Category: Griffith University Feed

Griffith Business School students have had the opportunity to learn from one of the biggest players on the south east’s tourism scene.
The Star Gold Coast hosted seven students for a 75-hour internship, taking them from front office through to concierge and housekeeping.
“This gives our students real-life experience in a very high profile organisation.  It’s not only related to the student’s degrees, but also to their potential career path,” said Dr Caroline Riot, First Year Coordinator at Griffith Business School.
“It gives them an edge because they’re being exposed to the ins and outs of everyday work life, within a supervised context.
“They’re being challenged by industry leaders who have a wealth of experience to share. They’re guided through in a very safe and structured way to gain the skills they need to get a start in this business.”
Neseema Mustapha, a Tourism and Hospitality student, said this was a fantastic opportunity.
“Although I have a

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A Queensland consortium led by Indooroopilly State High School and including Griffith University has been set up to foster a new generation of innovators in the state.
The international education initiative, involving some of the state’s leading organisations in education and industry, highlights Griffith’s commitment to and expertise in entrepreneurship and innovation.
The consortium will roll out an exciting, government-funded competition that gives students aged 14 to 21 all over Queensland the chance to bid for seed capital to fund enterprising ideas.
Shaping Queensland’s Entrepreneurs (SQE) project was announced by the Treasurer and Minister for Trade and Investment, Curtis Pitt as part of the state government’s new $6 million IET Partnership Fund to promote Queensland’s international education and training (IET) industry.
“The Student Innovation Challenge will seek entries from every corner of Queensland, with digital technology ensuring geography is not an obstacle to any students making a great pitch for funding,” Professor Nick Barter,

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Faced with the threat of more frequent weather events, society must change its land use habits in order to protect our precious waterways from further damage.
That is the view of new Professor David Hamilton who has joined Griffith University’s internationally renowned Australian Rivers Institute, bringing with him years of research and knowledge on lake ecology.
Taking the helm as Deputy Director, Professor Hamilton’s research focuses on algal blooms, nutrients cycles and the use of models for prediction and management of lake ecosystems.
Professor Hamilton previously led a research group at the University of Waikato known as Lake Ecosystem Restoration New Zealand (LERNZ). LERNZ was a ten-year $10 million initiative to identify and remediate threats to lake ecosystems. He said the biggest threats to ecosystems were climate change and diffuse pollution from land use.
“The frequency of the 1 in 100-year storms is likely to double, they’ll be one in 50 years and the cyclones

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Following in her mother’s footsteps, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lawyer Jayde Geia believes it’s her responsibility to help improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The Griffith Law School graduate, whose family comes from Yarrabah in Cairns and Moa Island in the Torres Strait, distinctly remembers the times she sat in on her mother’s law lectures as a young girl.
“I saw how studying law at Griffith empowered my mum who was a single parent. She inspired me to go to university because against all odds, my mum graduated with top marks and became a barrister where she is able to make real changes,’’ she said.
“I also decided to study law because I’m interested in social justice and the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”
Graduating from Griffith University in 2010, Jayde’s burgeoning career has seen her work at Allens Linklaters, the Queensland Investment Corporation and as

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A Griffith University geochronologist’s state-of-the-art dating methods push back the origins of our species by an unprecedented 100,000 years, uncovering the oldest modern human and our deep biological history in Africa.
Professor Rainer Grün, director of the leading Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE), was among an international research team that dated fossils discovered at the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud, Morocco.
The finds – reported on the front cover of Nature – are dated to about 300,000 years ago and represent the oldest securely aged fossil evidence of our own species.

Professor Grün said the fossils – which comprise skulls, teeth, and long bones of at least five individuals – revealed a complex evolutionary history of mankind that likely involved the entire African continent.
Jebel Irhoud has been well known since the 1960s for its human fossils and its Middle Stone Age artefacts but the interpretation of the Irhoud hominins has long

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Griffith University researchers have highlighted the urgent need for more effective conservation measures in a world-first assessment of global wetlands and the increasing pressures they face.
A study led by scientists in Griffith’s Australian Rivers Institute in collaboration with scientists from Canada, Spain and the USA has provided a consistent global portrait of inland wetland distribution, conservation status, and human pres­sure.
PhD researcher Vanessa Reis and co-author Dr Simon Linke said the study provided a framework toward improving the current paradigm of wetland conservation, which was historically an overlooked topic.
“Considering the rapid increase in human population and pressures on global wetlands, urgent action is needed to develop better frameworks for wetland conservation planning,” Ms Reis said.
“Because of their high productivity, fertile soils, and importance for provision of water, many of the world’s wetlands have historically been occupied and intensively used by humans.
“There are reported long-term losses of natural wetlands reaching up to 90 per

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Since graduating from the Queensland Conservatorium in 2014, violinist Iona Allan’s career has taken her from stints with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Melbourne Chamber Orchestra to touring Australia with multi-million-selling French romantic classicist Richard Clayderman.
However, it is the next step of her professional journey that has her filled with anticipation.
Thanks to the generosity behind the Ena Williams Award for Postgraduate Study Overseas, in September Iona will move to London to begin studying a Master of Performance at the prestigious Royal College of Music.
Iona was invited to join the Royal College after auditioning in late 2016, although accepting wasn’t easy given she also received invitations to join two other esteemed UK musical institutions, namely the Royal Academy of Music and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
“In the end I chose the Royal College because I will be learning under the wonderful violinist and orchestral leader Gabrielle Lester.

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Studying the food poisoning bacteria E. coli may have led scientists to discover a new and improved tool to detect cancer.
In a collaborative research project, scientists from Griffith University’s Institute for Glycomics, the University of Adelaide and University of Queensland have detailed their findings in a new paper published in Scientific Reports
Professor Michael Jennings from the Institute for Glycomics said the E. coli produces a toxin which binds to an unusual sugar that is part of carbohydrate structures present on cells (Neu5Gc) which is not usually produced by healthy cells.
Tumour antigen
“The structure that the toxin recognises is known to be a tumour antigen, that is, a substance produced by tumour cells which are recognised markers for cancer detection and diagnosis.”
The research team then took the naturally-occurring toxin and engineered it to change the protein make-up so it became entirely specific to detecting only this singular tumour antigen structure.
“The real innovation

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Griffith University researchers are analysing more than one million Queensland crimes to forecast where future crime hotspots are likely to occur.
The research is made possible by an Australian-first $1 million research facility – the Social Analytics Lab (SAL), launched by the Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services Mark Ryan and Queensland Police Service Commissioner Ian Stewart APM at Mt Gravatt campus.
The custom-built research facility combines high-performance computing facilities with industry standard security.
It allows sensitive, de-identified administrative data to be stored and studied using advanced analytics to reveal patterns and insights from large complex government agency data.
In one of the first projects to be run in the lab, researchers will use crime data recorded over the past 10 years to identify patterns in burglary and car crime that could inform operational policing.
Predictive policing expert Dr Daniel Birks said burglary and car crime, two types of crime affecting many people, cost

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Former Griffith student Rachelle St Leger knows the value of working for a company who is supportive of your education. The Bachelor of Commerce graduate says she got to where she is today through hard work, determination and the benefit of an employer who provided her with invaluable training while she was completing her degree. And now that she’s Australian CEO for EML, a company that processes billions of dollars per year, she felt the time was right to reach out to Griffith University and inspire the next generation.
“I started working with Myer from when I was about 18, and I stayed there until about 27,” she says. Beginning at the bottom, Rachelle was continually amazed and grateful at how the company valued her input and assisted her while completing her degree. “They just kept investing in me while I was studying, and then they promoted me the day I

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