (‘Dryandra’) features the largest remnant of native vegetation on the western edge of the Western Australian wheatbelt. The reserve supports more than half of the total known numbers of the Endangered numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus), represents one of only three (possibly now two) natural populations of the Critically Endangered woylie (Bettongia penicillata), and supports an important population of the Vulnerable chuditch (Dasyurus geoffroii). Despite its large total area (280 km2), Dryandra is represented by 17 isolated blocks of native vegetation surrounded by intensive agricultural lands that have been largely cleared. Ensuring persistence of these important mammal species requires sufficient space to support thriving populations, but also sufficient connectivity to enable genetic flow. The isolated blocks can provide important habitat if they are connected through viable corridors. This project will investigate which corridors are used by these species to inform management decisions about designing future corridors.

1) Blood flow restriction during exercise involves wearing thin pressurised cuffs around the arms or legs, to enhance how the body adapts to low-intensities of exercise. Typical assessments of the correct pressure to use for exercise with blood flow restriction require doppler ultrasound assessment of the pressure required to completely stop blood flow, but this is expensive and requires training. This research will explore more simple approaches to make this technique easier for practitioners to use.

2) Blood flow restriction (wearing thin pressurised cuffs around the arms or legs) has been found to cause reductions in sensations of pain, which could benefit patients recovering from injury or with a history of musculoskeletal pain (e.g. knee pain). However, we don't know exactly how wearing these cuffs decreases pain. This research will explore the mechanisms of how blood flow restriction can alleviate pain.

1) Wearing blood flow restriction cuffs (thin pressurised cuffs on the legs) during soccer training has been shown to enhance change of direction ability, and performance in different tests of endurance. However, it is possible that wearing the cuffs during sport-specific training (e.g. passing or shooting drills in soccer or other field sports) could cause impairments in technique, which would not be advantageous. This research will examine whether wearing blood flow restriction cuffs during sport-specific activities (team or field sports) impairs technical performance.

Competitive electronic sports (esports) require athletes to react quickly and accurately in response to a complex and dynamic virtual environment. Acute exercise facilitates short-term cognitive performance in lab-based assessments through a variety of mechanisms; namely increased cerebral blood flow, mental arousal and neurotrophin concentrations. By extension, a short bout of exercise prior to an esports competition may improve performance. However, there is currently no evidence regarding the efficacy of exercise in esports. In this repeated-measures trial, you will evaluate the acute feasibility and efficacy of a short bout of intense resistance exercise on response time and accuracy during both an ecologically valid task as well as standard lab-based cognitive tests in competitive esports athletes.

Contemporary circus is a performance domain that requires artists to perform physically and mentally challenging acts in front of live audiences. Several talent development pathways lead to careers as professional circus artists, but the impact of these on artists’ mental health is poorly understood. Building on Wylleman & Lavallee’s lifespan model to holistic talent development, this research project aims to explore circus artists’ identity within the context of these talent development systems, and relate them to mental health. The student will conduct thematic analyses data the student will collect via online interviews. The student will adopt a relativist approach to reality to gain deep and detailed insight into the artists’ experiences. This project will develop the students’ online interviewing skills, and will further the student’s understanding and abilities to conduct scientifically rigorous qualitative research.

In elite team sport settings, Global Positioning System (GPS) devices have traditionally been used to quantify movement demands based on time and displacement, allowing the determination of speed, distance and acceleration metrics. Technological advancements in the microsensors housed in athlete tracking devices now allows for more nuanced analysis incorporating accelerometer- and gyroscope-derived data. However, whether some of the more recent developments in team sport movement analysis are valid & reliable, and whether they add further useful information than traditional GPS-derived variables, remains to be determined. Therefore, this project (in conjunction with the Australian national men’s field hockey team – the Kookaburras) will investigate the use of novel movement profile metrics with this elite team sport cohort to determine their suitability for imbedding within the daily training environment.

Exercise might be the closest thing to a magic pill for some people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Exercise can help with mobility, fatigue and pain. In this project you will assist the Project BASE team to co-ordinate and deliver telehealth exercise to people living across Australia with MS. The BASE protocol will also be delivered by OTs, physios and EPs across Australia and you will have the opportunity to help us understand and improve the clinical delivery of telehealth exercise programme in clinical populations.

Exercise is one of the most significant and effective treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS), yet many people with MS do not achieve levels of exercise associated with positive outcomes. This study will assess whether exercising to music will influence motivation to exercise. You will join the Project SCORE team and assist in delivery of the exercise program at Murdoch University, and be involved in data collection and analysis. This study would be appropriate for a student of psychology, physiotherapy, clinical exercise physiology or similar behavioural science.

Coral reefs are subject to increasing pressures due to global warming. An increase of 1°C over a sustained period can have profound irreversible effects on reef organisms. For example, a marine heatwave off Western Australia in 2011 resulted in coral bleaching and mortality of a wide range of invertebrates on Ningaloo reef.
Bivalves, such as Giant Clams, are biological indicators of ecosystem health. As ectotherms, water temperature has significant impacts on their physiology. Giant Clams also contain photosynthetic zooxanthellae that live on their mantle tissue die off rapidly when exposed to prolonged heatwaves. The loss of this symbiont may have significant impacts on clam’s ability to gain sufficient nutrition.
The aim of this project is to determine whether increased water temperature causes significant stress to the shell gaping behaviour and zooxanthellae concentrations of Giant Clams. This information will provide valuable insight into the effects of global warming on coral reefs.

The review of the testing methodology that has already been applied on the existing buildings is to be undertaken. The review shall determine if the methodology applied was appropriate and whether resultant data and inferred outcomes are reliable and valid for decision-making.
Furthermore, the second stage of this project encompasses testing and comparison of the thermal transmission of various paints, including Thermoshield, and other alternative products. The testing would be applied on a smaller scale structure simulating the large-scale building with a justifiable rationale and considering variables that may influence results.

Please contact Dr. Almantas Pivrikas for more information.
0466 965 314
a.pivrikas@murdoch.edu.au

Freshwater and riparian ecosystems are the most biologically diverse in the world per unit area but are also disproportionately threatened by climate change. The most severe effect of climate change is the loss of permanent pools that provide essential refuges for the survival of species during the dry season. We have recently found that fire-fighting waterpoints can mimic natural refuge pools to maintain biodiversity. However, the utilization of waterpoints for conservation is currently hindered by an inadequate understanding of the characteristics that make them effective as biodiversity refuges. Therefore, this project aims to identify the ecological characteristics that make fire-fighting waterpoints effective biodiversity refuges. Projects can be designed to focus on any of the flora and fauna that are dependent on natural refuge pools for survival, including fishes, frogs, macroinvertebrates, and terrestrial flora and fauna (including feral animals). This project is fully funded and includes the scope to design field and/or laboratory-based studies.

Lures are used to attract wildlife for surveillance or monitoring purposes. Historically, these lures are food-based and short-lived (2 weeks). Developments in remote communications now means that wildlife traps are becoming more autonomous and can be left out for longer periods of time with little to no maintenance required. One of the current shortfalls relating to these autonomous traps is the continuous need to replace the trap lure. Such a lure would significantly decrease operational costs associated with refreshing lures and increase the effectiveness of the control/monitoring operations by ensuring that the lures are always optimally attractive to target animals. This project will trial New Zealand developed long-life block lures to assess the effectiveness and longevity of the lures in attracting invasive rodents in Australia.

Sooty mould is a fungal disease that can grow on surfaces covered by honeydew, a sticky substance exuded by Hemipteran insects (e.g. scale insects). There are over 8,000 species of scale insects globally, many of whom form mutualistic associations with ants. Ants feed on the honeydew produced by the scale insects, and in return for this food reward, aggressively protect them from predators and parasites. Excessive sooty mould outbreaks that are harmful to the plant can occur when a non-native ant, or non-native scale insect is introduced, causing an imbalance to the natural ecosystem. Although sooty mould species commonly feed on the honeydew exudates of insects, there are some sooty mould species that feed on exudates secreted from leaf glands or other substances leached from leaves. This project will investigate one aspect of the potential causes and consequences of a sooty mould outbreak in an island ecosystem. The student must be fit, enjoy walking, and willing to travel to remote locations to complete fieldwork.

Supervisors: Dr Samuel Lymbery, Professor Alan Lymbery

Social animals must choose where to invest their limited resources to maximise group competitiveness. For ants, there is a proposed trade-off between investing in the individual size of workers and the size of the colony. This trade-off affects how and where ants can live. For example, previous work has suggested that invasive ants should invest less in individual size and more in producing large colonies. We are seeking interested students to help us investigate this trade-off, which is fundamental to the fitness and strategy of ant colonies, and the environmental and social factors that control it. Approaches could include conducting a comprehensive meta-analysis and/or review to determine whether such a trade-off is consistent across ant species, and categorising ants along the trade-off curve according to such features as invasiveness, pest potential, habitat, diet, and foraging strategy.

Green Sawfish (Pristis zijsron) are the largest of all sawfishes and are globally threatened. Drones have been shown to be useful in detecting this species in a number of tidal creeks and river mouths in the Pilbara. The project will involve analysing footage of sawfish, sharks, rays and turtles from a number of tidal creeks and river mouths to determine hotspot area, seasonal changes in habitat use and detection of potential nursery areas.

The Fitzroy River is arguably the most important nursery in the world for Freshwater Sawfish (Pristis pristis). Two decades of research, in collaboration with traditional owners and ranger groups, has provided detail of habitat use and movements during the dry season using acoustic tracking and catch data. The opportunity exists for a student to engage in this research to examine the wet season movement patterns of this iconic species.

There is very little information documented with regard to the fish fauna of the Pilbara’s estuaries and mangrove creeks. The region is relatively pristine and has an extensive network of mangrove systems that are known to house threatened fishes and provide important nursery habitats for a vast number of species. The opportunity exists for one or more students to undertake surveys to document teleost and elasmobranch diversity and habitat associations from the Exmouth Gulf to the southern Pilbara.

Both projects relate to motor neuron disease. P1 will create novel cell models of MND associated with NEK1 mutations and assess the functional effects of these mutations. NEK1 mutations are reported as a rare cause of MND, however the mechanisms underlying pathogenesis have not been established. We will investigate effects on DNA damage repair, cell cycle aberrations and mitochondrial damage. P2: Will use an established and unique TDP-43 proteinopathy (present in 97% of MND cases) cell model to perform preclinical testing of our patent pending drug candidate on MND cellular phenotypes, including TDP-43 aggregation (insolubility) and cytoplasmic mislocalisation, RNA regulation and decreased cell viability. Skills obtained during these projects include: cell culture maintenance and transfections, DNA/RNA/Protein extractions, RT-PCR, Sanger DNA sequencing and analysis, agarose and SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, western blots, cell viability assays, immunocytochemistry and confocal microscopy, data analysis in ImageJ and SPSS.

The ANPC laboratory can routinely measure thousands of metabolites using a combination of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Mass Spectrometry. Metabolites such as lipids and lipoproteins indicate an individual's health. Comparing biomarkers from healthy individuals and others with medical conditions (such as diabetes, COVID-19 etc.) is a key step in understanding metabolic disturbances and diseases aetiology. However, little is known regarding the 'normal' fluctuation of metabolism within a day, between days and even across months in each individual, resulting in unwanted noise in the statistical models. Recent advances in the lab allow small blood volume self-collection, allowing repeated sample collection with reduce patient burden. This project's initial work is to help understand variations due to lifestyle (diet, exercise, circadian rhythm, etc.) on metabolic signature of individuals. It is hoped that the study's results will allow for future personalised health and monitoring applications taking science from the 'bench' to the ‘community’.

The ANPC laboratory can routinely measure thousands of metabolites using a combination of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Mass Spectrometry. Metabolites such as lipids and lipoproteins indicate an individual's health. Comparing biomarkers from healthy individuals and others with medical conditions (such as diabetes, COVID-19 etc.) is a key step in understanding metabolic disturbances and diseases aetiology. However, little is known regarding the 'normal' fluctuation of metabolism due to lifestyle choices adding unwanted noise in statistical models. Recent advances in the lab allow small blood volume self-collection, allowing repeated sample collection with reduce patient burden. This project's initial work is to help understand variations due to lifestyle (diet, exercise, circadian rhythm, etc.) on metabolic signature of individuals. It is hoped that the study's results will allow for future personalised health and monitoring applications taking science from the 'bench' to the ‘community’.

The advent of the data era such as the widespread capture of digital health data, such as electronic patient records introduces numerous opportunities and challenges to transform healthcare. Artificial Intelligence, especially machine learning techniques, features outstanding learning capabilities to make autonomous decision-making from complex data. This project will investigate advanced machine learning techniques in analyzing complex health data to assist health professionals in making informed decision-making and providing patient-centered care.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) empowered by deep learning and machine learning has been integrated into many automated decision-making processes. However, many existing techniques cannot explicitly explain how the prediction outcome is derived, which ruins human trust in the results and undermines AI adoption in high-stake applications. This project aims to investigate explainable AI solutions in real applications, to facilitate more transparent and trustworthy decision-making processes.

Advances in digital technologies cut short geographic, cultural, institutional and psychic distances across national borders, and present business opportunities previously unavailable to small and medium-sized enterprises. The project will investigate these business opportunities. It focuses on how adoption of digital platforms and associated ecosystems may change the way business is undertaken, and helps small and medium-sized enterprises overcome the constraints they face in competition with rivals. The project has the potential to develop into a PhD level research. Candidate requirement: good at numbers, and comfortable with quantitative research methods.

Accelerated global integration has created unprecedented opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises to expand their market reach across national borders, whereas the recent ‘deglobalization’ increases the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in international competition. The project will investigate the international business opportunities faced by small and medium-sized enterprises in the VUCA conditions, and propose managerial recommendations. The project has the potential to develop into a PhD level research. Candidate requirement: good at numbers, and comfortable with quantitative research methods.

Family firms count for vast majority of firms around the world, but have not been given sufficient attention in business and management research. The project will investigate key business and management issues faced by family firms. It examines how the emphasis on socioemotional wealth, combination of ownership and management, centralized authority and discretion power, and other attributes of family firms affect business operations, and how family owners may leverage the distinctive organizational attributes to enhance innovation and performance in the digital era. The project has the potential to develop into a PhD level research. Candidate requirement: good at numbers, and comfortable with quantitative research methods.

Foreign firms have been conventionally blamed for polluting the environment by transferring environment-unfriendly production technologies to developing countries. Whether and how the increasing ‘green’ awareness has changed this picture in recent years? This project will investigate this issue, focusing on whether or not the ‘greener’ technologies in multinational enterprises have a ‘spillover’ effect in developing economies. The project has the potential to develop into a PhD level research. Candidate requirement: good at numbers, and comfortable with quantitative research methods.

Covid-19, which broke out at the end of 2019, has developed into a global pandemic. Covid-19 has been severely affecting people’s health and lives. As a highly infectious disease, meanwhile, COVID-19 has been generating a devastating impact on businesses around the world. Business organizations across industries have taken a variety of initiatives to develop new business models in response to the changing business environment. This project will investigate the initiatives business organizations have taken, the features of the new business models, and the possible impact of business model innovations on organizational performance. The project has the potential to develop into a PhD level research. Candidate requirement: good at numbers, and comfortable with quantitative research methods.

Global warming is a challenge to mankind. By undertaking corporate environmental sustainability practices in daily operations, business organizations can play a crucial role in the global battle against climate change. While some business organizations are proactive in undertaking corporate environmental sustainability practices, others are hesitant, if not reluctant, to take action for fear that these practices would incur too much cost to generate any substantial economic benefits. This project will investigate whether corporate environmental sustainability practices enhance or hinder organizational performance. The project has the potential to develop into a PhD level research. Candidate requirement: good at numbers, and comfortable with quantitative research methods.

With the fast development of Next Generation Sequencing technologies, hundreds of crop accessions have been genetically profiled. The large volume of genomics data will be incorporated into phenotyping data and environment variables measured in large field trials across Australia to develop genotype to phenotype predictive models. Such models predict phenotypic traits as functions of genotypic and environmental inputs as well as their complicated interactions. The project will have access to thousands of high-density genetic markers and variations obtained by other methods, which will boost the reliability of the models that can predict phenotypes using multi-level genomics profiles. The project will also evaluate the prediction of gene sets that can give optimal barley yield and quality given a specific environmental condition. Using machine learning, new models will not only provide a framework for de novo breeding and precision agriculture, but give a new systems biology perspective in the context of crop genetics.

Improving crop grain yield and other important quality, including heat and drought tolerance, disease resistance, etc, rely on understanding the regulatory interaction between genotype and environment and identifying the genes controlling crop genotypes. This requires mapping the phenotypic performance of large number of genotypes under different environmental conditions. The fast development of Next-Generation Sequencing technology has enabled sequencing thousands of oat germplasms and made available large amounts of genomic resources, including the oat pan-genome. On the contrary, phenotyping remains a labour-intensive process and desperately needs a high-throughput approach. The project aims to develop a fast and automatic phenotyping method using deep learning-based image analysis. The project will develop skills in state-of-the-art deep learning methods and have access to more hundreds of Gigabytes of image data from > 900 oat varieties.

Butterflies – and moths, beetles and insects more generally – have evolved many creative ways of producing green coloration, with or without metallic or iridescent shimmer. Some use green pigmentation, but most appear green by developing diverse types of structural coloration or optical effects. These structures are often highly complex and can create polarization, iridescence and spectral effects. Why butterflies have evolved so many different solutions to producing green coloration remains unclear. In this project you will conduct a stocktake of the mechanisms for generating green coloration used by Australian butterflies, based on spectral analysis and electron microscopy or tomography. This knowledge will then be compared across the lepidopteran phylogeny and against important ecological variables to understand better the evolutionary drivers of green coloration strategies in butterflies. Depending on the student’s interests, the project can be extended to assess whether spectral properties of butterfly coloration can be used in automated species recognition based on deep learning approaches of hyperspectral images.

Policy makers around the world have recently articulated grave concerns about the security implications of climate change. But do climate-related disasters like droughts, floods or storms really lead to a higher risk of conflict? And if so, what types of conflict can be linked to disasters (e.g., armed rebellions, protests, community violence), and which contexts are particularly vulnerable to disaster-related conflicts? For this project, you will draw on (and, if necessary, refine) a conceptual framework developed by an ARC-funded project and employ is to a current day case study, such as the 2022 floods in Pakistan, the 2022 drought in Ethiopia, or the 2022 floods in Nigeria.

Making an innovative contribution to the literature on non-traditional security issues, this project will investigate how COVID-19 shaped the dynamics of civil wars? Did governments lack the resources to fight insurgents during a pandemic or did they rather use lockdowns and border closures to crush their opponents? And could rebels capitalise on the COVID-related chaos and grievances for their cause or were they too busy dealing with the pandemic themselves? Based on two self-selected case studies of civil wars and a conceptual framework developed by an ongoing project, your research would answer these questions.

Scholars have long tried to disentangle how academic research shapes political debates and policies. However, while climate security is a prominent topic among many national governments and international organisations, there is currently no assessment on how well-grounded such debates are in scientific evidence. To address this shortcoming, the project will compile a list of influential policy reports on climate change and security. Subsequently, it will assess to which degree and on which kind of scientific insights these reports are based. The project will be supported by a leading climate security scholar and a renowned expert on tracing research impact on policies.

Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students spend years developing a highly refined skillset to be able to tackle challenging issues facing society. This process can be stressful and isolating, and research indicates that many HDR students experience low levels of mental health. While interacting with animals is known to improve aspects of mental health, there is a paucity of research investigating whether therapy dogs can facilitate the mental health of HDR students. In this repeated-measures study, HDR students will complete validated mental health questionnaires or several occasions. You will use this data to l evaluate the effect the presence of therapy dogs during repeated fortnightly writing sessions on the mental health of HDR students.

Creating Perceptual Experts in Australia's Policing and Security Agencies.

Researchers are still learning how best to develop expertise in the interpretation of pattern and impression evidence, and police agencies are under pressure to establish rigorous training practices. This project aims to turn novices into experts more quickly by directing learning toward the most important cues in the context of fingerprint identification. The findings from this project will be used by our police partners, who will then have a solid empirical basis for the design of national training programs and standards to create perceptual experts that are accurate, reliable, and continuously improving.

Using Virtual Reality to Create Novel Metrics of Expertise in Safety-Critical Decision Making.

The decision making accuracy of experts working in suboptimal environments, such as low vision, low information, and time pressure, is a significant problem. This human mental performance project will use fully immersive 360-degree virtual reality to develop a metric of visuo-spatial decision-making, analytical, and meta-decision-making expertise. This metric will afford the possibility of detecting individual differences and high performers in the general population and help select and train personnel in disciplines requiring safety-critical decision-making skills, such as submariners, air traffic controllers and power plant operators.

Cognitive Biosecurity: Assessing and Training Perceptual Expertise for Defence Biosecurity Threats.

The overseas deployment of naval vessels can transport non-native marine species to Australia, posing a biosecurity threat and increasing operational costs. The Navy relies on visual inspection of vessels above and below water to detect these threats. This task is cognitively demanding, and genuine expertise is limited. Navy Clearance Divers perform the visual inspection of vessels without domain-specific training. Critically, task proficiency is unknown, and current training is based on intuition rather than evidence. This project will use established cognitive science methods to enhance the acquisition of biosecurity expertise and develop an evidence base for developing training tools to improve Australian maritime biosecurity effectiveness.

Accelerating Expertise in Australia’s Fire and Emergency Services.

This project aims to provide input and guidance for improving The Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES)’s Career Fire and Rescue Service’s current training models and curriculum. The review will take an accelerated expertise approach and draw on research from The Psychology of Expertise, Educational Pedagogical Frameworks, and The Science of Learning. The goal of accelerated expertise is to achieve the same level of expertise in less training time or achieve higher levels of expertise in the same training time. This review of DFES’s training and curriculum will provide improvement of instruction material that promotes the acquisition of essential skills and the transfer of knowledge into practice.

Telling Prints Apart vs Telling Prints Together: Inter- vs Intra-print Variability in Fingerprint Analysis.

Fingerprints from the same person can appear very differently depending on factors like pressure, material on the skin surface, the curvature of the surface, elasticity and dryness of the skin, and age. Prints from different people can also vary greatly in size, pattern type, and ridge characteristics. When comparing two prints, an examiner needs to “see through the noise” by distinguishing whether the print is distorted that way because of same person information or because of different person information. This concept of distortion is complicated because it encompasses the myriad ways a print can vary. This project aims to understand to what extent distortion affects examiners’ ability to correctly identify fingerprints from the same source.

Electronic sports (eSports) have gained substantial popularity in recent years, becoming one of the world's largest entertainment industries with a current estimated net worth over USD$1.5 billion. Professional conventional sports clubs have been diversifying into esports to maintain brand relevance. The status of eSport has also been established to the point where the International Olympic Committee approved eSports as a sport for the 2022 Asian Games. Despite the global popularity and established status as a sport, scientific research exploring how best to optimise performance in eSports is scarce. This scoping study aims to gain insight into the knowledge gaps and research interests in the eSports field, and to establish research priorities with respect to best preparing eSports athletes to thrive. We will achieve this by conducting surveys and interviews with eSports teams in Perth and Singapore.

1. The project will involve laboratory and data analysis
2. Project will involve data analysis

Burn injuries can cause significant physiological and psychological harm that led to quality of life challenges. While patient life expectancy has improved due to advances in surgical treatments, more research is needed to better understand non-surgical treatment approaches, especially in patients with non-severe burns. A biological system that has the potential to support improvements in burn-related symptoms such as motor and sensory dysfunction is the nervous system. In this project, we are aiming to improve the excitability of cortical neurons to facilitate burn rehabilitation by implementing a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The student selected to be a part of the Burns Research Team will learn how to conduct testing and intervention sessions using TMS while also learning other advanced technologies such as BrainSight to examine MRI images and DeepLabCut to examine motor control.

1. The project will involve laboratory and data analysis
2. Project will involve data analysis

The pace of digitalisation has increased tremendously over the past couple of years. The Covid pandemic accelerated this further. A significant change in the way people work in organisation has taken place with technology contributing a major portion to this. The effect of this behaviour change is reflected not only in the productivity function but also behaviours employers are looking for in the new employees. This has implications for the jobs of the future. This research intends to look at the types of behaviours (then and now) to be able to develop a framework/model.

The businesses of today have taken a major turn in terms of their new business models by employing new technologies. Digital technologies are being used to develop new value chains, new productivity functions and new performance parameters. To be able to maintain a competitive advantage and survive, the traditional business needs to look at these elements and see how best to incorporate in their traditional models. This research aims to explore the explore this current trend in the industry and what needs to be done to produce job-ready students to guide changes in business education.

The HR Department of today has taken a radical shift from the traditional one. Digital technologies including VR have influenced the roles of HR professionals, both in day to operations and decision making. The style of working and the job role is changing. We need to have an in-depth look at digital technologies and the related competencies required to work in the future and remain employable. This research aims to explore the existing literature and highlight the skills and competencies required to redesign the role of HR professionals.

Besides, work-related stress is also related to well-being, as such, we need to analyse if this stress confounds the association between digital skills and well-being. This research needs to explore the literature on digital skills required by leaders and their own psychological well-being. A hypothetical model will be developed which will be tested either in a high-tech manufacturing or service sector to determine the association between digital skills and well-being, and the influence of work-related stress on this relationship.

In these times of uncertainty, having a resilient and sustainable technology strategy is vital to maintain a competitive advantage. Technology systems should be able to maintain their function even in case of disruptions to maintain continuity (sustainability). The issue of adaptive resilience has significantly gained the importance of late to technology systems. This research will look into adaptive resilience and its application/link to technology systems (in terms of sustainability). Integration of resilience capacity in technology systems should enhance adaptive resilience in technology systems.

Covid-19, which broke out at the end of 2019, has developed into a global pandemic. Covid-19 has been severely affecting people’s health and lives. As a highly infectious disease, meanwhile, COVID-19 has been generating a devastating impact on businesses around the world. Business organizations across industries have taken a variety of initiatives to develop new business models in response to the changing business environment. This project will investigate the initiatives business organizations have taken, the features of the new business models, and the possible impact of business model innovations on organizational performance. The project has the potential to develop into a PhD level research. Candidate requirement: good at numbers, and comfortable with quantitative research methods.

Global warming is a challenge to mankind. By undertaking corporate environmental sustainability practices in daily operations, business organizations can play a crucial role in the global battle against climate change. While some business organizations are proactive in undertaking corporate environmental sustainability practices, others are hesitant, if not reluctant, to take action for fear that these practices would incur too much cost to generate any substantial economic benefits. This project will investigate whether corporate environmental sustainability practices enhance or hinder organizational performance. The project has the potential to develop into a PhD level research. Candidate requirement: good at numbers, and comfortable with quantitative research methods.

Sphalerite (ZnS) and chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) are important economic minerals of zinc and copper, respectively. Often, during ore formation, small inclusions of chalcopyrite may form within larger grains of sphalerite in a texture referred to as 'chalcopyrite disease' (CD). Due to the intricate nature of this mineral texture, CD often impedes the efficient metallurgical extraction of Zn and Cu; though, there remains a poor understanding on how CD develops in nature. This project will investigate the fundamental mechanisms responsible for the formation of CD. Laboratory experiments that mimic ore-forming conditions (temperature, pH, solution composition) will be conducted, and the samples will be analyzed to reveal their microscopic textures, chemical compositions and mineralogical features. It is anticipated that the insights gained from these experiments will have implications for extractive metallurgy, mineral exploration and fundamental geochemistry. Students with a background in chemistry, metallurgy, mineralogy, geology or related disciplines are encouraged to apply.

Nowadays, multiple mobile robots are commonly used in the fields of entertainment, medicine, mining, rescuing, education, military, space, agriculture and many more. While performing the task of navigation and control, the robots are equipped with many intelligent equipments which are required to model the environment and localize its position, control the motion, detect obstacles, and avoid obstacles by using navigational techniques.

The main goal of this project is to develop an artificial intelligence-based navigation and formation control of mobile robots to successfully manoeuvre and avoid collision in a cluttered environment.

Virtual power plants (VPPs) are the key components of future energy systemss. Increasing the level of renewables with the associated variability and uncertainty makes planning of VPPs complicated and time-consu,ing. The research goal would be to develop a fast planning algorithm to provide a cost-efficient strategy for VPP's planning including renewable and storage sizing and customes' contributions.

The Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP) phase 6 (CMIP6), provides the most up-to-date catalogue of climate simulations using the most up-to-date and latest climate models, and a vast library of model outputs are readily available from which many research questions can be tailored. For example, one question could be: "How well do CMIP6 models simulate southern hemisphere blocking and how do blocking patterns change in the future?". The student would need to have some background in atmospheric science, and some prior experience of using scripted programming languages such as Python/Matlab/R would be necessary. This would be a desk-only study and the availability of the data-sets makes this type of project well suited for an aRMT as no field work or data collection would be involved, but only data analysis of existing data-sets.

Invasive plant species can alter plant communities but can also pose a risk to native plants through pathogen accumulation. Invasive plant species may be less susceptible to some plant pathogens where they act as reservoirs that can increase transmission to native plant species. This project will determine the susceptibility of invasive and native plants to various plant pathogens through leaf/branch assays. The student will inoculate the various host material and measure lesion growth over time. Not only will this project enhance knowledge of host range of important plant pathogens, but also highlight possible hosts that may act as reservoirs or be less susceptible.

Habitat fragmentation has resulted in forest fragments spread throughout other land uses (i.e. farming and horticulture). The edges of these fragments are more prone to human and animal traffic as well as increased access for invasive species including pathogens. This project will determine whether plant species along these disturbed edges accumulate more pathogens than plant species in the interior of the forest. Roots from multiple plant species in these two distinct areas will be collected and root fragments plated on selective media for culturing of potential fungal and oomycete pathogens.

Plant-soil feedbacks occur when plant species affect the abiotic and biotic properties of soils which in turn can alter the fitness of host plant species. Pairwise plant-soil feedbacks are informative as they measure the performance of two plant species in soils conditioned by themselves (i.e. home soils) compared to another species (i.e. away soils). There has been debate on appropriate methodologies for these types of experiments. Therefore, this project aims to test different approaches to plant-soil feedbacks; specifically, this project will compare using a full sample of home and away soils in comparison to using a small proportion of home and away soils (inoculated into sterilised soils).

Sphalerite (ZnS) and chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) are important economic minerals of zinc and copper, respectively. Often, during ore formation, small inclusions of chalcopyrite may form within larger grains of sphalerite in a texture referred to as ‘chalcopyrite disease’ (CD). Due to the intricate nature of this mineral texture, CD often impedes the efficient metallurgical extraction of Zn and Cu; though, there remains a poor understanding on how CD develops in nature. This project will investigate the fundamental mechanisms responsible for the formation of CD. Laboratory experiments that mimic ore-forming conditions (temperature, pH, solution composition) will be conducted, and the samples will be analyzed to reveal their microscopic textures, chemical compositions and mineralogical features. It is anticipated that the insights gained from these experiments will have implications for extractive metallurgy, mineral exploration and fundamental geochemistry. Students with a background in chemistry, metallurgy, mineralogy, geology or related disciplines are encouraged to apply.

Feral cats can be difficult to monitor and control due to neophobia and trap avoidance behaviour, resulting in low detection rates and variable success of control measures. We will test a novel, long-life (up to 1 year) lure system to increase trap captures and reduce neophobic behaviour of cats and develop a smart camera to identify cats.

Being able to identify individual animals is essential for population estimates. Animals such as foxes, which lack obvious distinguishing markings, can be difficult to individually identify. This project will examine novel ways to identify individual foxes from a catalogue of photographic images of a population of foxes in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Techniques developed in this project will be applicable across a wide range of species.

A recent study lead by Murdoch University found that 80% of fungi identified in quenda scats were unclassified on global genetic databases. This indicates that they have never been genetically described before, representing a huge gap in knowledge. This project will compare fungi consumed by quenda with a broader sample collected form the environment to test the hypothesis that quenda are fussy eaters.

Australian ravens are problematic for many Perth schoolyards. They are super-smart animals that know how to undo backpack zips, open lunchboxes, and access bins. Their populations flourish around schools as they exploit discarded (or badly protected) play lunches and refuse. But what happens when term is over and students leave for holidays? Anecdotal stories suggest that these bullying birds head out into the neighbourhood where they cause havoc among small bird and reptile populations. This project will use a range of methods to find out what the birds are doing: following ravens using trackers, watching their exploitation of resources within schoolyards, and analysing their diet.

Understanding how many dingoes are present in an area is an important piece of information necessary to guide their management. Many studies use passive infrared camera traps to monitor population numbers, assuming that estimates obtained through these cameras are robust and representative of actual numbers. However it is clear that dingoes avoid cameras – some stare into the lens, while others walk around the sensor field and therefore avoid triggering the camera. This project will address a simple question – can we alter camera trap position to increase the likelihood of ‘trapping’ camera-wary dingoes?

An ongoing study in the Pilbara in northwest Western Australia that has been tracking feral cats has revealed interesting patterns in their behaviour, which we believe could reflect whether the animals are hunting or 'commuting'. This project will involve analysing the spatial patterns of cats to understand their movement ecology. This project will suit student who are strong in statistics, or would like to learn new statistical and spatial mapping approaches – great skills for future jobs.

Gnammas are rock pools at the top of the granite inselbergs scattered across southern WA. These gnammas have been found to contain rare species of aquatic plants and to have a much higher invertebrate biodiversity than gnammas in other parts of Australia and the rest of the world. Because gnammas are rainfed and unconnected to groundwater, they are unaffected by the salinisation that afflicts much of the wheatbelt, so they may be refuges from salinity. Little is known about the interactions between species in Australian gnammas or geographical patterns of species distribution. Food web structure in gnammas is also poorly understood. This project will either investigate the role of algae and leaf litter in gnamma food webs through sampling and experimental manipulation of leaf litter abundance or investigate patterns of alpha, beta and gamma diversity in gnammas.

Southwestern Australia is a biodiversity hotspot with a unique evolutionary heritage. Most aquatic insects in the region are endemic (found nowhere else) and relicts of cooler and wetter times (i.e. of Gondwanan origin). Little is known about the life histories, diet or environmental tolerances of these insects. A few studies show that some species have quite low tolerance of heat, whilst other species have shown surprising adaptations to withstand drying. Yet, knowledge of species life histories is essential for effective conservation. Many of these taxa will have important roles in the ecology of waterbodies (e.g. as shredders or algal grazers) but we do not know which taxa fulfil these roles nor how they will respond to continuing warming or drying. Within this topic, there are many options for students to choose which insect group they would like to study. Projects will involve field sampling but could also involve laboratory rearing of insect larvae and experiments to examine responses to warming and drying.

Ostracods are small bivalve crustaceans living in freshwaters in southwestern Australia. Little is known of their ecology, yet they may have large populations and high diversity. Other studies show that ostracods may be sensitive to salinity and show differing responses to wetland drying. For example, within one common family (Cyprididae) some species may enter dormancy as adults in drying wetlands, reviving quickly once wetlands refill; in other species, adults die but leave behind desiccation-resistant eggs that hatch once wetlands refill. Some species appear to show delays in hatching, but the cues for hatching are not known. Given the likely importance of these animals in aquatic food webs, we need to know more about their ecology and life histories. This project involves field sampling and rearing ostracods in the laboratory under different conditions, to investigate responses to drying, warming and cues for egg hatching.

Social media influencers began as bloggers but in the last 10 years they have evolved and their influence has been harnessed by many brands and organisations. This project would involve interviewing bloggers who began blogging 10 years ago to hear their reflections on the changes in social media and influencer marketing.

Working for the not-for-profit organisation, the Valuing Children Initiative, the project would involve designing, distributing, and analysing a survey of Australian adults on their attitude to children

Analysis of a major survey of women of colour in the Australian workplace, working with the not-for-profit group, Women of Colour Australia.

Investigating the impact of parental mobile phone use on their children, through interviews with practitioners and parents.

Undertaking research on the ethics of children as social media influencers.

How has the Indonesian Government worked with social media influencers during COVID 19.

The project will take existing antimicrobial dyes and incorporate these into a range of polymer coatings. The student will obtain training in a range of characterisation techniques and use these to investigate the effectiveness of the physicochemical incorporation. This will be followed by microbial studies to test the antimicrobial properties.

Daptomycin is an antibiotic used for treating infections caused by multi-drug resistant gram-positive bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). Resistance to daptomycin is rare and the mechanism of resistance is unknown.

The aims of the study are:

1. To identify novel genetic factors associated with daptomycin resistance in E. faecium using bioinformatics
2. To introduce the genetic factor(s) identified in a daptomycin-sensitive wild-type strain using molecular cloning
3. To test the effect, if any, of the genetic factor(s) identified on daptomycin sensitivity.

The project will involve:

• Bioinformatics analyses using a range of open source software pipelines
• Genomic DNA and plasmid extraction
• Primer design and PCR
• Molecular cloning techniques.

Isolates for the project will be sourced from the Australian Group for Antimicrobial Resistance (AGAR) Australian Enterococcus Sepsis Outcome Program reference laboratory located at Murdoch University. The project will be performed at the Antimicrobial Resistance and Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory at Murdoch University.

To understand the epidemiology underlying the appearance and spread of antimicrobial resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoea (Ng), several molecular techniques have been developed including multilocus sequence typing (MLST), N. gonorrhoeae multi-antigen sequence typing (NG-MAST), N. gonorrhoeae sequence typing for antimicrobial resistance (NG-STAR) and whole genome sequencing (WGS).

In Western Australia (WA), gonorrhoea is a notifiable disease and approximately 3000 cases are reported annually. A recent study showed Ng isolates circulating in WA consist of endemic lineages which likely evolved on-site as well as international lineages which were likely introduced by international and inter-state travel. In April 2020, the WA border was closed in response to the COVID19 pandemic, restricting the introduction of other Ng clones and allowing us to study the evolution and expansion rate of Ng clones already present in WA.

The aims of the study are:

1. To perform WGS on Ng isolated in Perth metropolitan area in 2019 and between 1 July 2020 and 30 June 2021
2. To compare MLST, NG-MAST and NG-STAR profiles of Ng circulating pre- and post- COVID19 outbreak
3. To determine the population structure of Ng, using core-genome phylogenetic analysis, pre- and post- COVID19 outbreak.

The project will involve:

• Whole genome sequencing
• Genome assembly
• Bioinformatics analyses using a range of open source software pipelines.

Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) was first reported in remote regions of Western Australia (WA) in 1992 and is now the predominant MRSA isolated in the state. To gain insights into the emergence of CA-MRSA, from 1995 to 2003 2,146 people living in 11 remote WA communities were screened for colonisation with S. aureus. Five CA-MRSA lineages were identified including four lineages harbouring the type IVa staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) element (ST1, ST5, ST45 and ST8). The reason for the spontaneous emergence of SCCmec in multiple lineages is not known.

The aims of the study are:

1. Determine if the SCCmec IVa elements identified in the four lineages identified in the remote community surveys are genetically the same
2. Determine if within a lineage the SCCmec IVa elements are genetically the same
3. Determine if the SCCmec IV element within a lineage has evolved over time 
4. Determine if the SCCmec IVa element in a “predominant” CA-MRSA lineage is the same as that found in a less frequently described CA-MRSA lineage.

Bacterial whole genome sequencing (WGS) enables high resolution characterisation of bacterial pathogens. In this project long-read WGS will be performed using the MinION (Oxford Nanopore Technologies). The project will involve:

• Bacterial DNA extraction and purification
• Quantification of bacterial genomic DNA
• Library preparation of DNA for sequencing
• PCR
• Sequencing
• Bioinformatics analyses using a range of open source software pipelines.

Isolates for the project will be sourced from the Western Australian MRSA reference laboratory located at Fiona Stanley Hospital. The project will be performed in the Microbiology Department at Pathwest Laboratory Medicine-WA, Fiona Stanley Hospital and the Antimicrobial Resistance and Infectious Diseases (AMRID) Research Laboratory, Murdoch University.

Vancomycin-resistant E. faecium (VREfm) is responsible for an increasing number of hospital-acquired, antibiotic-resistant infections. VREfm isolates possess a van operon which harbours genes responsible for resistance to vancomycin. Presence of the vanA operon results in resistance to vacomycin and typically resistance to teicoplanin. Presence of the vanB operon results in resistance to vancomycin but typically susceptibility to teicoplanin. In Australia, approximately 50% of E. faecium isolates causing bloodstream infections have been identified as VREfm.

As part of the Australian Enterococcal Sepsis Outcome Program (AESOP), the Australian Group for Antimicrobial Resistance (AGAR) conducts ongoing antimicrobial resistance surveillance on E. faecium isolated in blood. From 2018 to 2020, approximately 1,000 VREfm have been sequenced by the Antimicrobial Resistance and Infectious Diseases (AMRID) ResearchLaboratory at Murdoch University.

Using whole genome sequences, the aims of the study are:

1. To characterise the vanA and vanB operons currently circulating in Australia
2. To determine the core-genome phylogeny of sepsis-causing VREfm in Australia from 2018 to 2020
3. To investigate the association, if any, of antimicrobial resistance and virulence genes with specific phylogenetic clades of VREfm in Australia.

The project will involve:

• Whole genome sequencing
• Genome assembly
• Bioinformatics analyses using a range of open source software pipelines.

Isolates for the project will be sourced from the AGAR AESOP reference laboratory located at Murdoch University. The project will be performed in the Microbiology Department at Pathwest Laboratory Medicine-WA, Fiona Stanley Hospital and the AMRID Research Laboratory at Murdoch University.

Infections caused by Community-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) are a significant health burden in Western Australian remote Indigenous communities. Compared to the Perth metropolitan health regions, the Kimberley health region, experience a 70-fold higher rates of CA-MRSA infections. Over the last decade a phylogenetically distinct lineage of Panton-Valentine leucocidin (PVL)-positive CA-MRSA, ST5-IVc, has emerged in Northern Western Australia, increasing the numbers of infections year on year. Exacerbating the situation is a complete lack of genetic or genomic characterisation for ST5-MRSA-IVc strains. Ambiguity in the antimicrobial-resistance profile of ST5-MRSA-IVc isolates determined using automated antimicrobial susceptibility systems has unnecessarily restricted use of effective antimicrobials.

We hypothesise there may be a genetic basis for the ambiguity in resistance profiles and that genetic adaptations specific to ST5-IVc have led to its pervasiveness in remote Indigenous communities.

The proposed project will achieve the following Aims:

1. Sequence the genomes of 150 PVL-positive ST5-MRSA-IV isolated over the last 10 years (15 per year) to help establish a robust phylogeny of ST5-MRSA-IVc lineage and moreover, establish if ST5-MRSA-IVc is indeed a single lineage
2. Use long-read nanopore sequencing to create the first reference-quality complete genomes for 5-10 representatives of the PVL-positive ST5-MRSA-IV strains
3. Carry out antimicrobial-resistance testing on all 150 sequenced isolates to establish if there is an underlying genetic basis for the misclassification of the PVL-positive ST5-MRSA-IV antimicrobial-resistance profiles by automated antimicrobial susceptibility system
4. Use comparative genome analyses to establish features of PVL-positive ST5-MRSA-IV that have led to its pervasiveness in remote Indigenous communities.

Ticks are a major vector of disease and pose an immediate threat to animals and humans worldwide. As climate change and other contributing factors (land management and livestock movements) escalate, there is increased concern of more widely dispersed tick populations with the ability to spread pathogenic microorganisms. Understanding tick populations dynamics geographically and temporally will provide valuable insights into improving methods of tick control along with their associated tick-borne pathogens. Our group has a number of tick and tick-borne disease projects to offer. Please get in touch so we can design a tailored project to your interests.

Enterococci are a major cause of sepsis in adults and cause approximately 10% of all bacteraemias globally. The two most common species that cause this disease are E. faecium and E. faecalis. In rare circumstances, sepsis can occur from non-faecium (NFM) and non-faecalis Enterococci (NFC). These cases of NFM and NFC have been increasing in Australia over the last eight years, with a range of clinical manifestations and various antimicrobial resistances.

In Australia, as part of the Australian Enterococcal Sepsis Outcome Program (AESOP), the Australian Group for Antimicrobial Resistance (AGAR) conducts ongoing antimicrobial resistance surveillance on E. faecium isolated in blood. These isolates undergo whole genome sequencing, and their AMR genes have been well characterised. However, the non-faecium isolates that are collected from sepsis cases are not routinely genome sequenced. AGAR has a collection of 441 NFC and NFM isolates dating back to 2013 that have been phenotypically characterised but have not undergone whole genome sequencing.

A series of projects is available, all with the theme of molecular mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance. Techniques used involve whole genome sequencing, bioinformatics analysis, molecular cloning and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The pathogens we investigate include MRSA, VRE, Neisseria meningitidis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae and E. coli.

Working memory (WM) is crucial for daily functioning and maintaining functional independence. People with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) were found to have a higher risk of progression to dementia if they have WM deficits (Kirova et al., 2015). The current project investigates a 12-week multi-modal intervention involving aerobic exercise and non-invasive brain stimulation (NiBS) for improving WM capacity in individuals with MCI. Both approaches have been found to have positive benefits on WM functioning through facilitating the connectivity between brain regions (Hendrikse et al., 2017; Steinberg et al., 2019). The effects of aerobic exercise have been shown to be ‘global’ in nature, with improvements in connectivity distributed across networks in the brain (Smith et al., 2010). However, the lack of functional specificity of these effects limits the cognitive gains from exercise. NiBS has been demonstrated to be able to target specific network connections in the brain for specific cognitive functions (Reinhart & Nguyen, 2019). By capitalising on the global effects of exercise and the function-specific effects of NiBS, the combination of both techniques has the potential to bring about synergistic improvements in WM capacity. The research outcomes of this project will be instrumental in the development of a safe and cost-effective intervention that can improve the functional independence of individuals with MCI, and perhaps even lower their risk of dementia progression.

Exercise can improve health for older people, though many cannot tolerate vigorous activity. Low-intensity exercise with thin cuffs on the arms/legs too cause moderate BFR provides a solution. This multi-disciplinary study will investigate changes in muscle size/strength, as well as changes in how the brain controls voluntary movement, and the potential for BFR to decrease sensations of pain.

Warming up before exercise can improve performance in a training session. There is some evidence that wearing thin cuffs on the arms/legs too cause moderate BFR could improve the effectiveness of a warm-up. This study will examine whether light BFR exercise in a warm-up can optimise physical performance in subsequent activities.

Little conscious thought goes into the voluntary motor skills we use daily, such as reaching for a piece of food and bringing it to our mouth. However, importance of motor skills is brought into sharp focus following injury or disease: a stroke survivor can be reliant on external aid to perform even the simplest task due to loss of motor function.

With age comes a gradual decline the ability to perform voluntary movements, which leads to an increase in falls, injury, and loss of independence. Understanding the neural causes of age-related movement deficits is the first step towards developing interventions that improve brain function and movement control.

The aim of this project is to define relationships between age-related changes in brain function and age-related voluntary movement deficits.

This project will use non-invasive brain stimulation (transcranial magnetic stimulation) to measure brain activity in the human motor cortex.

Exercise might be the closest thing to a magic pill for some people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Exercise can help with mobility, fatigue and pain. In this project you will assist the Project BASE team to co-ordinate and deliver telehealth exercise to people living across Australia with MS. The BASE protocol will also be delivered by OTs, physios and EPs across Australia and you will have the opportunity to help us understand and improve the clinical delivery of telehealth exercise programme in clinical populations.

This project will examine the relationship between personality traits (e.g., neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness) and biological factors of future rick of dementia. We have access to data from the WA Memory Study to examine genetics as well as imaging and blood-based bio-markers of dementia. The student will be trained on the neuropsychological assessment of older adults and will learn collecting data towards their project as well as the WA Memory study. Strong statistical understanding will be beneficial.

Subjective cognitive decline or reports about decline in one’s cognitive abilities are considered as a relatively reliable measure to predict future risk of dementia. However, there are some discrepancies in research when self and informant reports are compared in relation to biological markers of dementia. This project will investigate which of these reports (self, informant, or a combination of these two) is reliably associated with bio-markers of dementia including imaging and genetic risk factors. The student will be trained on the neuropsychological assessment of older adults and will learn collecting data towards their project as well as the WA Memory study. Strong statistical understanding will be beneficial.

Light-load resistance training with BFR can improve muscular size and strength, as well as reduce pain in those with injuries. However, we do not know how BFR elicits these benefits. To address this gap, his project will investigate neural responses (i.e. neuroplasticity) to light-load BFR resistance training, as well as changes in pain threshold and tolerance following BFR training. This work will recruit older people, and will be conducted in a multidisciplinary environment within Murdoch’s Centre for Healthy Ageing.

Wearing BFR cuffs during sports training (i.e. soccer drills) can improve fitness in athletes. It is possible though that the cuffs could impair technical performance during sports-specific activities. This study will assess the effects of wearing BFR cuffs during team sport-specific activities, to determine whether wearing BFR cuffs decreases skill execution.

This joint Fiona Stanley Hospital/Murdoch University project will seek to expand upon the hospital based prehabilitation projects recently completed. While hospital based prehabilitation has demonstrated effectiveness in improving function capacity and surgical outcomes, remote/regional and those without transport are often excluded from these studies. This project will establish a community based prehabilitation program for patients scheduled for surgery.

This joint Fiona Stanley Hospital/Murdoch University project will investigate the role of exercise in the long term recovery phase following burn injury. The project aims to reduce the long term negative side effects and associated increased risk of chronic disease in this population.

This project seeks to determine the effect of a particular dieting-strategy, called time-restricted-feeding (TRF), either with or without exercise on risk factors for type 2 diabetes (T2D). We are specifically interested in whether the combination of exercise with TRF is better for controlling blood glucose and weight measures in this clinical population, than using TRF without exercise. This is important, since TRF has emerged as a potentially important dieting strategy for weight loss, and there is some information which suggests it is good for longer term glucose control.

The muscles of people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) are less responsive to insulin binding, a condition known as insulin resistance, resulting in reduced glucose uptake into skeletal muscle and a prolonged high blood glucose level. High blood glucose levels in the long term can result in the development of a broad range of health complications such as kidney failure, blindness, and cardiovascular disease. Therefore, an improved understanding of the mechanisms which initiate and promote insulin resistance, is critical for i) better management of blood glucose in individuals with T2D; ii) revealing novel therapeutic targets; iii) reducing the incidence of T2D. This project explores the shift in the processing of glucose within skeletal muscle, as a key mechanism in initiating and promoting skeletal muscle insulin resistance.

Exercise might be the closest thing to a magic pill for some people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Exercise can help with mobility, fatigue and pain. In this project you will assist the Project BASE team to co-ordinate and deliver telehealth exercise to people living across Australia with MS. The BASE protocol will also be delivered by OTs, physios and EPs across Australia and you will have the opportunity to help us understand and improve the clinical delivery of telehealth exercise programme in clinical populations.

Exercise is one of the most significant and effective treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS), yet many people with MS do not achieve levels of exercise associated with positive outcomes. This study will assess whether exercising to music will influence motivation to exercise. You will join the Project SCORE team and assist in delivery of the exercise program at Murdoch University, and be involved in data collection and analysis. This study would be appropriate for a student of psychology, physiotherapy, clinical exercise physiology or similar behavioural science.

Maladaptive perfectionism has been associated with decreased levels of mental health. Performing artists tend to report having higher levels of perfectionism than the general population. This study will take a retrospective approach to gain deep insight into circus artists’ perspectives on their levels of perfectionism through-out their circus careers, and how this affected their performance and mental health. Excellent verbal communication skills are required for successful completion of this study. Affinity with performing arts is preferred.

This study looks to identify if the addition of dermally absorbed testosterone to an exercise program for knee joint osteoarthritis will result in greater reductions in pain and improvement in function. This study is being undertaken in conjunction with staff from Fiona Stanley Hospital.

This study will investigate what team sports coaches, from community level to professional teams want from injury prevention programs. Coaches can be skill or conditioning coaches. The influence of coach background and training time availibity will also be investigated.

High intensity interval training (HIIT) is an effective method of training for cardiorespiratory fitness and weight loss in many populations. It is also characterised by high external loads which may not be well-tolerated by load-compromised populations such as the elderly. Methods which allow for HIIT to be performed at lower absolute intensities without reducing internal load, such as hypoxia or blood flow restriction, may allow us to prescribe HIIT to load-compromised individuals. Therefore, the aims of this research are to determine to what extent external load is reduced in elderly people performing HIIT with blood flow restriction or systemic hypoxia when heart rate is clamped. Additionally, to determine the impact of low vs high cuff pressure and low vs high FIO2 on the external load response to HIIT in elderly people.

Systemic hypoxia and blood flow restriction may allow us to apply high intensity interval training (HIIT) with load-compromised individuals, such as the elderly, due to reductions in associated external loads. However, it is unknown whether these strategies will result in similar pro-adaptive signals or inflammatory responses to regular HIIIT. Therefore, the aim of this investigation is to determine the impact of applying blood flow restriction or systemic hypoxia during a HIIT session with the elderly on nitric oxide (NO), HIF-1a, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) responses

Single-leg cycle training has proved beneficial for improving whole body exercise capacity in patients with COPD (centrally-limited in exercise capacity); however, it is unknown whether this modality could be beneficial for patients with heart failure (also centrally-limited). This study will investigate the acute central and peripheral responses of patients with heart failure to a high intensity single-leg interval cycling, high intensity double-leg interval cycling and moderate intensity double-leg continuous cycling.

Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is known to reduce hospital readmissions, morbidity and mortality, and consequently reduces costs for hospital treatments, while also improving health and quality of life. Some barriers to CR participation in rural and remote locations include distance and lack of health services and health professionals to deliver CR. This study will assess the feasibility and effectiveness of a 12-week exercise program delivered by videoconferencing to a rural community.

Substantial evidence independently links physical activity and sleep to cognition and dementia risk. However, little is known about the interrelationships between physical activity and sleep, and their impacts on cognition and neuroimaging markers of dementia. This study will utilise world-class observational and interventional data to examine the interaction between physical activity and sleep on brain health in large cohorts of cognitively normal older adults. The outcomes of this work would contribute to the development of multi-domain lifestyle interventions to reduce dementia risk in older adults.

The interaction between how we move and the built environment is particularly important for encouraging physical activity in people with movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s. In this mixed methods study, you will co-design a research project alongside people with Parkinson’s, bringing together objective measures of people’s daily activity, physical capacity and their built environment alongside qualitative information from interviews. The results of this study will help shape future research aimed at improving personalised clinical management of Parkinson’s, and guide policy recommendations to better facilitate movement in people with Parkinson’s. Given the broad objectives, you will have flexibility to develop a research project that fits your interests and career development.

Sport is an important aspect of life for many students. However, some sports put players at a high risk of sustaining a concussion. Students who sustain concussion can develop short- and long-term cognitive, motor and social problems. Accurate and timely measurement of cognition and motor function both before and after concussion is critical for appropriate management and return-to-play decisions. However, the high cost, long testing duration and need for dedicated equipment for the current gold standard tests are prohibitive for many amateur sporting teams and those from low socio-economic countries. To address this, Cognisant, a not-for-profit organisation and Newcastle University, UK, has developed a web-based smart-phone application to measure cognition and motor function related to sport concussion. In this study, you will work alongside local and international researchers as well as Cognisant to validate the smart phone application and contribute to a normative database of cognitive and motor performance.

Fluctuations in HRV are used to monitor athlete readiness, guide training prescription, and identify potential over-reaching/training. There is some evidence to suggest that dehydration can alter some important HRV indices, however, it is not known if there is a threshold level of dehydration that must be reached before HRV is altered; if there is a dose-response relationship between dehydration and HRV; nor has a time-course for this relationship been identified, in other words, if the effect of dehydration on HRV is immediately apparent or delayed, and how long does the relationship last into recovery after exercise (with and without rehydration). Therefore, the goal of this project is to answer these unknowns.

Ideally, subjective and objective markers of exercise intensity are surrogates for each other; generally, in healthy people, commonly used subjective and objective measures correlate highly. However, things like medication and surgery, and higher levels of anxiety, fatigue and motivation, may alter the effect of, and/or the relationships between, subjectively and objectively prescribed exercise intensity. Thus, consequently, depending on which method is used to prescribe exercise intensity, the perceptual and/or physiological responses to exercise may differ around worsening or improved health or treatment. The purpose of this project then, is to examine the effect of, and the relationships between, exercise intensity prescribed subjectively and objectively, on perceptual and physiological responses to exercise during different stages of health in people with chronic disease.