Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellows

Our Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellows are nationally recognised for their research contributions and establishing strong research track records through quality research outputs.

The Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowships is a competitive scheme advertised internationally on an annual basis.

Applicants are selected on the basis of their exceptional track record and national recognition for undertaking high quality research in one of RMIT's research priority areas.

2024 Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellows

Dr Francesco Campaioli

STEM | Science

Francesco Campaioli is a theoretical physicist, specialising in open and many-body quantum systems. Their research focuses on using quantum science and technology for energy applications. In particular, they study excited electronic states in semiconductor materials to improve solar cells, batteries, and energy conversion in optical and electronic devices. To do so, Francesco uses advanced techniques like tensor network methods, quantum master equations, and quantum simulation platforms. As Chair of the International Conference on Quantum Energy, Francesco is actively fostering collaborations with industry partners to translate their findings into practical solutions and grow the interdisciplinary research community that focuses on these topics.

Dr Irina Grossman

STEM | Computing Technologies

Dr Irina Grossman is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the RMIT School of Computing Technologies. Her research bridges the fields of demography, artificial intelligence, and data science, focusing on developing methods for demographic forecasting. By integrating established demographic approaches with machine learning and data science techniques, Dr. Grossman’s research aims to enhance the accuracy and robustness of population forecasts that inform government policy and public service planning. Her interdisciplinary background in both demography and cognitive neuroscience allows her to address complex issues related to demographic change. Among her research interests is a focus on translating research into practical outcomes, enabling data-driven decisions to support policy and planning.

Dr Kelly Donati

STEM | Health and Biomedical Sciences

Dr Kelly Donatiis a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow (Regenerative Futures) in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences and a member of RMIT’s Food Cultures and Practices Network. Bringing together human geography, critical public health and the environmental humanities, her interdisciplinary research investigates the role of community and public food infrastructure in creating more caring, regenerative and convivial urban environments. As co-founder and Chair of Sustain: the Australian Food Network, a health promotion charity, Kelly has a strong track record in working with government and community practitioners on research and policy development to support meaningful food system transformation.

Dr Konstantina Vasilakopoulou

DSC | Property, Construction and Project Management

Dr Konstantina Vasilakopoulou is an accomplished researcher, architect, and environmental engineering specialist passionate about sustainability and healthy and inclusive environments. She possesses comprehensive industry knowledge in the impacts of the built environment on wellbeing, sustainable design, and architecture with a focus on the inclusivity of vulnerable populations.

In the near future, Konstantina plans to explore the effects of environmental parameters such as light and temperature on the mental, physical and social wellbeing of older workers and collaborate with industrial partners to develop solutions for improving the lives of this population. Konstantina’s work depends on multi-disciplinary knowledge and diverse approaches from scientists in the psychology, engineering and technology fields.

Dr Jer Shyuan Ng

STEM | Science

Dr Jer Shyuan Ng earned her PhD in Computer Science from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, under the Alibaba Talent Programme.

Her research focuses on developing resource management frameworks and incentive mechanisms to enable the deployment of AI solutions over edge intelligence networks. By integrating concepts from economics, optimization, game theory, engineering, and AI, her work bridges multiple disciplines. To enhance the security and privacy of edge intelligence, she advances Federated Learning by incorporating cutting-edge privacy-preserving techniques, such as differential privacy and secure multi-party computation, driving both theoretical innovation and practical applications.

RMIT Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellows by starting year

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2023 Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellows

Dr Tingting Song

School of Engineering | STEM

Dr Tingting Song is an ARC DECRA and Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow at RMIT Centre for Additive Manufacturing, School of Engineering. Tingting is a physical metallurgist and materials scientist trained in Australia with a proven track record in both nanoporous metals and metal additive manufacturing – particularly in the design, nanofabrication and commercial translation of nanoporous metals, and high-performance Ti-alloys enabled by metal additive manufacturing. She pioneers interdisciplinary research in the unique integration of metal additive manufacturing and post-nanofabrication for a novel class of highly biocompatible implant materials.

Dr Justyna Dabrowska

Dr Justyna Dabrowska is a Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the School of Management, COBL. Her research centres on innovation management with a focus on developing open collaborative innovation capabilities, collaborative approaches between incumbents and start-ups in New Product Development, orchestrating innovation ecosystems, and digital transformation.

Justyna has extensive experience in developing and managing large international projects on open innovation, business acceleration, sustainability and digital transformation, as well as collaborating with a wide range of companies from different industries.

Dr Ruchika Ojha

Dr Ruchika Ojha is a Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the School of Science, STEM College. Ruchika is an inorganic synthetic chemist and electrochemist performing research in the field of cancer and energy-storage solutions. Her research interest includes synthesising advanced material such as anticancer agents, solution and solid-state electrochemical analysis, generation and stabilisation of the metal complexes with rare oxidation states, activated carbon materials, hydrogen-storage and energy-storage systems.

Ruchika is currently working on synthesising novel bimetallic gold-platinum anticancer drugs and undertaking electrochemical studies to increase their overall anticancer activity, aiming to create health benefits for the community.

Dr Johanne Trippas

Dr Johanne Trippas is Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellow in the School of Computing Technologies, STEM College. Johanne has built an international reputation as a leader in conversational information seeking research, especially at the intersection of information retrieval, human-computer interaction, and dialogue analysis, with the aim of making information more accessible. Prior to RMIT University, she was a Doreen Thomas Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Dr Trippas obtained her PhD in Computer Science from RMIT University. Recently, her work has focused on developing next-generation capabilities for intelligent systems, including spoken conversational search, digital assistants in a cockpit, and artificial intelligence to identify cardiac arrests.

Valentina Baccetti

Dr Valentina Baccetti is an expert in relativistic quantum information, an area of research that brings together Einstein’s theory of relativity, quantum physics and information theory, and general relativity in which she has several significant high impact publications.

Valentina’s work on black holes physics, specifically on the black hole information loss paradox, has had a significant impact on this forty-year-old Physics paradox, which ultimately pertains to the microscopic nature of space and time. Valentina is a member of the Quantum Laboratory at RMIT (QuRMIT) and ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T). Additionally, she has extensive international collaborations with the Institute of Quantum Computing and Perimeter Institute in Canada.

As a VC Research Fellow, she is focusing on understanding how relativity affects quantum mechanics and the so-called quantum resources, such as “quantum entanglement”. Primary applications of this research can be seen in quantum communications performed between satellites. Among other recognitions, Valentina was also a recipient of a Macquarie Research Fellowship in 2015.

Valentina is aligned to the RMIT Information and Systems (Engineering) ECP.

Find out more about Valentina

Jessica Holien

Dr Jessica Holien has an outstanding track record in computational molecular modelling and drug discovery relative to opportunity. Her research bridges the chemistry-biology divide, incorporating medicinal chemistry, biology and computational modelling. Furthermore, she has extensive experience in the commercial drug discovery sector, consulting widely with Australian and international start-up biotechnology companies. Her lab uses cutting-edge, machine learning methods to enrich traditional bioinformatic analysis and improve high-throughput chemistry screens. This leads to faster small molecule chemical hit identification. She has a particular interest in understanding the mechanisms behind protein-protein interactions developing tools to design small molecule inhibitors to modulate them.

Jessica is aligned to the RMIT Biomedical Health and Innovation ECP.

Find out more about Jessica

Huacheng Zhang

Dr Huacheng Zhang is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. She worked as an ARC-DECRA Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Monash University before being awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship at RMIT.

Dr Zhang is a prominent and internationally recognized researcher in the field of bioinspired engineering of artificial membranes for efficient separation applications. She has published 45 peer-reviewed research journal articles in international and leading journals, including Nature Materials, Science Advances, and Nature Communications. Her publications have received more than 1900 citations with a corresponding h-index of 21.

Huacheng is aligned to the RMIT Advanced Materials ECP.

Find out more about Huacheng

Kylie Quinn

Dr Kylie Quinn is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Translational Immunology and Nanotechnology Program at RMIT University. She is currently exploring how ageing may limit immunity in older individuals and how we might restore immune function.

Serene Ho

Dr Serene Ho is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in Geospatial Science in the School of Science at RMIT.

Her fellowship explores how the use of disruptive geospatial technologies to co-produce land information to improve tenure security in vulnerable urban communities impacts trust between communities, NGOs and governments. This forms the basis for developing strategies to optimise trust, and indicators to measure the impact of trust creation/destruction to transform urban land administration systems for improved urban governance.

Maria Vasardini

Shadi Hoshayar

Dr Shadi Houshyar is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the School of Engineering at RMIT University. Her research program is focused on developing polymers/biomaterials for medical application.

Dr Brian Coffey

Dr Brian Coffey is a Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University.

Dr Chris De Gruyter

Chris De Gruyter is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban Research. His research is exploring the impact of new development on public transport.

Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellows