ARC Future Fellowships 2026 - Five for the School!
Published on the 18 September 2026
We’re delighted to announce that five researchers from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering have been awarded prestigious 2026 ARC Future Fellowships to the value of $6.3M. Overall, UNSW was awarded 28 Fellowships – twelve of which were to UNSW Engineering researchers.
ARC Future Fellowships are among Australia’s most competitive and highly regarded research awards, designed to enable researchers to build their research programs, develop new ideas and contribute to Australia’s research capability and future prosperity.
Congratulations to our School’s Dr Da (Daniel) Chen, Professor Peyman Mostaghimi, Professor Taha Rashidi, Dr Kefeng Zhang, and Associate Professor Min Zheng.
Their research projects at the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering aim to contribute significant improvements in current planning, design and re-use of our resources across a range of civil and environmental fields. They involve:
- developing an innovative bio-chemical approach to convert nitrate pollution into valuable ammonia, a substance essential for Australian agriculture and with growing potential as a clean fuel. (Min Zheng)
- enabling evidence-based design and management of resilient stormwater assets that protect waterways and enhance the climate resilience of Australian cities. (Kefeng Zhang)
- creating a flexible and adaptive transport modelling framework that better reflects today’s complex transport systems and the choices people make within them, ensuring more reliable results for building sustainable, efficient, and user-friendly cities. (Taha Rashidi)
- developing advanced numerical and experimental methods to help the energy industry identify optimal subsurface reservoirs for hydrogen storage and carbon dioxide geo-sequestration while ensuring safe operations throughout the process. (Peyman Mostaghini)
- develop lightweight greener structures using carbon-absorbing concretes - utilising graded porosities to improve load carrying capacity and air permeability for mitigating carbon footprints more efficiently. (Daniel Chen)
Announcing the latest round of Fellowships, ARC CEO Prof Ute Roessner AM FAA said, ‘These projects demonstrate the value of investing in research that expand knowledge, address complex challenges and create benefits for all Australians.’
Head of School, Professor Nassr Khalili noted that ‘This outstanding achievement reflects our staff’s research excellence, international standing and leadership in their fields.’
For further information on the projects see below:
Professor Peyman Mostaghimi, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering's Centre for Infrastructure, Engineering & Safety (CIES)
Multiscale Reactive Transport Modelling for Safe Subsurface Storage
This project aims to develop high-fidelity modelling frameworks to mitigate risks associated with fluid storage in subsurface reservoirs and to investigate reactive processes in geological formations.
The project expects to reveal the interplay of spatial scales in rocks and generate knowledge on reactive transport in porous media by utilising advanced theories, numerical simulation and multimodal imaging.
Expected outcomes include novel predictive methods and an enhanced capacity to repurpose underground reservoirs as storage sites for carbon or hydrogen. This will enable energy sector to support Australia in reaching its net-zero target by designing safe, large-scale storage solutions without risk of leakage or groundwater contamination.
FT260101266. $1,307,914.00
Further details:
The Australian Government's Climate Change Bill (2022) sets ambitious environmental targets: a 43% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050.
Averting catastrophic climate change requires an urgent shift to clean energy sources, coupled with continuous efforts to capture and sequester carbon dioxide emissions. Achieving these will require large-scale carbon dioxide sequestration and the adoption of hydrogen as a clean, emission-free energy source.
During this energy transition, substantial storage capacity is needed for both hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Subsurface geological formations present significant potential, as they can store large volumes of fluids. However, ensuring effective storage necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the interactions between rocks and injected fluids. It is essential to rigorously model these processes to mitigate risks such as leakage or groundwater contamination.
This project aims to develop advanced numerical and experimental methods to help the energy industry identify optimal subsurface reservoirs for hydrogen storage and carbon dioxide geo-sequestration while ensuring safe operations throughout the process.
This will position Australia to thrive in a low-carbon economy by enabling the sustainable, safe, and efficient utilisation of subsurface reservoirs. Energy storage and carbon sequestration are two rapidly growing global markets with significant job creation potential for Australia's future.
New generation of strategic models to evaluate new mobility technologies
The pandemic fundamentally disrupted transport patterns through widespread remote work, rapid growth in e-shopping, and unsustainable energy use, revealing urgent gaps in current infrastructure models.
This project advances transport modelling theory by creating flexible and efficient formulations that better capture how agents and systems interact.
By integrating diverse multimodal data, it delivers adaptable modelling specifications, moving beyond prefabricated ones. Importantly, the framework can incorporate information from all types of data sources, ensuring evidence-based policy and guiding the right investment strategies.
The outcome is a transformative modelling method equipping planners with resilient, future-ready decision tools.
FT260100714 $1,329,808.00
Further details:
Travel patterns have shifted dramatically in recent years. The pandemic accelerated work from home, boosted online shopping, and reshaped travel demand, while new technologies such as electric vehicles and the prospect of autonomous transport are rapidly changing how people and goods move. Yet, the planning tools we currently use are limited and cannot fully account for these realities. Existing approaches often rely on a single model specification, which risks producing results that are too narrow or sensitive to small changes in data.
This project will create a flexible and adaptive modelling framework that better reflects today’s complex transport systems, and the choices people make within them. It will draw on a wide variety of data sources and incorporate multiple competing model specifications, ensuring more reliable and robust results.
With this capability, contemporary issues such as carbon pricing, alternative fuel taxation, and strategies for building sustainable, efficient, and user-friendly cities can be assessed with greater confidence.
Professor Taha Hossein Rashidi, Director, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering's Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI).
Associate Professor Min Zheng, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering's Water Research Centre (WRC).
Nitrate-to-Ammonia Conversion for Circular Nitrogen Management
This project aims to develop a biological-chemical process to transform nitrate, a widespread pollutant, into valuable ammonia. Ammonia plays a vital role in food production and is increasingly recognised as a potential clean fuel. The project will investigate the microbial mechanisms driving nitrate-to-ammonia conversion and design an integrated treatment system to recover ammonia from nitrate-laden waste streams.
Expected outcomes include uncovering fundamental microbial mechanisms and developing an innovative biochemical process for green ammonia recovery, with reduced nitrate pollution. The benefits include reduced environmental impacts and new opportunities for circular economy practices in agriculture, energy and the environment.
FT260100003. $1,328,307.00
Further details from A/Prof Min Zheng:
Nitrogen is essential for food production, but today we use enormous amounts of energy to manufacture ammonia while, at the same time, nitrate pollution from agriculture, industry and wastewater is creating growing environmental challenges.
My Future Fellowship aims to connect these two problems by developing an innovative bio-chemical approach to convert nitrate pollution into valuable ammonia.
Rather than treating nitrate simply as a pollutant that needs to be removed, we want to recover it as a resource. If successful, this research could help close the nitrogen loop, i.e., protecting our waterways while producing green ammonia that is essential for Australian agriculture and has growing potential as a clean fuel.
I am particularly excited about the opportunity to translate fundamental discoveries in microbial processes into a technology that could contribute to more circular and sustainable management of nitrogen in Australia.
Intelligent green porous structural design for active carbon removal
This project aims to develop lightweight green structures using carbon-absorbing concretes for achieving net zero. The innovation lies in the deep learning-enhanced intelligent structural design, using graded porosities to improve load carrying capacity and air permeability for mitigating carbon footprints efficiently.
By generating new insights into permeability-strength balance via tailoring porosities, this project will address the limitation of carbon removal in existing designs due to low air permeability. This will accelerate the transformation of civil industries toward zero emission, promote the economic growth and create jobs in green and smart construction, driving environmental sustainability and emerging market expansion.
FT260100514 $1,146,854.00
Dr Da (Daniel) Chen, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering's Centre for Infrastructure, Engineering & Safety (CIES)
Understanding and Predicting Resilient Nature-Based Stormwater Systems
This project aims to establish the scientific basis for maintaining the long-term functionality and safety of nature-based systems as critical urban infrastructure for managing stormwater. It expects to generate new understanding of how system structure, maintenance, and environmental stresses drive long-term performance and contaminant behaviour, through integrated field, pilot, and laboratory studies with predictive modelling.
Expected outcomes include new design principles and hybrid models for forecasting performance, maintenance, and risk. This will deliver significant benefits by enabling evidence-based design and management of resilient stormwater assets that protect waterways and enhance the climate resilience of Australian cities.
FT260100928 $1,133,896.00