The Australian National University has won almost $40million in Australian Research Council funding to investigate subjects as diverse as a cure for tomato fungus to the reproductive practices of 400-million-year-old fish.
Science and Research Minister Kim Carr announced more than $394million for 1145 research projects across the country yesterday, with $40.7million for 107 projects in the ACT.
The ANU received the lion's share with $39.7million for 103 projects, followed by the University of Canberra, with $749,000 for three projects, and the CSIRO which received $240,500 for one project.
The ANU's projects include estimating the age of oil and predicting where petroleum reservoirs may be hidden, looking at breeding tomatoes resistant to Fusarium wilt disease, and finding the ancestors of the Homo floresiensis, or ''Hobbit''.
Geologist Associate Professor Gavin Young and his team received $370,000 to continue their investigation of the unborn embryo in a 400-million-year-old fish discovered in Western Australia.
In collaboration with American and Chinese researchers, the scientists are searching for evidence internal fertilisation might have originated when jaws and hard skeletons evolved in the earliest vertebrates.
Professor Young said he was thrilled to receive the research council funding, which would allow him to help ''fill in the last major gap in early vertebrate evolution''.
The University of Canberra's three projects include demonstrating the importance of the Australian media and its reporting of international news for Australia's foreign relations, new ways to measure child and youth social exclusion risk at small area level, and the impact of ageing baby boomers on Australia's aged-care system.
The CSIRO project will examine plant-soil microbe interactions and ecosystem restoration practices.
ANU vice-chancellor Professor Ian Chubb congratulated the successful applicants and said that within a highly competitive system the ANU had done extremely well.
He said the ANU had identified ways to improve its support for researchers who were making applications to research-granting bodies.
He estimated that with less than 4per cent of Australian academic staff, the ANU had received 10 per cent of the funding.
Senator Carr said the National Competitive Grants Program ''nurtures the creative abilities and skills of Australia's most promising researchers''.
Applications for funding were subject to an independent peer review process considering factors such as the researcher's track record and capacity to undertake the research, the significance and innovation of the proposed research, the approach to be taken, training opportunities to be made available, and the national benefit.
The research council has allocated funding across three schemes ''discovery indigenous researchers development'', ''discovery projects'' and ''linkage projects''. Senator Carr said the projects would ''lead to the discovery of new ideas and the advancement of knowledge that will help Australia tackle current and future economic, health and environmental challenges''.
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