Over $8.5 million in ARC Future Fellowships funding for Deakin researchers

Seven projects led by Deakin University researchers have been awarded $8,590,067 under the newly announced Australian Research Council (ARC) 2026 Future Fellowships.

The Future Fellowships scheme supports mid-career researchers to undertake high-quality research in areas of national and international benefit, providing four-year project funding.

‘This outstanding outcome across all four of our faculties demonstrates Deakin's exceptional research capability and our commitment to addressing some of Australia's most pressing challenges – from climate resilience and sustainable energy to social equity and technological innovation’, says Amy Hunter, Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research & Innovation.

Deakin’s successful projects cover a broad range of impactful research areas, including enhancing emergency fire management, improving common plastic recycling, addressing Australian Aboriginal socio-cultural challenges, promoting environmentally sustainable food systems, investigating safer battery alternatives and much more.

The successful projects are: 

Professor Adrian Cameron, Deakin Institute for Health Transformation

With little progress toward environmentally sustainable diets, the current food system is the single largest risk to environmental sustainability. This project aims to demonstrate the environmental sustainability of impactful retail environments and the marketing activities that influence them. It will develop a comprehensive evidence base to support retail-focused government policies as well as voluntary initiatives by retailers. Findings will help address the challenge of transitioning to a net zero future and contribute positively to social, economic and climate systems. 

Dr Fangfang Chen, Deakin Institute for Frontier Materials

This project will design and investigate advanced electrolyte materials to enable safer and longer-lasting sodium-metal batteries, a low cost and sustainable alternative to lithium batteries for diverse energy story applications. Research will focus on novel, positively-charged polymers that combine mechanical strength with good ionic conductivity, addressing key scientific limitations of traditional polymer electrolytes. Outcomes will advance knowledge and national capability in energy storage research.

Dr Tim Connell, Deakin Centre for Sustainable Bioproducts

Currently, the recycling of common plastics is impeded by the limits of light-driven chemistry in breaking strong chemical bonds. This project will generate new knowledge in sustainable chemical synthesis and demonstrate how difficult high-energy reactions can instead be driven with low-energy light by harnessing the energy stored within chemical additives. Expected outcomes include replacing precious metal catalysts with earth-abundant alternatives and improved methods of chemical recycling that convert common pollutants into useful chemical building blocks. It will guide more sustainable industrial processes and provide significant economic and environmental benefits.

Dr Jason Gibson, Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation

In partnership with Anmatyerr and Arrernte communities, this project examines how ceremonial knowledge and practice functions as a critically important Indigenous social institution. The research investigates connections between living ceremonial practice, archival collections, and contemporary social life to understand how Aboriginal men draw upon ceremonial knowledge to navigate 21st-century challenges. It will generate community-controlled archives, provide evidence-based policy recommendations, and mentor Aboriginal researchers through collaborative training.

Associate Professor Timothy Neale, Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation

This project addresses the critical need to understand the future of Australian fire management in the face of climate change and political and economic crises. Utilising a unique ethnographic approach across multiple sites, the project will develop conceptual tools for understanding and justifying emergency management systems. It will also provide insights to enhance Australia’s resilience, national security, and environmental protection, ensuring a more effective and sustainable approach to future emergencies. 

Dr Antonio Rosato, Deakin Business School

This project aims to explain when and why people misread market signals like prices, reviews and labels, and how to fix it. It will generate new knowledge by developing and experimentally testing behavioural models of how individuals form and update beliefs, helping to inform new economic frameworks to quantify the impact of distorted beliefs for auctions, negotiations and firm pricing. These frameworks will provide new policy instruments to help markets convey information more accurately, such as quality certification standards and transparent advertising rules to support fairer and more efficient markets.

Dr Ali Zolfagharian, Deakin School of Engineering

This project aims to develop dynamic programmable mechanical invisibility, known as "cloaks”, in nonplanar metamaterials (architected materials that aren’t flat) with controlled nonlinear behaviours. Cloaks can effectively hide or protect internal areas against external disturbances like vibrations or impact but have so far largely been confined to static regimes, limiting their practical output. The project will use a dynamic framework to integrate the design and manufacturing of metamaterials for switching tasks in response to determined stimulus, with broad impact in soft robotics, aerospace, impact protection and adaptive infrastructure beyond the reach of conventional manufacturing.