Researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) have been awarded more than $11 million in new funding through the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) and Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) schemes. This investment supports emerging research leaders and strengthens collaborative, cross-disciplinary projects spanning social sciences, public policy, humanities and cultural studies, Indigenous studies, advanced biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, and engineering.

ANU Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) Professor Lachlan Blackhall congratulated all recipients.

“These awards recognise the depth of talent within our early career research community and the strength of our partnerships across industry, government and international collaborators,” Professor Blackhall said.

“This funding will enable our researchers to pursue bold ideas, build collaborative networks, generate transformative knowledge and deliver real-world impact across Australia and beyond.”

ARC Chief Executive Officer Professor Ute Roessner said the newly funded projects will ensure that Australia remains at the forefront of global research and innovation, building a skilled workforce and delivering impact.  

‘The ARC is proud to be empowering the next generation of research leaders to thrive in supportive environments, collaborate globally, and deliver outcomes that matter. This investment gives researchers access to specialised equipment and large-scale infrastructure that no single institution could reasonably deliver alone. By pooling resources, they create opportunities for progress that would not otherwise be possible. These new projects will enhance Australia’s research capability in areas of national priority, including sustainable manufacturing, quantum technology and advances in diagnostic tools, helping ensure Australia remains a leader in collaborative, world-class research,’ Professor Roessner said.

ANU researchers awarded Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA)

• Dr Mohammed Alsudairi - Building and governing sectarianism: Muslims and the modern Chinese state, $528,773.
• Dr Ian Brennan - Using genetics to save Australia’s predators from cane toads, $517,554.
• Dr Giacomo Cordoni - Decoding stellar and galactic evolution through star clusters, $529,878.
• Dr Stephanie Florin - Co-investigating deep time plant use in Sahul for sustainable food futures, $529,382.
• Dr Hayley Henderson - Locally-led collaborative urban governance in superdiverse suburban centres, $527,758.
• Dr Ruitao Jin - Structure, function and engineering of plant osmolarity sensors, $507,308.
• Dr Ashley Jones - Safeguarding Australia's native plant biodiversity from a fungal pandemic, $526,439.
• Dr Shimona Kealy - Crossing Wallace’s line: Lombok's role in early human dispersals, $525,035.
• Dr Borui Liu- Unveiling sulfur reaction pathways in all-solid-state Li–S batteries, $529,727.
• Dr Maria del Rocio Camacho Morales - Tiny tech, deep vision: Nonlinear optics to light next-gen bioimaging, $517,509.
• Dr Thao Phan - Model minorities: racial targeting and discrimination in the platform era, $519,185.
• Dr Stefanie Puszka - Care economies: The First Nations disability workforce in remote Australia, $527,927.
• Dr Wayan Sastrawan - Understanding the religious transformations of early modern Indonesia, $527,884.
• Dr Xueqian Sun - Engineering interlayer biexcitons in atomically thin heterobilayers, $524,078.
• Dr Andrew White - Synthetic technologies to accelerate peptide and protein production, $528,646.
• Dr Jie Zhao - Hybrid encoding of light for fault tolerant optical quantum computing, $507,778.

ANU researchers awarded Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme

• Prof Ian Cockburn - A spectral flow cytometry platform for the Australian Capital Territory, $358,159.
• A/Prof Bram Slagmolen - Australian partnership for breakthrough science in the advanced LIGO+ era, $2,972,043.

More details of each project are available at Funded Projects - Discovery Early Career Researcher Award 2026 round 1 and Funded Projects - Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities 2026 round 1.