Taking stock: a year for integration and collaboration 

12 December 2018

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By Professor Guy Marks

 

As we end the first year of our new CAR, it is timely to take stock of what we have achieved since the first CAR CRE began six or seven years ago. At that time, there was little integration among research disciplines or institutions doing air pollution work. There was no real pipeline of air pollution researchers or projects. Contacts between researchers and policy makers were sporadic and ad hoc.

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CAR, with its CRE-mandated focus on research, collaboration, translation and capacity building, has explicitly set out to address these shortcomings.

 

I believe we have made great progress in building collaborative, multidisciplinary and cross-institutional linkages throughout Australia. We have engaged and developed the careers of many early and mid-career researchers and ensured that they have a broad grounding in the skills and issues relevant to air pollution research.

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We have developed strong links with policy makers in environment, planning and health in Australia and with key movers and shakers in the global and regional sphere.

 

We are engaged in important, policy-relevant research and development work in many arenas relevant to our mandate:

• Developing new mobile sensors

• Establishing an accessible database for air pollution exposure and other relevant data for populations

• Investigating the Hazelwood mine fire outcomes

• Understanding the effects of smoke on human health and how to mitigate it

• Understanding the genetic basis of human response to pollutants

• Exploring the pathology of adverse human health responses to various inhaled toxicants

 

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