By Marcus Strom
The University of NSW has been awarded $47.8 million to fund 120 research projects in the latest Australian Research Council funding round announced on Tuesday.
Four other universities in Sydney combined – Macquarie, Sydney, University of Technology and Western Sydney – received $56.6 million, just $8.8 million more in ARC funding than UNSW did on its own.
"On top of recently being awarded $91 million for three ARC centres of excellence, this means that UNSW has secured $150 million of the $863 million announced by the ARC in 2016," said Professor Nicholas Fisk, UNSW deputy vice-chancellor (research).
One of the biggest projects to be funded in this year's ARC round is for UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre.
UNSW's Chris Turney in Antarctica. Professor Turney has been awarded a $980,050 ARC research grant.Credit: Leigh Henningham
Professor Chris Turney was awarded $980,500 for research that aims "to resolve the timing, rate of change, mechanisms and effects of past abrupt and extreme global climate change".
However, the research funding tide is not only flowing UNSW's way.
The University of Sydney received $31.4 million in ARC funding for 79 projects.
Professor Duncan Ivison, Sydney University's deputy vice-chancellor (research), congratulated all recipients of ARC grants announced on Tuesday.
"I am very pleased to congratulate our researchers who were successful and we are also incredibly proud of recipients of the NHMRC grants last week," he said.
The University of Sydney was the big winner last week in the National Health & Medical Research Council funding round, receiving more than any other Australian university.
Sydney University has received $26.5 million in NHMRC funding for 2016, with $22.5 million of that awarded last week. This is more than UNSW, Macquarie, UTS, Western Sydney combined and nearly half of all health and medical research funds awarded within NSW.
Grants to Sydney University included $2.5 million to Professor Kate Conigrave for a centre for research excellence in indigenous health.
Professor Kate Conigrave (left), Health Minister Sussan Ley and Assistant Health Minister Ken Wyatt announcing Sydney University's $2.5 million NHMRC funded Indigenous health research centre.Credit: University of Sydney
"This program is founded on strong partnerships with Aboriginal community-controlled health services, communities and health professionals across Australia," Professor Conigrave said.
In all global university rankings, Sydney University is consistently ahead of UNSW. However, UNSW pipped Sydney this year in one ranking. UNSW became the first preference for more HSC finishers last year, beating Sydney Uni into second place.
For the ARC funding round, only seven out of 989 successful projects received more than $1 million. The largest of these was an infrastructure funding grant of $1.8 millon to Professor Joanne Etheridge, at Monash University, to "establish a transmission electron microscope facility to analyse materials structure at the atomic level".
Dr Chunnong Zhao, at the University of Western Australia, received $1.1 million to "create optomechanical devices to amplify signals in gravitational wave detectors".
There were a total of 5283 applications for ARC grants this year, indicating an 18.7 per cent success rate. A total of $416,648,607 was disbursed during this funding round. Monash University in Melbourne received the highest amount of $47.9 million.