Research involving IT faculty researcher receives over A$600K

Congratulations to Dr Madhu Chetty, Deputy Head of School, Gippsland school of Information Technology and Prof Ross Coppel, Deputy Dean, Faculty of Medicine for their success in securing an Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) for their genetic network project.

Under the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) initiative, they have secured a funding of A$326K from the Australian Government (through the department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research). Their research counterpart at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), Prof Pramod Wangikar has also been awarded the equivalent of A$300K by the Indian Government for the collaborative research.

Climate change and sustainable development are amongst the most critical challenges facing humanity today. Due to these reasons, bio-fuel production and carbon sequestration have been getting increasing attention in the recent years.

Cyanobacteria, often called blue green algae, play a key role in naturally sequestering a large part of carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere and also for the harvesting of solar energy. An emerging idea is to sequester CO₂ at source by using Cyanobacteria ponds. Many of the Cyanobacteria due to their naturally occurring biosynthetic machinery are capable of converting CO₂ to fine chemicals and fuel.

A system level view provided by reconstructing a genetic network in a genome scale model is crucial in tuning the biosynthetic machinery of these bacteria.

Here at Monash, for this project, Chetty and Coppel's team will develop novel computer models and grid-based simulation infrastructure for understanding the underlying regulatory processes and network motifs that channel the carbon toward various products.

Gene expression data for Cyanobacteria generated at IITB as well as those available in literature will be utilized. The time varying computer models of genetic networks will be realistic and robust, by incorporating direct and indirect causal relationships; accurate modelling of time delays and transient gene interactions and feedbacks.

We at the Faculty of Information Technology congratulate Dr Madhu Chetty, and Prof Ross Coppel for their outstanding success!