Selected from a shortlist of more than 1100 applications nationally, 23 Macquarie University-led projects – more than double last year's number – were successful in the 2026 ARC Discovery Projects funding round, while one additional Macquarie study was successful under the 2025 Linkage Projects scheme.
The 24 successful projects, which span all four faculties and address areas such as astronomy, quantum computing, student housing, electric vehicles, mathematical equations and business decision-making, were collectively awarded a record $15.3 million.
“The Discovery and Linkage Projects schemes each play a vital role in advancing research that benefits our world – the Discovery Projects by supporting fundamental, investigator-driven research, and the Linkage Projects by fostering collaboration between researchers and industry, government and community partners,” says Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Sakkie Pretorius.
“It is a very proud moment to see that 24 projects led by our researchers were awarded funding by the Australian Research Council from a large pool of applicants, and it’s an indication of the calibre of work being conducted here at Macquarie.
“I extend my warmest congratulations to the successful researchers, including those from Macquarie who are vital contributors to externally led projects.”
The successful Discovery Projects are:
Faculty of Arts
Student housing in (a time of) crisis: interrogating student housing supply
Chief Investigator: Professor Kristian Ruming
Funding awarded: $540,304
Health, biological fitness and environmental diversity
Chief Investigator: Dr Pierrick Bourrat
Funding awarded: $600,146
Grief at the margins: Conceptualising the diversity of loss
Chief Investigator: Dr Regina Fabry
Funding awarded: $292,294
How our gender and sexuality euphorias predict our identity development
Chief Investigator: Professor Tiffany Jones
Funding awarded: $663,830
Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences
Deciphering the effects of self-repair on human language and communication
Chief Investigator: Dr Scott Barnes
Funding awarded: $495,302
Sometimes it is better to keep your mouth shut: Mouth versus nose breathing
Chief Investigator: Professor Daniela Traini
Funding awarded: $584,524
Attention under threat: Maintaining attention in a noisy, cluttered world
Chief Investigator: Professor Anina Rich
Funding awarded: $768,109
Using multisensory illusions to test the cause of bodily desires
Chief Investigator: Professor Richard Stevenson
Funding awarded: $345,469
Faculty of Sciences and Engineering
Convergence and divergence theories for variational decentralised learning
Chief Investigator: Professor Longbing Cao
Funding awarded: $710,144
Generative graph modelling for anomaly detection
Chief Investigator: Associate Professor Jia Wu
Funding awarded: $566,045
Energy on wheels: A new approach to the smart grid with electric vehicles
Chief Investigator: Professor Stephen Hanly
Funding awarded: $620,858
Quantum computation combining learning and simulation for molecular design
Chief Investigator: Professor Dominic Berry
Funding awarded: $683,296
Intrinsic structures in partial differential equations
Chief Investigator: Associate Professor Ji Li
Funding awarded: $594,201
Where are all the exo-Earths?
Chief Investigator: Associate Professor Benjamin Pope
Funding awarded: $592,045
Harmonic analysis and spaces of functions on manifolds
Chief Investigator: Professor Xuan Duong
Funding awarded: $591,725
Trustworthy data-driven discovery from complex high-dimensional data
Chief Investigator: Professor Samuel Muller
Funding awarded: $589,585
Activating the quantum advantage in Raman microscopy
Chief Investigator: Dr Mikolaj Schmidt
Funding awarded: $531,382
Can quantum computers solve sensing problems?
Chief Investigator: Dr Zixin Huang
Funding awarded: $516,554
Revolutionising extracellular vesicle research: A single-particle approach
Chief Investigator: Professor Yuling Wang
Funding awarded: $997,643
Dissecting nutrient uptake and metabolism in a fast-growing cyanobacterium
Chief Investigator: Distinguished Professor Ian Paulsen
Funding awarded: $826,239
Enhancing extracellular vesicle-cell interactions with chiral recognition
Chief Investigator: Professor Yuling Wang
Funding awarded: $790,131
Using gene knockouts to control cane toads and buffer their impacts
Chief Investigator: Professor Rick Shine
Funding awarded: $699,026
Macquarie Business School
Analysing business decisions through the Business Outlook Scenarios Survey
Chief Investigator: Associate Professor Ben Wang
Funding awarded: $1,320,000
A full list of funded projects and project summaries is available here.
The successful Linkage Project is:
Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences
Unlocking the potential of dry powder carriers for biologic applications
Chief Investigator: Professor Daniella Traini
Funding awarded: $441,446
Partner organisations: APTAR Frances SAS and Dr D F Fletcher
A full list of funded projects and project summaries is available here.