In the final year of the Centre’s active operations, the Centre developed and launched the ACEMS Ideas Challenge. The scheme was funded with $60k of surplus Central funds due to reduced travel activity, online events and other COVID-related savings from the Stakeholder Engagement Portfolio. The scheme was designed to assist members with driving a final burst of activity with the Centre’s Partner Organisations and provide a foundation for ongoing research activity beyond the end of ACEMS.

Up to $10,000 of Ideas Challenge funding was available for one project with each of the Centre’s six Partner Organisation. Projects that involved cross-node collaboration, engaging students and early-career researchers, and additional contributions were assessed favourably. The scheme funded a range of different project types with tangible research outputs including proof of concept and feasibility studies, building on existing projects, and laying the foundations for future studies after the closure of the Centre.

Like the Research Sprint Scheme, this new scheme proved to be extremely popular with numerous applications being received within a matter of weeks. A total of 20 project ideas were submitted for consideration with some Partner Organisations submitting up to five different project ideas. Ultimately one project for each Partner Organisation was supported; one of these projects was also given additional support by the Centre’s Research Sprint Scheme.

This dedicated investment into research with the Centre’s Partner Organisations directly supported several students and early-career researchers to work directly with industry partners and lay the foundation for future collaborations and other research opportunities into 2022 and beyond.

For more information about these projects, please refer to each Partner Organisation report by clicking on their logo.

ACEMS-PO Funded Ideas Challenge Projects in 2021
Partner	Project title	Aim / Abstract / Planned impact	Principal collaborators (*ACEMS lead investigator)
	Responsible Data Science including Explainable Machine Leaning (& Challenges): Symposium, challenge workshop and academia-industry exchange	Bring together experts from ACEMS, mathematics, statistics, computer science, & other relevant disciplines, plus invited industry to discuss literature, issues, & ABS challenge projects	Sean Buttswort, Clare Clarke, Bernadette Guiffrida & Gentry White*
	Triton, a natural alternative to fight the deadly crown-of-thorns starfish in the Great Barrier Reef?	This work will help AIMS to make use of experimental data on behaviour to inform decisions regarding use of Triton to manage COTS	Patricia Menendez* & Cherie Motti
	Multivariate spatio-temporal visualisation with application to Australian bushfire detection, causes and risk	This research aims to help inform bushfire science and AT&T, whose infrastructure is at risk from bushfires	Di Cook*, Emily Dodwell & Chris Volinsky
	Complementing official wind records with crowd-sourced observations for improved forecasts of wind and fire behaviour	The aim is to promote the use and use statistics to increase the utility of citizen science wind data, for improved wind and fire forecasts	Carolyn Huston, Petra Kuhnert & Kate Saunders*
	Free-text field data from hard copy and online 45 and Up questionnaires	The aim is to help develop a robust tool to obfuscate sensitive information, for greater utility of 45 and Up survey data	Kerrin Bliecher, Tina Navin Cristina, Kerrie Mengersen*, Richi Nayak & Duoyi Zhang
	Study into Arterial Network Optimisation - including consideration of Macroscopic Fundamental Diagrams (MFDs)	The study investigates traffic performance in Melbourne's southeast suburbs in terms of MFDs, to inform arterial network traffic control	Tim Garoni, Matthew Hall, Alex Herold & Joyce Zhang*