Category: Griffith University Feed

Queensland College of Art graduate Andy Lowrie has been selected to exhibit his latest collection of jewellery in Rome – part of an international exhibition showcasing the best young talent from around the world.

‘7 Artists 7 Days’ will take place at the myday-byday gallery space in Rome from 5 – 16 June.
Andy graduated from the Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) in 2011, and is now based in the US. His bold designs, featuring unusual materials and forms, have won him an international following.
“I’ve been really fortunate in recent years to have my work shown in Australia, North America and China,” he said.
“The exhibition with myday-byday will be the first time my pieces have been shown in Europe, which is a real hub of activity for art jewellery.
“I’m looking forward to sharing my work with an audience of people who will likely have a keen and critical eye.”
QCA senior lecturer Elizabeth Shaw
QCA

See Full Post >>

A pair of Griffith University researchers has investigated the application of lean and green thinking to turn food waste from the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (GC2018) into a super dynamic compost.
Associate Professor Cheryl Desha, who is head of Civil Engineering in the School of Engineering and Built Environment, and lead researcher Savindi Caldera, who are both from Griffith’s Cities Research Institute, are validating and documenting a novel process that effectively “greens the Gold Coast with food waste” that has been collected from GC2018 venues, thereby saving it from landfill.
Click here to see how the process unfolds.
The research team engaged a Woongoolba waste processing plant to mix green waste (tree parts, twigs) and sugar cane mulch with food waste collected from Games venues (including the GC2018 Commonwealth Games Village and all venues where there were food outlets, cafes, canteens etc).
The process improves the degradation of the food waste into an

See Full Post >>

A pilot solar project in a small Aboriginal community in far north Queensland could hold the key to cleaner and more reliable power supply for isolated Indigenous communities throughout Australia and the Pacific.
The township of Lockhart River on Cape York Peninsula is nestled in bushland, 800 kilometres north of Cairns, surrounded by pristine beaches and rainforest.
It’s idyllic, but incredibly remote. So much so it’s not even on the national power grid.
So Lockhart River relies on expensive and dirty diesel fuel to keep the lights on, and power the town’s businesses and homes.
But it’s hoped a solar trial instigated by Griffith University Professor of Economics Paul Simshauser could change that.
“We ended up installing about 200kW of rooftop solar around various rooftops,” he said.
“It’s a community project so all of the households benefit from it.
“I’m not completely sure but I wouldn’t mind betting this is one of the highest levels of solar

See Full Post >>

Professor Susanne Karstedt  from the Griffith Criminology Institute has been appointed as a new member of the jury of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology. The jury is the international body that selects and appoints prize recipients.
“It is a great honour for me to be elected to the Jury of the Stockholm Prize of Criminology.  I am proud to join the jury representing Australia and Griffith University,” Professor Karstedt said.
The prize is awarded for outstanding achievements in criminological research or for the application of research results by practitioners for the reduction of crime and the advancement of human rights.
Professor Karstedt’s research has a strong focus on cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons of both crime and justice, where she explores democracy and its values and institutions in relation to violence, corruption, state crime and prison conditions. Other research interests include atrocity crimes and transitional justice, and she is widely known for work on

See Full Post >>

Patients with drug resistant forms of breast cancer and some forms of pancreatic cancer may have new hope, thanks to a new drug first developed at Griffith and now being trialled in the Czech Republic.
Clinical trials of the experimental drug MitoTam are beginning imminently in the Czech Republic with funding from a local venture capital firm Smart Brain.
Professor Jiri Neuzil from Griffith’s School of Medical Science is leading the clinical trials involving patients with the triple negative tumours which are known to be very hard to treat.
The drug has been modified from the commonly used breast cancer drug Tamoxifen to target the mitochondria of a patient’s cancer cells to make a more efficient compound that is able to kill resistant cancer cells.
Tamoxifen is ineffective in treating triple negative tumours or tumours with a high level of HER2, a protein found on the surface of cancer cells.
Could revolutionise treatment
“MitoTam could revolutionise

See Full Post >>

An urgent need for high quality research aimed at reducing alcohol-related drowning is the call, following a new Griffith University systematic literature review.
The call comes from Dr Kyra Hamilton from Griffith’s Menzies Health Institute Queensland, who says that despite continued safety campaigns to alleviate this global public health issue, the statistics still remain high.
Through a research collaboration between Griffith University and Royal Life Saving Society – Australia, 73 studies were looked at as part of the paper “Alcohol use, aquatic injury, and unintentional drowning: A systematic literature review” published in Drug and Alcohol Review – 57 on prevalence and/or risk factors, 14 on understanding alcohol use, and two on prevention strategies.
On average, 49 per cent and 35 per cent of fatal and non-fatal drownings, respectively, involved alcohol, with large variations among studies observed.
“Globally, prevalence rates for alcohol involvement in fatal and non-fatal drowning varied greatly,” says Dr Hamilton.
The role of

See Full Post >>

Griffith University is among a select of group universities chosen to conduct joint research with US universities on priority defence projects.
Griffith, along with University of NSW, Sydney University and the University of Technology Sydney, were announced by the Minister for Defence Industry, Christopher Pyne as the four Australian universities to help conduct the research, which will come under the auspices of the US Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI).

“This success is testament to the strength of quantum research at Griffith, and in our collaborating institutions” said Professor Howard Wiseman, who is the Director of Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics and one of the chief investigators in the project.
The MURI project, titled “quantum control based on real-time environment analysis by spectator qubits”, is led in Australia by Griffith Research Fellow Dr Gerardo Paz Silva.
Dr Gerardo Paz Silva
“The research is an exciting multidisciplinary project that will be executed

See Full Post >>

The old adage of not bringing your work troubles home with you has even more significance according to a new study by a leading Griffith researcher.
Professor of Organisational Psychology at Griffith University Professor Paula Brough has found workplace stress was being transferred from one partner to another at home, with around half of the participants reporting it had significantly impacted their relationship.
“Our research found transferred stress is very real and does occur and affects couples with our without children” Professor Brough said.
Psychologists call the phenomenon ‘stress contagion’.
16 couples, who all had full-time careers, were involved in the study which has been published in the Australian Journal of Psychology.
The outcome was part of a larger study which looked at how employees managed stress levels with the aim of tackling workplace bullying.
“That can be in the work environment, from your boss to you or vice versa, if you have a difficult co-worker then

See Full Post >>

An ‘heirloom’ piece of jewellery has been bestowed to Griffith Research Institute for Drug Discovery (GRIDD) Director Professor Jennifer Martin AC to honour her inspiring achievements in the field.
Professor Martin was among eleven leading female scientists from around the world – and the only one from Australia – to be awarded the hand-crafted scientific heirlooms by their peers at the fifth Suffrage Science Awards for Life Sciences, held at the Academy of Medical Sciences in London.
The awards celebrate women in science and encourage others to enter science and reach senior leadership roles.
The scientific ‘heirloom’ jewellery piece, to be bestowed to Professor Martin. Credit: MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences
The 11 awardees were chosen by the previous award holders for their scientific achievements and ability to inspire others. The awards themselves are items of jewellery, inspired by the Suffrage movement, and are passed on as heirlooms from one female scientist to

See Full Post >>

More than 30 high achieving Griffith Law students were honoured for their academic accomplishments at the Dean’s Law Awards­—headlined by the Dean’s Thesis Award recognising the best honours student research dissertation completed last year.
Surfing enthusiast and law student Todd Berry took home the award for the most outstanding student thesis for his original work which argued urban planning and development needed to consider the ‘traditional knowledge’ of surfers.
Deputy Head of Learning and Teaching at Griffith Law School Associate Professor Therese Wilson says, students who complete an honours thesis are setting themselves up for the future.
“It’s an opportunity to develop and demonstrate expertise in an area of law, through a sustained piece of research, which can be very valuable to a prospective employer and qualifies them for admission into our higher degrees by research,” says Therese.
Sponsors and donors to the Griffith Law School were also acknowledged with a vote of thanks

See Full Post >>