2011 Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure

infrastructure makes this engagement difficult and models where the engagement
is driven and directed by the researcher community should be developed.
3.D.1
What are your views on the eResearch infrastructure identified, including
their relative priority and ability to support the current and future
eResearch infrastructure needs for Frontier Technologies?
Section E: Cross-disciplinary needs
It is critical to provide research infrastructure that is capable of supporting crossdisciplinary
needs. Internationally competitive research requires access to large
state of the art infrastructure that serves a broad range of areas of research and
also because there is an increasing need for infrastructure that supports research
that sits at the boundaries of existing discipline areas.
Some of the existing funded capabilities clearly deliver infrastructure that is crossdisciplinary;
good examples of this include the Australian Synchrotron and the
National Imaging Facility.
There are other areas where there are clearly gaps or only embryonic capability at
present, and examples include:
Integration of the full ‘discovery chain’ of advanced materials development
from materials design and properties modelling, through processing,
characterisation and device fabrication;
Interfaces between commercial/off-the-shelf biotechnologies and sensor
and bionics development and engineering, including via the provision of
infrastructure and laboratories for the co-location of researchers from
these different disciplines to allow the testing and prototyping of new
device concepts;
Capabilities for designing approaches and solutions to problems that
require access by researchers from other disciplines to frontier
technologies;
Capacity and support systems that facilitate use by frontier technologies
researchers and industry of established service infrastructure and
systems; and
Facilities for visualisation of complex data sets and simulations across
multiple scales (e.g. nano-scale up to full size structures) and domains
(e.g. optical and mechanical).
In addition to the requirements for access to high quality large-scale crossdisciplinary
infrastructure, and facilities for conducting high value cross-disciplinary
research and integration, it is also important to have access to experts to assist
and advise users on the use of cross-disciplinary facilities.
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