Information and Computing Sciences (ICS) research at UQ is centred within the School of
Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE) which includes the groups:
Complex and Intelligent Systems, Security and Surveillance, Data & Knowledge Engineering,
eResearch, Systems & Software Engineering and Ubiquitous Computing. However significant
contributions in applied research are also made by the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), the
Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) and the Institute for Social Science Research
(ISSR) at UQ.
UQ publishes extensively across all 4-digit codes under 08. Its national and international
profile in ICS is evidenced by UQ’s lead/host role in the ARC Centre for Complex Systems,
ARC Network in Enterprise Information Infrastructure, ARC Centre of Excellence in
Bioinformatics, Qld Facility for Advanced Bioinformatics (QFAB), Qld Cyber-Infrastructure
Foundation (QCIF), Centre for Medical Diagnostic Technologies in Queensland (MedTeq)
and the Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology (CEIT). International
collaborators include: San Diego Supercomputer Centre, MIT, UCLA, Oxford, Cornell,
Johns Hopkins U., U.Southampton, U.Newcastle, European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI),
Chinese Academy of Sciences and the W3C.
Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing (0801)
0801 at UQ is highly interdisciplinary with expertise in both computational intelligence and
image processing. Foundational research is undertaken in adaptive agents, intelligent
robotics, artificial life, computer graphics and image processing, neural and evolutionary
computation, pattern and face recognition, semantic inferencing, simulation and modelling.
These techniques are applied by UQ researchers in engineering, bioinformatics,
nanotechnology, health, neurosciences, surveillance, cognitive, social and clinical sciences.
Major funded research projects include: ARC-funded Thinking Systems: Navigating through
Real and Conceptual Spaces; Development of a Computational Model for the Prediction of
Mental Workload in Air Traffic Control; Modelling Transdermal transport using
computational molecular simulation; Multi-modal, Multi-dimensional Virtual Microscopy for
Diagnostic Quantitative Pathology; Intelligent Closed Circuit TV.
Major Awards and Prizes include:
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Srinivasan: Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Prime Minister's Science
Prize, member of the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council,
Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Qld Smart State Premier's Fellow
Lindsay: Fellow Australian Computer Society, Boeing Chair of Systems Engineering
Belward: Fellow Australian Mathematical Society
Perkins: Fellow Australian College of Vet Sciences
Geard: Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Computing Research and
Education Association of Australasia.
Editorial board memberships include A* journals: IEEE Trans PAMI (Srinivasan) and
Cognitive Science (Wiles); Pattern Recognition Letters (Lovell). Bradley is Vice President of
the The Australian Pattern Recognition Society.
Applied research outcomes include 5 patents in computational intelligence and image
processing (Wiles, Bradley, Srinivasan, Lovell). Ausonex and Leximancer provide two
examples of successfully commercialised software products.
UQ has ~520 publications in 0801 of which 114 are journal publications (46% A*/A).
Appropriately for this field, 75% (>300) of publications appear within conference papers
(21% A). Top-ranked publications appear in Nature Biotechnology (Bailey), Nature
(Srinivasan), International Journal of Robotics Research (Srinivasan), IEEE Trans on
Robotics (Clarkson, Milford, Wyeth), IEEE Trans on Evolutionary Computation (Li,
Gallagher), IEEE Trans on Information Theory, IEEE Trans on Pattern Analysis and
Machine Intelligence and IEEE Trans on Neural Networks.
A large number of the researchers (63) in this code have a fractional assignment (26.6
apportioned), underlining its interdisciplinary nature and the broad application of
computational intelligence and image processing. Research outputs demonstrate extensive
collaborations within UQ between Complex and Intelligent Systems, Thinking Systems,
MedTeQ, the ARC Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics, ARC Centre for Complex
Systems, Queensland Facility for Advanced Bioinformatics (QFAB), Institute for Molecular
Bioscience, Queensland Brain Institute, Queensland Health and Queensland
Cyberinfrastructure Foundation (QCIF).
Researchers have access to over $12M of high performance computing facilities at
Queensland Cyberinfrastructure Foundation (QCIF) plus a $5M investment in advanced
imaging facilities at the Queensland Brain Institute and Centre for Magnetic Resonance
funded through NCRIS 5.3, the Qld Govt and UQ.
There is a very strong RHD training program with 138 students enrolled (apportioned 76.4),
an average of 5.2 students per supervisor.
International collaborators in this area include: U.California, San Diego; Salk Institute;
U.Zurich; and the EU FP6 project QosCosGrid (Quasi Opportunistic Supercomputing for
Complex Systems in Grid Environments). National collaborators include CSIRO, NICTA,
the ARC CoE in Vision Science at ANU, ARC Complex Open Systems Research Network,
the Research Network for a Secure Australia, and the CRC for Sensor Signal and Information
Processing.
Information Systems (0806)
Research in 0806 is a mix of fundamental (including large scale data management, data
quality, semantic web, sensor data analysis, spatial indexing and multimedia indexing) and
applied research (primarily bio-informatics, eco-informatics and e-Science).
Major ARC-funded projects include Mining Distributed High-Speed Time Variant Data
Streams; Efficient Similarity Query Processing in High Dimensional Databases;
Approaching the Limits in Data Quality Management. ARC-funded projects in applied
research are investigating information systems for:
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structural biology ($1.46M Discovery with Kobe (Federation Fellow) and Martin
(Laureate Fellow));
water (CSIRO, Microsoft, Linkage and SmartState grants of > $2M)
painting conservation (Linkage $544K)
In 2004 UQ also received over $637K for 8 Special Research Initiative projects to develop eResearch tools and services and $320K from AusIndustry for Integrating Australia into
Global eScience.
Major awards and prizes include:
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Orlowska: Fellow of Australian Academy of Science
Hunter: Academy of Sciences Committee for Data in Science
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Heng Tao Shen: Chris Wallace Award for outstanding computing research
Editorial Board memberships include: VLDB (Zhou, IF 7.2), Journal of Web Semantics
(Hunter, IF 3.4), IEEE Trans on Knowledge Engineering (Zhou), World Wide Web (Zhou),
Information Management (Li), IEEE Multimedia (Hunter), Evolutionary Bioinformatics
(Ragan).
Although IS at UQ is a relatively small group (<16 FTE of which 4 are level E and the
majority are Early Career), it has a prodigious publication rate - 451 publications 2003-2008;
78% (260) conference publications; 16% (76) ranked journal articles. 50% of journal
publications are in A* or A journals (i.e., MIS Quarterly, Computer Journal, IEEE Trans
Software Engineering, Information Systems, ACM Trans on Database Systems) and over 25%
of the conference publications are at A ranked conferences (SIGIR, SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE,
KCAP). UQ also has 5 patents in this area.
The ARC Network in Enterprise Information Infrastructure represents a major investment of
$3.2M (including $1.6M from industry and participating institutes) in Information Systems at
UQ. UQ is also the lead organization in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics and
was a core partner in the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) and the CRC for
Enterprise Distributed System Technology.
Infrastructure investments include over $12M in QCIF from 2003-2008 for high performance
computing and visualization. Ragan has attracted $8M to establish the EMBL Australia EBI
Mirror. Hunter received over $4M for data management from the Systemic Infrastructure
Initiative and NCRIS 5.16 between 2003 and 2008. Other major infrastructure funding
includes over $2mill funding via ARC LEIFs.
There are over 30 RHD students enrolled in this area (4.5 PhD students per eligible
supervisor).
IS at UQ has established strong collaborations with industry (Microsoft, Boeing, SAP,
Pfizer), CSIRO, NICTA, the Qld Govt and DIISR, as evidenced by non-ARC research
funding of almost $6M in the period 2006-2008. Funded international collaborations include:
research grants of over $5M with Italy, Germany and China; 3 major research grants from
Microsoft Research in the US and China; partnership in the $US20M NSF Data Conservancy
project; an Andrew W. Mellon grant for the Open Annotations Collaboration with UIUC; and
a joint lab with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Other
UQ is also research active in the following FORs, as evidenced by significant publications
and the achievements below:
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0802 (Computation Theory and Mathematics) – 92 publications with > 67% at
conferences. Awards: Hayes (Fellow of the British Computer Society and IEE Mather
Premium). Hayes is also on the editorial board of Formal Aspects of Computing.
0803 (Computer Software) – 180 publications with > 80% at conferences. Awarded 5
ARC Discovery and Linkage grants worth over $1.1M in period 2003-2008. Bailes
was made a Fellow of the ACS. Editorial boards: IEEE Transactions in Software
Engineering (Strooper), Science of Computer Programming (Lindsay).
0804 (Data Format) – 97 publications on semantic web/ontologies, includes 11 (75%)
pubs in A*/A journals (VLDB and IEEE Trans on Knowledge and Data
Engineering).
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0805 (Distributed Computing) – research focus is on the emerging area of
pervasive/ubiquitous computing (Indulska, Bergmann). Supported by major grants
from NICTA, TRL, Boeing and Ericsson. Indulska is on the editorial board of
Pervasive and Mobile Computing (the top journal in this field).