Winter projects

We offer winter research scholarships to eligible students. Our winter research program is offered for six to ten weeks over the winter holiday period (June to September).

Students will participate in a 6-10 week research project, working with a research mentor, and will be expected to actively participate in the program for between 20 and 36 hours per week.

Contact A/Prof François-René Bertin, f.bertin@uq.edu.au for more information on the eligibility and the application process.

Available projects

Are commonly used wormers still effective against canine hook worms?

Title: Are commonly used wormers still effective against canine hookworms in South East Queensland? Towards a diagnostic tool for surveillance.

Description: This survey will provide data on the prevalence and level of resistance in canine hookworms in SE QLD towards two commonly used classes of anthelmintic drugs. It will also help unravel the resistance-conferring mutations in canine hookworm populations and their possible influences on phenotypic resistance to BZ drugs, building towards a sought-after rapid diagnostic test that could be employed in the field to undertake much larger surveillance programs in the future Insights gained will be helpful for understanding natural variation in hookworm ß-tubulin profiles and will strongly contribute to our understanding of benzimidazole resistance mechanisms in canine hookworms in Australian dogs.

Supervisor: Dr Swaid Abdullah

Proteomic and inflammatory lipid mediator analysis

Title: Proteomic and inflammatory lipid mediator analysis for a moreobjective and comprehensive understanding of heartworm disease progression indogs.

Description: The proposed study aims to use high-throughput proteomics and lipid mediator analysis to develop a more objective and comprehensive method of accurately classifying heartworm disease (HWD) through Heartworm specific host serumcardiopulmonary and systemic biomarkers in dogs. Insights gained through this study will be helpful for a better understanding of HWD and the use of biomarkers for diagnosis, disease progress and response to treatment.

Supervisor: Dr Swaid Abdullah

Screening and phylogenetic characterization of tick-borne pathogens

Title: Screening and phylogenetic characterization of tick-borne pathogens in dogs, dog carers and associated ticks in South East QLD and Northern NSW.

Description: The proposed study will use a One Health approach across the entire epidemiological chain of Tick-borne pathogen transmission, which will help better understand the infectivity of the TBPs and their zoonotic potential.

Supervisor: Dr Swaid Abdullah

Histopathology of canine and feline bladder disease

Do conformational and structural cardiovascular adaptations help freshwater turtles?

Title: Do conformational and structural cardiovascular adaptations help freshwater turtles to live in water and land?

Description: Freshwater turtles (Emydura: Emydidae) appear to have developed unique cardiovascular adaptations thought to assist with changes in cardiac output during deep-diving or maintaining circulatory homeostasis in a terrestrial environment. These include smooth muscle in the sinous venosus and atria as in otherEmydid turtles, and interestingly, prominent valve-like arterial structures which have not been described in freshwater turtles before. This is an exciting opportunity for a student to gain exposure to wildlife and physiology subjects. The student will be responsible for data mining in the UQ’s histology database to extract archived tissue, arrange laboratory requests for histochemical and immunohistochemical staining, and assist with manuscript drafting.

Supervisor: Dr Viviana Gonzalez-Astudillo

Reducing tick paralysis mortalities in the endangered spectacled flying fox

Title: Reducing tick paralysis mortalities in the endangered spectacled flying fox

Description: Genetic testing techniques inclusive of polymerase chain reaction and Sanger sequencing, will be used to determine the genetic haplotype of paralysis ticks from both archived and prospectively collected ticks from SFF from 2019 to 2024. Data will be investigated and modelled to determine whether individual ticks are within differing genetic haplotype/toxicity clades, whether genetic haplotype prevalence changes with time and/or changing environmental conditions and if these factors affect the severity of paralysis and recovery success.

Supervisor: Dr Lee McMichael

Cleft palate syndrome in bats

Title: Cleft palate syndrome in bats

Description: During the project, the students would analyse cleft palate syndromes identifying key genes that have been shown to have an association with the deformity. After which, the student will conduct bioinformatic analyses on previously collected genomic data to identify, map and annotate SFF genes that are analogous to cleft palate syndrome in other mammals, using the bioinformatic platforms Galaxy Australia Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis (MEGA).

Supervisor: Dr Lee McMichael

Patient flow within the UQ small animal teaching hospital

Title: Observation of patient flow within the UQ small animal teaching hospital, patient wait times, teaching times, bottlenecks, and suggestions for improvement

Description: The Small Animal Veterinary Teaching Hospital of the University of Queensland(UQ-SAVTH) has a double mission of serving the community by providing outstanding animal care as well as teaching final-year veterinary students. Clinical teaching occurs throughout the process of patient management within the hospital and can affect patient flow. The main purposes of this observational study are:

to analyse the timing and duration of clinical and teaching activities performed throughout the day
to identify potential causes of bottlenecks
to identify strategic changes that could improve workflow

The student can expect to:

learn about workflow in a veterinary hospital and for future veterinary or technology students to acclimatise to the hospital operations ahead of their final year rotations
be involved and learn about study design and actively perform data collection in the hospital (ethics already obtained)
be involved and learn about data analysis and if interested in developing presentation skills to deliver a talk on the results of the study to the hospital staff
The study will be based at Gatton and requires a dedicated student who is reliable and hardworking as well as proactive and who can work independently

Supervisor: Dr Erika Meler