Australia’s Minister for Education and Training yesterday announced $416.6 million in funding as part of the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) National Competitive Grants Programme.
Minister Simon Birmingham said the funding was a crucial investment in furthering a “smart Australia”, fostering innovation and outcomes that will benefit all Australians.
“This funding represents a significant investment in a wide variety of fundamental and applied research projects, growing Australia’s research capacity and infrastructure, and supporting the next generation of researchers,” Minister Birmingham said.
Solar power, energy storage and related technologies certainly got a look-in; with a number of projects funded, including:
- $652,000 for researchers at the University of Wollongong to develop innovative technologies for high-performance lithium-ion batteries for portable electronic devices, including electric vehicles.
- $904,000 for research in conducting polymer materials; which among other things could lead to energy storage application and wearable displays (Associate Professor Drew Evans – University of South Australia).
- $652,000 for the development of cheaper and better performing energy storage solutions using metal boranes (Dr Mark Paskevicius – Curtin University of Technology).
- $652,000 for a project aiming to improve the design of photovoltaic, energy storage, and nanocatalytic devices through electronic coupling and nanoscale engineering of two-dimensional nanojunctions (Dr Ting Liao – Queensland University of Technology).
- $332,000 for the development of environmentally benign polymer solar cells. (Professor Mats Andersson; Professor David Lewis; Dr Warwick Belcher; Professor Olle Inganäs – University of South Australia).
- $310,000 for two-dimensional graphitic carbon nitride heterostructures for solar hydrogen production research. (Associate Professor Aijun Du; Professor Dr Thomas Frauenheim – Queensland University of Technology)
- $315,000 for anodisation methods and materials for solar water splitting – (Dr Yun Hau Ng; Dr Judith Hart; Dr Jason Scott; Dr Akihide Iwase – University of New South Wales)
- $300,000 for a project aiming to develop nanostructured lead-free oxide perovskites for solar energy applications. (Dr Danyang Wang; Dr Xin Tan; Professor Jiyan Dai – University of New South Wales)
… and there were quite a few more solar and storage related projects that gained a guernsey. A complete list of all projects that received funding can be viewed here.
Top Right Image Credit: BigStock
