Defence Science and Technology Group
The Defence Science and Technology Group is part of Australia's Department of Defence. It is the second largest public-funded R&D organisation in Australia.
The Department of Defence manages its own strategic R&D expenditures through innovation frameworks that include the Australian Defence Science and Universities Network (ADSUN) and Next Generation Technologies Funds (NGTF).
The NGTF launched in 2016 to drive investments in specific defence-relevant technology areas — ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance), space, human performance, medical countermeasure products, materials science, quantum technologies, trusted autonomous systems, cyber, advanced sensors, hypersonics, and directed-energy capabilities.
In addition to the above, in 2020 the Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group led the development of a new S&T Strategy for Defence, More Together. More Together explicitly supports DST Group’s focus on large and highly strategic S&T programs through the Science, Technology and Research Shot (STaR Shot) concept, and calls for closer and more focused collaborations between the defence S&T, industry and academic sectors under these programs.
DST Group has consistently been an active ACEMS collaborator over the past five years, pursuing numerous collaborative research projects, awarding funding grants, and attending various events hosted by ACEMS.
Highlights from some of our collaborations and engagements across areas of DST include:
In 2021, ACEMS became a recognised partner of DST’s Human Performance Research Network (HPRnet) and its engagements from the earlier year translated into new collaborations and funding, including for human biotechnology work.
ACEMS has been officially recognised as a HRPnet network partner, as featured above in the HPRnet website
ACEMS and DST Group researchers completed several co-funded projects in 2021 including two cross-node central support scheme projects:
Further work between ACEMS researchers, DST Group and other defence partners will continue into 2022 and beyond with several new research grants providing secure funding such as:
“A generalised framework for characterising uncertainty in complex systems to enable quantification of extrinsic mathematical uncertainty in defence and emergency services”.
The researchers used bushfire response simulations as an unclassified surrogate for defence responses to develop a model to help the Australian Defence Force (ADF) decide future weapons capability purchases under high levels of uncertainty. Learn more about the research in this media article. Bushfire and defence responses have a lot of similarities: threats, defendable assets, team hierarchies and complex interacting networks. Image of a simplified operational context diagram of bushfire emergency response courtesy of QUT's Dr Troy Bruggemann.