University of the Sunshine Coast
Established in 1996, the University of the Sunshine Coast has experienced rapid growth with research in a concerted area of expansion, and continues to build research productivity and output through strategic partnerships and collaboration.
A key strategy is fostering productive research partnerships with major stakeholders in the research community, such as universities, research organisations, government agencies, industry and business.
Our focus is strategic research aimed at generating outcomes of benefit to the wider community.
- At the Sustainability Research Centre, our goal is to help regions transition towards sustainability. Our collaborative, transdisciplinary approach is focused on understanding the relationships between people, place and change, and is broadly aligned with the fields of human geography and environmental management. Our researchers include about 30 staff and almost 50 higher degree by research students. We also lead UniSC’s sustainability teaching programs.
- The Forest Industries Research Centre (FIRC) is focused on issues as they relate to the forestry value chain, thus the economic and environmental sustainability of forest industries. The forestry value chain covers a wide range of research disciplines including genetics and genomics, silviculture and stand management, forest health and pest management, ecology and biodiversity management, timber and biomass harvest and haulage, fibre quality and value, timber processing and biorefinery, renewable energy and biofuels as well as timber construction materials. While these research areas are all important in their own right, from the perspective of the FIRC, they all interact with each other in real ways to have important impacts and we believe a multidiscipline approach is the best to understand and identify value in these interactions.
- The GeneCology Research Centre centre aims to provide knowledge that improves processes in a wide array of disciplines in order to benefit society. The Centre brings together a multidisciplinary team organised into 6 main Research Themes: Aquaculture, Forestry and Plant Sciences, Ecology, Functional Genomics and Proteomics, Microbiology and Molecular Engineering.
- The Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems was established in 2013 with the aim of developing a leading research capability in the areas of Human Factors, Sociotechnical Systems, and Systems thinking. The Centre was officially recognised as a Tier 2 research centre by UniSC in 2015 and currently comprises various academic, teaching and research support staff and PhD and Masters students.
- The Tropical Forests and People Research Centre aims to help forest-dependent people to make better use of their forest resources to improve livelihoods and the environment. The Centre is based around collaborative, multidisciplinary projects that bring together researchers interested in the interactions between people and tropical forests. Our research focuses on real-world problems in community and smallholder forestry: ‘people-focused’ systems in which individuals and communities create and manage forests for a mix of economic, social and environmental reasons. In partnership with government and the private sector, we use the results of our research to develop evidence-based policy, and to design and implement ‘people focused’ reforestation systems. Our geographic focus is in tropical and subtropical regions, mostly in the Asia–Pacific region. These forest areas are critical for livelihoods of many millions of people and provide critical environmental goods and services such as water, carbon storage and biodiversity.
The University of the Sunshine Coast Library will publish available research data on behalf of researchers in Research Data Australia, and research publications in the UniSC Research Bank, the institutional repository.
90 Sippy Downs Drive, Sippy Downs QLD 4556
- Selection for maximum speed reveals patterns of posture and energetics across body sizes
- Datasets and R code for Hwang, B. et al. (2024) The impact of insect herbivory on biogeochemical cycling in broadleaved forests varies with temperature
- Rhythm and Movement for Self-Regulation (RAMSR) RCT
- Dataset: Projecting investment with Delphi
- Working with Adult-Child Survivors of Severe Parental Alienation Abuse: Survivors and Mental Health Practitioners' Perspectives: A Qualitative Study [Data Notes]
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