The Australian Research Council’s Laureate Fellowships scheme aims to attract and retain outstanding researchers and research leaders of international repute.
The scheme, and the Federation Fellowships scheme, which it replaced in 2009, is also intended to:
- build and strengthen world-class research capability in Australia
- provide an excellent research training environment and exemplary mentorship to nurture early-career researchers
- expand Australia’s knowledge base
- forge strong links between researchers, industry and the international research community
- support research that will result in economic, environmental, social and cultural benefits for Australia.
- Professor Mike Tobar
- ARC Laureate Fellow, Physics
- Professor Tobar's work on precision measurement has led to the development of an array of measurement instruments including the sapphire oscillator, which gives the most exact measurement of time developed to date, and commercial and space applications for the atomic clock.
- The world-leading work undertaken by Professor Tobar and his colleagues is testing the very fundamentals that underpin physics.
- Professor Richard Hobbs
- ARC Laureate Fellow, Plant Biology
- Professor Hobbs' research is focused on the crucial issues that affect the world's ecosystems.
- His work on the impacts of land-use and climate change, invasive species, changed nutrient regimes and other factors that lead to increasingly rapid and unpredictable change in the world's ecosystems, is essential to the analysis and management of ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.
- Professor Cheryl Praeger
- ARC Federation Fellow, Mathematics
- Professor Praeger is in the top one per cent of highly cited mathematicians in the world and is best known for her works in group theory, algebraic graph theory and combinatorial designs.
- She has been recognised for adapting a 19th century theory by a now celebrated rebel French teenager, Evariste Galois, for use in today's information technology.
- Professor David Pannell
- ARC Federation Fellow, Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy
- Professor David Pannell is director of the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy and is a prominent commentator on environmental policy in Australia.
- His research has included work on bio-economic modelling, economic and policy aspects of natural resource management and the environment, adoption of conservation practices by landholders, and economic decision-making under uncertainty.
- Professor Mark Randolph
- ARC Federation Fellow, Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems
- Professor Randolph was the driving force behind the Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems, an Australian Research Council Special Research Centre that has an active research group in geotechnical engineering.
- The Centre is composed of some 40 staff and research students who have devised geomechanical solutions for the many challenges of anchoring oil and gas platforms to the ocean bed.
- Professor Leigh Simmons
- ARC Federation Fellow, Centre for Evolutionary Biology
- Professor Simmons is director of the Centre for Evolutionary Biology at UWA.
- He has attracted researchers from all over the world to work with him in the field of evolutionary biology, with work on sexual selection and the evolution of mating systems. His research group adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of sexual selection, using behavioural observation, molecular genetic, quantitative genetic, comparative, physiological, and morphological analyses.
- Professor Steven Smith
- ARC Federation Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Plant Metabolomics
- Professor Smith is a world leader in applying functional genomics tools to the study of plant metabolism, and was part of the founding team of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy.
- He is director of the Centre of Excellence in Plant Metabolomics, which carries out fundamental research in plant metabolic biology. The Centre's goal is to develop strategies to select or tailor plants for improved performance under environmental extremes and for improved production of food, materials or bioenergy.
