QUEX Scholarships
The University of Queensland and the University of Exeter are seeking exceptional students to join a world-leading, cross-continental research team tackling major challenges facing the world’s population in global sustainability and wellbeing as part of the QUEX Institute. The joint PhD program provides a fantastic opportunity for the most talented doctoral candidates to work closely with world class research groups and benefit from the combined expertise and facilities offered at the two institutions. This prestigious program provides full tuition fees, stipend and travel and development funding to the successful applicants.
This select group of doctoral candidates will have the chance to study in the UK and Australia, and will graduate with a joint degree from The University of Queensland and the University of Exeter.
More information including How to Apply is available on the Graduate School website.
Available Projects with QAEHS researchers
Advanced hazard detection in portable water sources
Project Team
UQ - Associate Professor Sarit Kaserzon
Exeter - Associate Professor Edward Keedwell
Project Description
Background
Maintaining water security remains one of the greatest challenges globally. Accordingly, providing clean drinking water is a UN goal for sustainable development (SDG6). Incidents of drinking water contamination have increased over recent years, challenging current water resource management. Growing numbers of water contamination scenarios are reported (e.g. PFAS contamination in drinking water supplies), exacerbated by climatic events (i.e., floods, algal blooms, increased pollution). Concerningly, current monitoring practices involve several costly and disparate analytical techniques and only target a very limited number of regulated contaminants. The rate at which chemicals enter waterways far outpaces current regulatory methodologies. Therefore, strategies that can timely identify environmental and human hazards are paramount for adequate risk management.
Aims/Objectives/Approach/Deliverables
This project aims to place a student at the forefront of innovation and technology by developing the capabilities to enable robust identification of chemical threats in water systems, that is fit-for-purpose and adaptable to changing climate and environmental stressors. Such a tool does not exist, but is required to support water authorities, environmental and health protection regulators and water laws. Starting at UQ year 1, samples will be run using established HRMS methods at QAEHS and used to generate the data to build, train and test the ML models in Exeter (years 2-3). Key deliverables include:
- Obtain training set data from Australian/UK water treatment plants to establish ‘typical baseline chemical fingerprints’ (ground truth data), including time-series data.
- Develop train and test ML models based on HRMS water quality fingerprinting.
- Develop the anomaly detection mechanism using the sampling cycle, HRMS, ML and fine-tuning.
- Stress-test using different water baseline parameter scenarios (i.e. post floods with extremely turbid water or when water sources are mixed).
Main deliverable will be a highly novel PhD Thesis with several publications highlighting an open access ML tool, ready for validation in large test case applications, starting with water authority collaborators, followed by other facilities. Future commercialisation would also be a possibility.
Expertise/Facilities
QAEHS consistently maintains high research outputs and success in major Australian and international research grants. It operates through a state-of-the-art laboratory with instrumentation equipped for trace-micropollutant analysis (14xGC and LC-MS/MS Incl. 4xHRMSs), with a highly supportive environment for PhD students (~40 PhD’s from 15 countries). Facilities at Exeter include three complementary aspects; the Department of Computer Science (DCS), Centre for Water Systems (CWS) and the Centre for Resilience in Environment, Water and Waste (CREWW). In REF2021, 95% of research outputs in the DCS were rated internationally excellent, 41% as world-leading, with a cohort of ~70 PhD’s. Computationally, Keedwell’s group includes access to 2xhigh-powered workstations and server and the ISCA supercomputing facility.
Both UQ/Exeter groups have established long-term meaningful collaboration with the Australian/UK water industries. E.g. several technologies developed by CI Kaserzon’s team are today applied by industry in Australia and globally (>$9M funding). While CI Keedwell’s team have a proven track record working with the water industry on improving industrial knowledge systems and applying ML optimisation to solve problems in the water sector (>£5M funding; EPSRC, Innovate UK, EU and industry).
Contact
Questions about this project should be directed to Associate Professor Sarit Kaserzon k.sarit@uq.edu.au
AMR in food producing environments
Project Team
Exeter – Professor Will Gaze
UQ - Dr Jake O'Brien
Project description
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses, adapt to current treatments like antibiotics, reducing their effectiveness. This can happen through genetic mutations or the transfer of resistance genes between species (many of which originate in environmental bacteria). Human use of antimicrobials, including overuse and misuse, drives the development of multi-drug resistance, becoming a rapidly growing global health problem. The World Health Organization (WHO) launched the GLobal Antimicrobial resistance Surveillance System (GLASS) in 2015 to monitor this issue, but critical data gaps remain in monitoring significant pathogens. Current data suggests that currently between 1-5 million people die annually from AMR infections.
AMR is not limited to clinical settings nor to humans, as resistance genes can be mobilised between bacteria in various environments. Animal waste acts as a major environmental reservoir for AMR due to the presence of excreted faecal matter, urine, faecal bacteria, and antimicrobial drug residues. Unlike humans who have dedicated systems to treat and remove contaminants from waste prior to release, waste generated in animal husbandry are either directly released to the environment or may be reused for other agricultural purposes. As such there is risk associated with AMR and antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB). As Zero Hunger is the #2 Sustainable Development Goal, this currently unquantified risk to food production requires investigation.
This PhD project thus aims to 1) derive agricultural specific selective effect concentrations of antimicrobials and determine the risk they pose in terms of AMR evolution, 2) characterise AMR bacterial populations associated with agricultural waste streams and to assess their dissemination to the wider environment including aquatic systems used for irrigation, water abstraction and recreation and 3) using mesocosms experiments determine the ability of human opportunistic pathogens such as E. coli to acquire novel resistance mechanisms during passage through the environment. Recent work in coastal environments has revealed that some E. coli isolates are much better adapted to survive or even grown in the environment and only by focusing on a range of strains, including these environmentally adapted strains, can we understand the full risk posed by in situ evolution of human pathogens in environmental compartments.
The project will combine microbiological and chemical analyses to characterise agricultural samples followed by adapting the SELection End points in Communities of bacTeria (SELECT) method to derive agriculture specific selective effect concentrations of antimicrobials. This will enable risk assessment to be conducted applicable for both agriculture and the environment.
The European Centre for Environment and Human Health at Exeter are world leaders in environmental AMR surveillance and Professor Gaze leads a transnational group of academics and government practitioners via UKRI AMR network. The Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS) at The University of Queensland has pioneered environmental sampling and chemical analysis for antimicrobials since 2019. Their facilities include state-of-the-art trace analytical chemistry infrastructure and the Australian Environmental Specimen Bank (ESB) which includes agricultural samples. As such the capabilities of each institution are complimentary and sampling and chemical analysis will be conducted at UQ and microbial characterisation at Exeter.
Contact
Questions about this project should be directed to Professor Will Gaze w.h.gaze@exeter.ac.uk
Apply here: Award details | Funding and scholarships for students | University of Exeter