A new parcel of funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) will establish a cutting-edge national network for magnetic resonance spectroscopy – and the AIBN’s Centre for Advanced Imaging is set to play a central role.
The ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities program for 2024 has set aside $1.68 million to upgrade nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) instruments at five leading universities: The University of Queensland, The University of Melbourne, University of Western Australia, Deakin University, and Griffith University.
Work scheduled specifically for UQ include upgrading the CAI’s wide-bore 16.4T (700 MHz) MRI machine for dual imaging and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) applications.
Once work across the five institutions is finished, the universities will form a collaborative national network to drive advanced studies in chemistry, drug design, materials science, and environmental science.
UQ is the administering organisation of the ARC-funded project, with the CAI’s Professor Mehdi Mobli leading the initiative.
The new network, he says, will enhance NMR capabilities in Australia and drive new discoveries, innovative applications, and potential commercialisation of new products.
The participating facilities will also be open to collaboration with international researchers and industry partners in areas of biotechnology, energy capture and storage, and environmental sustainability.
“NMR spectroscopy is a key analytical technique used ubiquitously in advanced manufacturing, given its non-destructive nature and ability to provide chemical and geometric information on the atomic scale,” Professor Mobli said.
“However, advanced NMR capabilities and expertise are currently limited in Australia, creating a bottleneck for research and innovation in critical areas such as food security, biomedical research, polymer science, energy storage, and environmental sciences.
"In this proposal, we aim to enhance NMR capabilities in Australia by addressing gaps in existing facilities in key areas of materials and molecular characterisation"
The latest ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities program distributed more than $28 million in funding for 35 new research projects across the country.
Based at The University of Queensland’s St Lucia campus, the CAI is at the forefront of imaging science and is the only centre of its kind in Australia.
Bringing together a critical mass of researchers and state-of-the-art preclinical and clinical research instruments, CAI provides world-class research services for industry and academia while fostering a rich, collaborative environment for our own experts to innovate across spectroscopic and imaging technologies.
Media: AIBN Communications, Alex Druce, a.druce@uq.edu.au, +61 447 305 979
