The University of Wollongong (UOW)

Australia

At UOW we recognise that the search for solutions to the world’s challenges must be a global one. That’s why we have established an international network of campuses, partners and bright minds to foster a supportive research community that drives real change.

Our research priorities are working tirelessly to solve complex, real-world problems. We’ve discovered human ancestors, partnered with NASA to find clues to climate change, collaborated with Twitter to manage monsoon flooding, built a bionic bra from intelligent fabrics and invested in a Titan Krios cryo-electron microscope that will allow us to move from developing treatments to finding cures.

UOW’s strategic research initiative, the Global Challenges Program, provides a distinctive environment for collaborative challenge-led research to ultimately transform lives and regions. It encourages and develops creative and community-engaged research that helps drive social, economic and cultural change in our region, with the potential to be translatable across the globe.

UOW’s strong research partnerships with world-renowned organisations and industry work towards building a sustainable and equitable future for the 21st century. Through engagement, UOW builds bridges between academics, businesses and researchers and is working with our partners to grow the Illawarra’s innovation ecosystem and pursue the uptake of disruptive technologies that deliver positive economic impacts.

Our Innovation Campus (IC) is a world-class, award-winning research and commercial precinct, home to a number of UOW’s leading research institutes working on developing “intelligent” innovative materials; superconductors that make energy transmission more efficient, new techniques for sustainable building design and maritime law and security. IC is also home to iAccelerate, a purpose-built business incubator and accelerator, with its two-stream program being the first of its kind in Australia. iAccelerate supports students, staff and the greater Illawarra community by providing the infrastructure, mentoring and education programs for great ideas to grow and helps connect entrepreneurs with funding opportunities.

UOW is proud to be among the best modern universities in the world. Throughout our 42 years as an independent university, we’ve built an international reputation for world-class research and exceptional teaching quality. UOW is consistently ranked in the top 1% of universities in the world for the quality of our graduates, ranking 151-200 in the 2017 QS Graduate Employability Rankings. UOW is also ranked as the 17^th best modern university in the world by QS Top 50 Under 50 2018.

1 November 2017 - 31 October 2018

Region: Global
Subject/journal group: All

The table to the right includes counts of all research outputs for The University of Wollongong (UOW) published between 1 November 2017 - 31 October 2018 which are tracked by the Nature Index.

Hover over the donut graph to view the FC output for each subject. Below, the same research outputs are grouped by subject. Click on the subject to drill-down into a list of articles organized by journal, and then by title.

Note: Articles may be assigned to more than one subject area.

AC	FC
102	27.27

Outputs by subject (FC)

Subject	AC	FC
Physical Sciences	59	15.26
Chemistry	44	10.75
Earth & Environmental Sciences	10	2.90
Life Sciences	11	3.94

Highlight of the month

Cleansing wastewater with a pinch of salt

Wastewater could be decontaminated and reused thanks to a system that simultaneously desalinates seawater.

Water is often in limited supply, and although this essential resource can be extracted from wastewater and seawater, conventional filter systems can get blocked by organic matter and salt. A team including researchers from the University of Wollongong built a system that harnesses osmosis, whereby the high salt concentration of seawater on one side of a membrane draws just water through from liquid waste on the opposite side. The remaining waste falls to the bottom of the tank to be removed as sludge. To maintain the necessary salt concentrations, the seawater is heated and pure water is extracted as vapour. The whole process removed nearly all 30 of the undesirable bacteria that the researchers tested for.

This system could be used to recycle water on ships and to reduce pollution from wastewater in coastal areas.

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