Guided by our values of equity, excellence, sustainability and engagement, the University of Newcastle has built a strong reputation as a world-leading university making an impact within our own regions, in Australia and across the globe. We are ranked in the top 200 of the world’s universities by QS World University Rankings 2021.
Across our campuses in Newcastle, the Central Coast, Sydney and Singapore, the University of Newcastle enrols more than 37,000 students from diverse backgrounds, with a focus on equity and developing our next generation of socially-oriented leaders, entrepreneurs and innovators.
Our University has long been known as a champion of innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Many of our courses are designed to integrate theory with practice, offering rich opportunities for real-life, hands-on experiences.
We are also a research-intensive university and proud of the great things we have achieved in collaboration with our partners in industry, business, government and the community here and around the world. Our sights are set firmly on the future, as we work hard to build our research capacity and maintain our position as a competitive destination for the world’s best researchers and global innovation leaders.
The Australian government’s ironic and perverse decision to better fund schools at the expense of already-promised university funding would make for a good episode of the 1980s sitcom Yes, Prime Minister…
Fraud. It’s an ugly word, an arresting word. As with “cheating” it comes loaded with negative connotations, but can potentially lead to far greater penalties and consequences. And yet fraud in science…
US president Barack Obama has renewed his promise to close the controversial US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. The prison camp is currently the scene of a hunger strike by numerous inmates, some…
Weight-loss ads and television shows regularly profile people who have transformed their lives through major losses of 30 kilograms or more. These weight-loss ambassadors try to inspire us to do the same…
Thanks to the Human Genome Project we now have a complete genomic map. But, simply having a map doesn’t give you all the information. For a map to be useful, you still need know where to go, the best way…
On the eve of a federal budget looking for savings, I would like to report a medical intervention that reduces suffering, can prolong life and dramatically reduces health-care costs. The intervention itself…
Dieters can now have their wine and drink it, guilt-free and minus the hangover. That’s the promise of so-called “light” or low-alcohol, low-calorie wines. But these wines are not considerably lighter…
New diseases grab headlines. The latest influenza scare – H7N9 – has prompted much speculation about the direction the virus might take. And rightly so, as vaccines to fight new viruses can take some time…
The father of western medicine Hippocrates famously said: “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”, arguing disease was not a punishment from the gods, but the consequence of a poor diet. Today…
Last week we learned a famous 2010 academic paper, relied on by political big-hitters to bolster arguments for austerity cuts, contained significant errors; and that those errors came down to misuse of…
There’s an old saying, you are what you eat. If you look at the average Australian diet, we’re in trouble. The rise of the 24/7 society, unsocial work hours and an accelerating pace of life have led the…
So, the Higgs boson … Last week, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) finally announced the new particle discovered last summer is indeed a Higgs boson, a particle predicted…
A month ago, I returned to Australia from a trip to Burma. After four weeks in the country, I’d acclimatised to the culture, cuisine and people. My conditioning was so complete that on my return, I was…
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) today released its updated Australian Dietary Guidelines to advise Australians about the types and amounts of foods needed to maintain a healthy…
We assess risk every day. But very few of us receive any formal training in the requisite mathematics and statistics, and, partly as a result, poor decisions are made, both by individuals and governmental…
When you open a science textbook or magazine, it’s often the images that capture your attention. Some of these images help you visualise the topics, while others - such as diagrams - can be instrumental…
The new paternity leave scheme that started on January 1 may be cheap and still have a significant impact. It offers new fathers two weeks leave at minimum wage, which is only a fraction of what new dads…
If food is labelled low fat, it’s got to be better for weight loss, right? Wrong – it’s the total kilojoules that matter most for weight loss. Looking solely at fat content only gives you part of the picture…
Forget an apple a day, vitamin manufacturers would have you believe it’s important to take daily vitamins to boost your health. And a surprising proportion of Australians do. Data from the last National…
Fractals are exquisite structures produced by nature, hiding in plain sight all around us. They are tricky to define precisely, though most are linked by a set of four common fractal features: infinite…