The Macquarie University Smart Green Cities Research Centre was formed to address these challenges with the objective to create collaborative evidence-based solutions for liveable smart green cities of the future.

Centre expertise

The Centre is hosted by the Faculty of Science and Engineering and brings together more than 45 academics from across all four faculties with combined expertise in urban ecology and biodiversity, climate change adaptation, environmental science, remote sensing, sensor development, energy, the Internet of Things, data analytics, sustainability, health and wellbeing, urban planning, governance, finance, strata and community title.

Research themes

Green and blue infrastructure – urban greening (including waterways) and biodiversity, climate-smart species selection and urban cooling, engineering solutions to enhance coastal biodiversity and smart urban forest management.

Smart technologies – sensor development and Internet of Things for mobility, health and energy optimisation, remote sensing, data privacy and security and data analytics.

Sustainable cities – sustainable urban design and planning, renewable energy solutions, circular economy principles, health and wellbeing, nature connection and sustainable development goals (SDG) initiatives.

Centre leadership

Distinguished Professor Michelle Leishman, School of Natural Sciences; Professor Michael Sheng, School of Computing; Professor Darren Bagnall, School of Engineering; Associate Professor Melanie Bishop, School of Natural Sciences; Associate Professor Peter Davies, School of Natural Sciences; Associate Professor Noushin Nasiri, School of Engineering; Dr Rohan Best, Department of Economics; Dr Sara Deilami, School of Engineering; Professor Maria Kangas, School of Psychological Sciences; Dr Caragh Threlfall, School of Natural Sciences and Professor Cathy Sherry, Macquarie Law School.

Key partners

The Centre partners with industry and government to develop evidence-based solutions that address global urban environmental challenges. Key partners include NSW Department of Planning and Environment, Sydney Water, Hort Innovation, NSW Smart Sensing Network, Snowy Hydro and Transport for NSW. The Centre has on-ground experimental and demonstration sites at The Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan, and the living seawalls around Sydney Harbour.

Current projects include:

The Living Seawalls project aims to improve biodiversity in urban marine environments through co-design of marine built structures for humans and nature.

Read more in The Lighthouse: Two year study shows living seawalls promote regeneration in Sydney Harbour

Which Plant Where is the culmination of five years of research to facilitate resilient urban green spaces, including a world-first species selection tool for urban greening and analysis of ecosystem services.

Read more in The Lighthouse: Future city liveability to depend on which plant we put where

How to engage with the Smart Green Cities Research Centre

Staff and students interested in contributing to the works of the Centre are invited to contact the Executive Officer Leanne Price at smartgreencities@mq.edu.au

Upcoming events

Wednesday 26 July | Macquarie University City Campus
Together with Macquarie University’s Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre, Smart Green Cities will host University of Oxford Professor Myles Allen on 26 July. Professor Allen is the Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative and will present ‘Geological Net Zero: How we will stop fossil fuels from causing global warming’, followed by a panel discussion with leading energy experts on ‘What does Net Zero mean for Australian energy markets?’

Check the Smart Green Cities webpage for registration details.

Centre expertise

The Lifespan Health and Wellbeing Research Centre brings together expertise from the Centre for Emotional Health, Centre for Ageing Cognition and Wellbeing, eCentreClinic, Centre for Research into Early Childhood Education, Health and Wellbeing Research Unit, the Multilingualism Research Centre, Centre for the Health Economy and Macquarie Law School as well as other individuals from across the University. The Centre provides research, legal support and policy and strategic advice on the prevention and management of emotional, cognitive and social health challenges across the lifespan.

Research themes

The Centre will apply a wholistic approach to psychosocial health and wellbeing and build on members’ existing strengths across all stages of life in the following domains:

• emotional health and wellbeing
• cognitive health and dementia
• social health and wellbeing
• systems, frameworks and institutional wellbeing.

Centre leadership

The Centre is led by Director Professor Viviana Wuthrich, School of Psychological Sciences; two co-Deputy Directors Associate Professor Carly Johnco, School of Psychological Sciences and Dr Lauren McLellan, School of Psychological Sciences; and a multidisciplinary executive team including Distinguished Professor Ron Rapee, School of Psychological Sciences; Professor Lise Barry, Macquarie Law School; Professor Rebecca Mitchell, Macquarie Business School; Professor Henry Cutler, Macquarie Business School; Professor Sandie Wong, Macquarie School of Education; Associate Professor Alice Chik, Macquarie School of Education; Dr Milena Gandy, School of Psychological Sciences; Professor Melissa Norberg, School of Psychological Sciences.

Key partners

The Centre works in collaboration with a wide range of government and non-government partners in education, health, aged care, business, law and mental health, as well as foundations, NGOs and consumer groups across the lifespan.

Current projects include

The Australian multidomain approach to reduce dementia risk by protecting brain health with lifestyle intervention (AU-ARROW) study

Funded by the Medical Research Future Fund under the International Clinical Trial Collaborations Scheme, a research team led by Professor Ralph Martins, Macquarie Medical School, is aiming to add to the evidence that lifestyle modifications can positively impact cognitive decline and dementia risk, across different countries and cultures. The research will help develop a framework of preventative steps that can help preserve brain function and possibly also reduce the incidence or severity of other preventable health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. The AU-ARROW study is the Australian adaptation of a two-year international, randomised, single-blind clinical trial of this multimodal treatment, and will be strongly aligned with the US-POINTER study. The research team will work in collaboration with the US Alzheimer’s Association, Lions Alzheimer’s Foundation and WA Alzheimer’s Association.

Read more in The Lighthouse: $3 million funding awarded to trial lifestyle interventions against Alzheimer’s Disease

The Early Childhood Educators’ Wellbeing Project (ECEWP)

Together with colleagues at the University of Melbourne and Griffith University, researchers in the School of Education are conducting research that investigates educators’ work-related wellbeing holistically. The research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of educators’ wellbeing to inform interventions that better support and sustain the workforce, bringing benefits for educators, early childhood services and organisations and, importantly, children and their families. The project team includes Dr Tamara Cumming, Primary Chief Investigator, Professor Sandi Wong, Primary Chief Investigator and Professor Rebecca Bull, Chief Investigator.

Read more in The Lighthouse: Why early child educators are going on strike

Resilience and mental health in mining

Funded by the Australian Coal Industry’s Research Program (ACARP), researchers from Macquarie Business School, led by Professor Rebecca Mitchell, have teamed up with project partners to examine the occupational environment of miners – the first study of its kind. Australian coal mining employees experience significantly greater psychological distress levels than non-mining employees, with research identifying unique stressors in their occupational environment that are detrimental to mental health. However, a range of organisational and workplace factors can help build resilience in coal mining employees. Engagement with large mining firms has enabled mining firms to direct resources to employee collaboration in resilience and mental health support and accept recommendations to develop tailored mental health interventions focusing on unique mining-related stressors and resilience supports.

Find out more >

A randomised CONtrolled trial of Tailored Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for older people with treatment resistant Generalised Anxiety Disorder (CONTACT-GAD)

Professor Viviana Wuthrich is the Australian lead on an international multi-site clinical trial, funded through the NHMRC-NIHR Collaborative Research Grant Scheme, which is investigating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a new intervention for older adult anxiety. Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is a common anxiety disorder in older people. It is a condition that may persist for decades and is associated with numerous negative outcomes in older people, including poorer quality of life, increased disability and greater healthcare utilisation compared to non-anxious older people. First-line treatments for GAD include pharmacotherapy (eg selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors) and psychological therapy (eg cognitive behavioural therapy and applied relaxation). However, many older people with GAD find these treatments ineffective or are unable to tolerate them, leaving clinicians uncertain as to how best to manage this condition. At present, there is a lack of evidence to guide the management of treatment-resistant GAD (TR-GAD) in older people.

This project builds on a pilot study funded by NIHR in which a tailored Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) program was developed for older people with TR-GAD and was demonstrated to be feasible and acceptable for delivery by the United Kingdom National Health Service. This international multi-site clinical trial will provide the first clinical and cost-effectiveness evaluation of ACT for TR-GAD in older adults for reducing anxiety when routinely applied in older adult mental health services in the UK and Australia, against treatment as usual. The results from this trial will inform clinical guidelines and the routine management of GAD in older adults in both the United Kingdom and Australia

How to engage with the Lifespan Health and Wellbeing Research Centre

Staff interested in contributing to the works of the Centre are encouraged to contact Viviana Wuthrich.

Centre expertise

The Centre brings together a unique team to holistically address emerging connectivity challenges, with expertise in the areas of AI, digital, cyber security, satellite systems, quantum devices, internet of things, machine learning, photonics, astronomical optics and analog devices.

Research themes

The Centre’s vision requires an interdisciplinary research effort combining physics, engineering and computer science. Research themes encompass secure and provable communications algorithms and infrastructure.

Centre leadership

Professor Iain Collings, School of Engineering; Professor Judith Dawes, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Professor Dali Kaafar, School of Computing; Professor Annabelle McIver, School of Computing;  and Dr Hazer Inaltekin, School of Engineering.

Key partners

The Future Communications Research Centre aims to establish strategic partnerships with industry leaders in both the defence and telecommunications sectors.

Current projects include

Dynamic full-spectrum communications

This project explores targeting, tracking and communicating with a single drone or satellite in a complex environment and ensuring high-bandwidth data transfer. Structured light – orbital angular momentum light, for example – offers advantages for resilience under atmospheric turbulence, and offers potentially high bandwidths for communications between satellites, or for shorter-range ground-based communications with drone swarms. 

Privacy preserving semantic compression-based networks

This project tackles the challenge of exploiting semantics in communication – using content and context understanding to drive privacy preservation, connectivity and efficient content delivery.

Provable hardware-embedded security and privacy

In this project, researchers are seeking to genuinely embed and guarantee privacy and security as an intrinsic part of the software and hardware of communications technology.

Anonymised quantum–based communications

For more than a decade, mix networks (also known as mixnets) have been studied and developed as a promising approach to ensuring anonymity and secure communications, and defending against mass surveillance and censorship. They also show potential for efficient communication in hostile environments by finding applications in combat-zones’ delay-tolerant scenarios. Quantum communications offer new opportunities in this field from the perspective of high efficiency and also leveraging quantum noise to enable privacy-preserving unlinkable data streams.

Heterogeneous networks in space

Satellite technology is at a tipping point where it is possible to envisage large networks of satellites, across multiple satellite orbital regimes. These will provide flexible, reliable communication services for a range of applications, from low-data-rate internet-of-things (IoT) devices to high-bandwidth 5G mobile support. The project will formulate a transformative new approach to coordinating heterogeneous satellite networking technologies.

How to engage with the Future Communications Research Centre

Staff interested in contributing to the work of the Centre are encouraged to contact erfan.khordad@mq.edu.au.

For energy market stakeholders and decision-makers, this involves changes to the current structure of wholesale electricity markets; the creation and design of new markets such as carbon credit units; and the integration of new energy sources and technologies, such as hydrogen or the use of smart meters and distributed energy systems. The long-term vision is to establish the Centre as an internationally leading institution for interdisciplinary research on energy market design, analytics, regulation and innovation.

Centre expertise

Transforming Energy Markets brings together more than 30 researchers from Macquarie Business School, the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Science and Engineering. Through collaborative research across several disciplines, the Centre will create a knowledge brokerage to improve the functioning of energy markets in Australia and around the world, make the supply of energy more cost-effective and reliable and reduce carbon emissions.

The Centre’s expertise includes energy economics, business analytics, econometrics of financial markets, energy law, regulation and policy, socio-legal perspectives, statistical modelling, clean energy technologies, energy systems analysis and engineering.

Centre leadership

The Centre will be led by a cross-faculty team including the Centre Director Professor Stefan Trueck, Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics with Co-Directors Professor Sean Foley, Department of Applied Finance; Professor Vito Mollica, Department of Applied Finance; Professor Tina Soliman Hunter, Macquarie Law School; Dr Madeline Taylor, Macquarie Law School; Professor Vladimir Strezov, School of Natural Sciences; and Associate Professor Yijiao Jiang, School of Engineering.

Research themes

The Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre will place Macquarie at the forefront of addressing one of the greatest societal challenges of our time: redesigning energy markets to transform and decarbonise the economy. To achieve this vision, the Centre focuses on new research methods and discoveries facing transitioning energy markets in three core areas of expertise:

• Research Stream 1 focuses on the design, economic and econometric analysis of energy markets.
• Research Stream 2 examines regulation, social acceptability and impacts of the energy transition, as well as market-based mechanisms for decarbonisation.
• Research Stream 3 probes the inclusion of technological innovation and transformative energy technologies in energy markets to actuate change.

Current projects include:

Understanding Australia’s energy crisis and market suspension

In 2022, the National Energy Market (NEM) in Australia was suspended in an unprecedented move, after wholesale power prices had skyrocketed to over $10,000/MWh for sustained periods. This mandated the capping of electricity prices at $300, causing many participants (particularly gas-fired power plants) to withdraw from the market. Electricity supply was only maintained through the direct intervention of energy market regulators, obliging existing generators to contribute electricity to the grid. Research by the Centre documents the regulatory framework, rules and generator behaviour responsible for the crisis, and analyses the different impacts on regional markets in the NEM based on their generation mix.

Community acceptability and the energy transition: developing renewable energy sentiment index for Australia

Understanding public sentiment towards the transition of energy markets is important because public perception influences policy and investment decisions in the sector. This project applies analytical techniques to develop a renewable energy sentiment index for Australia. The index is derived by examining and measuring the sentiment of tweets by the Australian public, using lexicon-based methods as well as artificial intelligence. The research employs business analytics techniques such as web crawling, text mining and data mining to measure and analyse opinions, emotions and sentiments in written documents. The study aims to develop the first Australian Renewable Energy Sentiment Index as well as key insights into the dynamics of public perception on the energy transition in the Australian community. It also aims to identify key factors that shape attitudes towards renewable energy, while offering valuable information for policymakers and stakeholders in the energy sector.

Leading practice regulatory framework for hydrogen

This research project examines the requirements for establishing a legal framework to support a hydrogen framework. Utilising a holistic approach, the project examines not only the generation of hydrogen, but also the development of a hydrogen market in the future. This is a scoping project that will examine requirements from a big-picture perspective.

Biofuel production from co-processing of biomass and plastic wastes

This project assesses opportunities for co-processing plastic wastes with biomass to improve the quality of bio-fuel production. Two different co-processing technologies are being investigated, including pyrolysis and gasification. Different types of plastics are processed to optimise the processing parameters and maximise bio-oil production quality. The work aims to design sustainable solutions to plastic waste management issues.

How to engage with the Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre

Staff interested in contributing to the work of the Centre are encouraged to contact tem@mq.edu.au, stefan.trueck@mq.edu.au, sean.foley@mq.edu.au, vito.mollica@mq.edu.au, tina.solimanhunter@mq.edu.au, madeline.taylor@mq.edu.au, vladimir.strezov@mq.edu.au or yijiao.jiang@mq.edu.au.

Upcoming Centre events

Lectures and seminars

Together with the University’s Smart Green Cities Research Centre, the Centre will host University of Oxford Professor Myles Allen on 26 July. Professor Allen is the Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative and will present ‘Geological Net Zero: How we will stop fossil fuels from causing global warming’, followed by a panel discussion with leading energy experts on ‘What does Net Zero mean for Australian energy markets?’

A seminar series is already underway with strong interest from industry and regulatory participants. The first event of the Transforming Energy Markets Event Series was held in early May, with speaker Professor Thierry Bros from Sciences Po Paris. The leading European energy expert presented ‘Back to security of supply or fast-track energy transition’.

Conferences

The Centre will host the 5^th Australasian Commodity Markets Conference in September, and the 11^th Financial Risk Day in October, with the theme The Energy Transition: Risks and Opportunities, jointly with the Centre for Risk Analytics. Register your interest in attending these events here by contacting tem@mq.edu.au.