Research spotlight
Find the details of the latest HMNS research projects awarded funding.
ARC Discovery Project: Structural and neural determinants of stress and strain in human muscle
Researchers:
Prof Paul Hodges
Prof Scott Delp
Funding Body: Australian Research Council Discovery Project (ARC DP)
Years: 2020-2022
Summary: This project aims to further our understanding of the biomechanical stress and strains experienced by contracting human muscles. Using innovative imaging techniques such as microendoscopy and supersonic shear imaging, we expect to generate new significant evidence on the structural and neural factors that lead to areas of high stress in human muscles. Outcomes of this project include not only a new understanding of muscle design on multi-scale level, but also of muscle function and adaptation. This should provide significant benefits in better predicting muscle injury and prescribing safe exercise, knowledge that would benefit biomechanical engineers and sport and exercise professionals.
ARC Discovery Project: Pride, Resilience and Identity: Reimagining Aboriginal Sport History
Researchers:
Prof Barry Judd
The investigatory team would like to acknowledge Honorary Professor Colin Tatz, who passed away on 19 November 2019, as a Partner Investigator.
Funding Body: Australian Research Council Discovery Project (ARC DP)
Years: 2020-2023
Summary: Sport is central to Indigenous communities, identities and cultures. This project aims to engage Australian Aboriginal communities in the history-making process by combining the passion for sport with culturally appropriate digital technologies. The goal is to expand our understanding of the complexity of Aboriginal existence during their institutionalisation under the State Protection Acts. Anticipated benefits include the empowerment associated with Aboriginal people reclaiming their histories. The scholarship produced will prioritise Aboriginal agendas, interests and narratives, facilitating reconciliation through an understanding of the multifaceted relationship between sport and Aboriginal communities.
ARC Future Fellowships: The grand challenge of predicting human movement energetics
Researchers:
Funding Body: Australian Research Council Future Fellowships
Years: 2020-2024
Summary: This project aims to advance our understanding of how the neuromuscular system uses energy during movement by exploring the interplay of different factors that influence movement energetics. The project will explore different levels of organisation; from how muscle fibres consume energy to how those fibres interact and are subsequently controlled within a complex neuromuscular system. Expected outcomes of this project will be an improved capacity to predict energy expenditure of the vast array of movements that humans perform. This will enable accurate monitoring of human energy expenditure and will provide benefits for individualised exercise prescription, enhancing work productivity or designing devices to augment human performance.
Link: researchers.uq.edu.au/research-project/38507
ARC DECRA: Does foot shape even matter? Rethinking the function of the human foot
Researchers:
Dr Luke Kelly
Funding Body: Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
Years: 2020-2022
Summary: Human feet are unique in shape and structure, having evolved to allow upright locomotion. Despite their importance, we don't understand how foot shape and structure facilitates upright locomotion. This DECRA aims to explore the relationship between foot morphology and foot function. I will close a large knowledge gap by applying novel experimental and shape modelling approaches to provide unprecedented insights into human foot function. The primary expected outcome is a detailed understanding of how foot shape and structure influences our ability to walk and run. This research will create a paradigm shift in how we think about feet in the context of human evolution, human athletic performance and athletic footwear design.
Brain Foundation - The role of dopamine in age-related deficits in sensorimotor adaptation
Researchers:
Prof Penny Macdonald
Funding Body: Brain Foundation Research Gift
Years: 2019-2020
Summary: The benefit of this project is two fold. First, we will provide causal evidence of the role of dopamine in sensorimotor adaptation, taking a crucial step towards forming a comprehensive framework of the neural mechanisms that underpin age-related declines in sensorimotor adaptation. Second, we will test the feasibility of pharmacologically remediating age-related decline of sensorimotor adaptation. Increasing evidence from animal and human clinical studies suggest that dopamine pharmacotherapy can improve rehabilitation outcomes, however, how dopamine pharmacotherapy improves rehabilitation is unknown. This work will fill this knowledge gap by revealing how dopamine pharmacotherapy affects the multiple components of sensorimotor adaptation, which forms the basis of many forms of movement rehabilitation.
Link: researchers.uq.edu.au/research-project/38496
2019 BDHP Health System Improvement Ideas Grants (MRFF Rapid Applied Research Translation Grant) : A New Way to Prevent and Treat Obesity
Researchers:
Philip Juffs
Sharon Sweeney
Prof Stuart Trost
Funding Body: Brisbane Diamantina Health Partners – Health System Improvement Ideas Grant (MRFF Rapid Applied Research Translation Grant)
Years: 2019-2020
Summary:
Currently, there is no evidence-based, widely recognised or clinically adopted Referral Pathway useable by primary care clinicians for childhood overweight/obesity within Queensland. Current referral behaviours are inadequate and inconsistent. The co-design of an evidence-based Referral Pathway will be the first standardised referral process of its kind in Queensland. Leveraging off an existing, culturally-adapted community childhood overweight/obesity community program within Logan, Queensland’s first culturally adaptable, multimodal intervention program will be developed. This prevention program will target children and families at a scale unreachable if implementing on-site, in-person community programs only. A robust, evidence-based design process, in conjunction with the involvement of relevant stakeholders and multicultural child and family consumers, will ensure the multimodal program is sustainable, delivers tangible outcomes and is relevant to all Queensland children and families.