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ANU College of Business and Economics' (CBE's) experts Dr Francis Hui and Dr Yijuan Chen have been awarded funding through the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) prestigious Discovery Projects 2024 Scheme.
Francis, who is from CBE’s Research School of Finance, Actuarial Studies and Statistics (RSFAS), received A$401,287 for his project ‘Modern statistical methods for clustering community ecology data’. The funding will allow Francis to lead a team of researchers in developing statistical methods and software for clustering community ecology data, and use them to analyse systematic survey and citizen-science program data collected along the Great Barrier Reef. By doing so, the team will address deficiencies in current statistical classification techniques for high-dimensional, multi-response data with complex relationships.
New methods developed by the team will allow us to better understand how human activity and environmental change affect coral diversity and, ultimately, will underpin future decisions in the conservation and management of the Great Barrier Reef.
Dr Yijuan Chen from CBE’s Research School of Economics is part of a cross-disciplinary team led by Dr Jinhu Li from the ANU College of Health and Medicine that have received A$546,194 for their project ‘Counter-COVID public policies and the impacts on Australian children’.
The funding will allow the team to understand how counter-COVID school closures, stay-at-home mandates and government support payments affected the educational and developmental outcomes of Australian children at each stage of schooling. It will also improve our understanding of child-skill accumulation and the relative importance of schools, parents, peers and government intervention and, by doing so, will yield policy recommendations designed to restore student learning outcomes and reduce educational inequality in Australia.
Congratulations Francis and Yijuan!
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