Completed ARC Discovery Projects
Completed ARC Linkage Projects
A Grid based platform for multi scaled biological simulation
ARC Discovery 2010-2012
Prof DA Abramson; Prof K Burrage
Heart disease currently affects over 3.5 million Australians. In 2006 it claimed the lives of almost 46,000 Australians (34% of all deaths). We will develop enabling technology that underpins cardiac disease research, offering potential for new treatments and pharmaceutical therapies. Even a small improvement in this area can translate into significant national benefit. Further, the mathematical techniques and software tools we will develop, whilst focused on heart tissue, will have broader applicability, and may underpin advancements in other disciplines. Finally, we expect that the software solutions and infrastructure will have both commercial and strategic value in their own right.
A Process Based Approach to Generative Form Synthesis
ARC Discovery 2010-2014
A/Prof JP McCormack; Dr A Dorin; Dr A Whitelaw; Prof W Latham
This project addresses open problems in digital media art, introducing innovative methods for professional practitioners. Through close collaboration with a highly successful UK pioneer and his team, this research nurtures Australian expertise and scholarship. Creative industries are making an increasingly important global economic contribution. Related projects overseas demonstrate the potential for tangible commercial benefits as a direct result of research investment in this domain. The practical outcomes of this research find application in architecture, computer games, digital animation and new media art. This inter disciplinary project enhances collaborative links between the research communities of Computer Science and Media Arts.
A Unified Grid Programming Methodology for Global e-Science
ARC Discovery 2007-2011
Prof DA Abramson
Modern science requires huge computational resources and has become Global e-Science. Going far beyond individual super computers, Grids harness geographically distributed resources: dozens of super computers, workstations, clusters of computers, data bases, together with scientific instruments, such as telescopes or synchrotrons. Currently, Grids are difficult to use because they lack key software infrastructure. We shall develop this by both extending available Grid services and by building new software tools. Australian e-Science case studies will be pursued in environmental sciences, life and health sciences, and geo-sciences and will link to global Grids extending Australia's scientific capabilities globally.
Adaptive data stream processing in heterogeneous distributed computing environments using real-time context
ARC Discovery 2008-2010
A/Prof A. Zaslavsky; Dr S. Krishnaswamy; Dr M. Gaber [APD]
This project falls within the ARC research priority goal, Smart Information Use. The innovative contributions of this project through the development of adaptive data stream mining algorithms for heterogeneous devices will have an impact on a range of emerging application areas such as: 1. Meeting time-critical, intelligent information needs of the mobile workforce (e.g. mobile healthcare professionals, stockbrokers). 2. Improving Intelligent Transportation Systems via in-vehicle analysis and crash prevention. 3. Facilitating 'on-board' analysis in sensors that monitor the environment and patients. The project will enhance Australia's leading international role in the area of data stream processing in distributed computing environments.
Adaptiveness of self-organised decision making
ARC Discovery 2008-2011
A/Prof B. Meyer; Dr A. Dussutour
Complex systems are an important international research focus in many disciplines, and their engineering applications are plentiful. The new mathematical approach developed by this project will enable different disciplines for the first time to communicate using a common formal framework. This will open the path to a generalized understanding of self-organized systems in dynamic environments. Creating the tools for a unified interdisciplinary approach will allow Australia to gain a stronger position in biomimetic engineering and to take a lead in international research on collective behaviour.
Analysing model transformations for combinatorial problems
ARC Discovery 2008-2010
Prof M. Wallace; A/Prof M. Garcia de la Banda
Maximising the benefits of limited resources is crucial for our industry, our hospitals, our security and ourenvironment. This is achievable through a technology called combinatorial optimisation, which also supports wiser investment, better engineering, and even accelerated bio-informatics. Applying the technology is highly skilled and effort intensive, so most of its potential benefits are unrealised. This project will break down some of the barriers which make it hard to use. The ultimate goal is to let the user state the problem in simple terms, and the computer work out how best to solve it. Our vision is for groups and organisations large and small to reap the benefits of combinatorial optimisation.
Automatic music feature extraction, classification and annotation
ARC Discovery 2009-2011
Prof G Lu; A/Prof K Ting; Dr D Zhang
Music is a huge industry currently undergoing a major revolution. The industry is shifting from music-making to music retrieval and its incorporation into a range of products from TV, and film, to music streaming into locations and events, as well as MP3 players and all kinds of electronic devices. This research will support immediate retrieval of music that meets the current industry need, based not just on titles, composers and/or performers, but on the actual properties of the music itself. The knowledge and music processing techniques developed will give Australian music industry an advantage over other countries.
Computational creativity: An evolutionary ecosystem approach
ARC Discovery 2008-2010
Dr J. McCormack
The creative industries are at the forefront of a 21st century economy. For Australia to play a leading role, artists and designers require innovative software systems that support original creative practice. Creativity is a highly sought-after yet little understood phenomena. This research will advance our understanding of creativity, developing imaginative new ways of working with technology: enabling creative outcomes that are difficult or impossible to achieve with existing software tools. In a global and rapidly changing industry, this project will give Australian creative practitioners and software developers a competitive edge, enhancing our international reputation as a leader in this area.
Discovering justified knowledge from data
ARC Discovery 2007-2010
Prof G. Webb
Knowledge Discovery from Data (KDD) has become a critical tool for science, commerce and public administration. However, its effectiveness is reduced by the propensity of some key techniques to make many spurious as well as real 'discoveries.' Such false discoveries can be misleading and extremely costly. Standard statistical techniques designed to address this problem do not directly scale-up to the massive numbers of potential discoveries that KDD routinely explores: their power is too low, and their computational requirements too high. This project will develop efficient and effective technologies to control the risk of false discoveries from those susceptible techniques, thereby greatly increasing the value and reliability of KDD.
Dual phase evolution in networks
ARC Discovery 2009-2011
Prof DG Green; Prof HA Abbass
A grand challenge for modern society is the sheer complexity of vast networks arising from organizations and infrastructures. Unexpected, sometimes catastrophic, behaviour often emerges from interactions within such systems. As a result, the Internet, financial markets, power grids and other vital infrastructures are susceptible to costly problems such as cascading failures, inefficiency, and unpredictability. High-tech industries, such as biotechnology and information networking, face problems in coordinating networks of interacting agents. This project will expand the horizon of complex systems by deriving the design principles underpinning stable and resilient network structures and validate these principles on real world networks.
Emergence of robust, stable structures via computation within natural networks
ARC Discovery 2007-2011
Prof D. Green
Nature as computation is a powerful analogy that has proved a rich source of scientific insights and computing methodologies. This project addresses two central problems of natural computing: how self-organisation occurs within connected networks of agents and how global properties emerge from local interactions. These are explored both in living systems, including landscape genetics and social networks, as well as computational systems, especially multi-agent systems. Processes investigated include synchronisation, clustering, enslavement, feedback and phase changes. The results will provide insights into social issues and self-organization in networks of agents as well as novel methods for solving complex computational problems.
Ethics and encyclopaedic culture in 13th century France: adaptation, diffusion and contexts of innovation in the Speculum morale and its sources
ARC Discovery 2010-2012
Dr DM Squire; Prof CJ Mews
This project will contribute to awareness of the ethical foundations of the Western intellectual tradition, both philosophical and religious, through studying an influential encyclopaedia of ethical instruction from 1300, known as the Speculum morale and its relationship to the evolution of ethical teaching in France during the 13th century. It will develop text similarity detection software for use with Latin texts, and by implication within humanistic studies more generally. Through connecting with an international research project into medieval encyclopaedic culture, it will enable Australian expertise in both medieval studies and information technology to become internationally recognised.
Koorie archiving: Community and records working together
ARC Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development 2009-2010
Ms S Faulkhead; Prof LW Russell; Prof SM McKemmish
The integration, preservation and accessibility of all archival sources, forms and media of Koorie knowledge are vital to processes of recovery for those affected by past government policies and to national reconciliation. Working in partnership with the Gunditjmara community of the Victorian Western District and the Koorie Heritage Trust, the Project will assist Koorie and other Indigenous communities to access and control information about them and their culture, and to build sustainable community archives. This will help in establishing identity, reconnecting families, pursuing land claims, intergenerational healing, preserving culture, and redress. The Project will place Australia at the forefront of Indigenous archiving research.
Low complexity Video Coding for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks
ARC Discovery 2010-2012
A/Prof MM Murshed
This project develops frontier technologies to capture and transmit videos by miniaturised sensing devices. It will improve Australia's telemetric surveillance capabilities and benefit defence, law enforcement, traffic control, and wildlife inhabitant monitoring agencies. It will enable the telecommunication industry to support quality video conferencing with mobile phones and the computer games industry to develop rich virtual reality games. The Australian health industry will be able to provide ubiquitous healthcare services through improved telemedicine and medical imaging with emerging technologies such as edible cameras. The project will also enable Australia to lead the world in setting up video coding standards for sensor networks.
Mobile Query Processing: An Integrated Approach
ARC Discovery 2009-2011
Dr D Taniar; Prof B Srinivasan
Mobile communication is a frontier technology, and providing efficient mobile query services to the general public is critical in placing Australia as a leading country in mobile information services. The benefit to Australia nationally is beyond the telecommunication industry. The project will transform other Australian industries which rely on mobile information services, including emergency response services (eg. ambulance, police), mobile workforce and mobile commerce, transportation/traffic controller, bureau of meteorology, defence/army forces, financial market, as well as tourism and news. With the enormous growing of investment in these industries, this project will become a major contribution to national productivity and growth.
Multi-sensory fusion and understanding in robotic assistive technology environments
ARC Discovery 2008-2010
Prof R. Jarvis; Prof I. Zukerman; Dr J. Alexandersson; Prof Y. Shirai
The research will yield improved international standing through scientific advances disseminated through high impact refereed publications and open source software. The synergy between Language Technology and Robotics will attract post-graduate students in these areas, and potentially commercialisation interest. The demonstration prototype will provide proof of concept of an application that improves the capabilities of human-centric environments, especially for people with limited mobility or cognitive function. The deployment of this research will extend the independence of such people beyond the time when they may otherwise need to be institutionalized, which will benefit both them and the remainder of society.
Supporting adaptive, interactive documents
ARC Discovery 2009-2011
Prof KG Marriott; Prof PJ Stuckey; Dr B Bos
The project will improve comprehensibility of technical material, reduce paper usage, encourage collaborative science, improve the reliability of published science (by allowing post-publication annotation and correction), and improve the accessibility of technical material for readers who are blind or have poor vision. The project also holds considerable potential for supporting Australian companies in the publishing and document processing industries.
A high throughput Grid based environment for real time bio-medical imaging
ARC Linkage 2008-2010
Prof D. Abramson; Dr M. Lackmann; Dr M. Haase; Dr I. Harper; Dr S. Scheck
Together with Leica, we will build a virtual microscope facility that will provide substantial functionality not currentlyavailable in Australia. This facility will have major national and international impact on bio-medical imaging. Thesoftware solutions and infrastructure, developed as part of this program will have considerable commercial andstrategic value in their own right. One guaranteed avenue for exploitation of the software will clearly be through our industry partner, Leica. Importantly, our proposal consolidates a critical mass of expertise connecting biomedical with computer science, thereby addressing a well-recognised constraint that to date has limited their national andinternational impact.
A scalable debugging framework for petascale computers
ARC Linkage 2008-2011
Prof DA Abramson; Dr L DeRose; Mr R Moench
Supercomputing underpins a wide range of areas of importance to the Australian economy; mining, agriculture, engineering, medical research and pharmaceutical development to name a few. It is of critical importance thatsoftware solutions in these areas behave correctly and do not generate erroneous results. This project will develop software tools and techniques that make it possible to detect and locate errors as software is converted to run onthe next generation of 'petascale' supercomputers. We will deploy the tools both commercially through our industry partner, and also on national high performance computing facilities.
Digital Divas: Designing approaches to enthuse girls' interest in ICT studies and ICT careers
ARC Linkage 2009-2011
A/Prof J Fisher; Dr C Lang; A/Prof HJ Forgasz; Mrs A Craig; Ms RT Ellul; Ms B Harlos
APA(I) Award(s): 1
Collaborating/Partner Organisation(s): Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, VicICT for Women Network, Australian Computer Society, Netspace Online Systems, Brentwood Secondary College
A strong information and communications technology (ICT) industry, a skilled ICT workforce and excellence in ICT research is vital to Australia's future. However, girls' interest in ICT, and the numbers of women entering the ICT workforce, are at record lows, while Industry skills are critically short. Digital Divas will pioneer a program to build girls' ICT skills and confidence, increasing their motivation to study ICT and enter the ICT workforce. The benefits of education will be maximised by addressing the gender digital divide evident in classrooms, universities and professions.
Enhancing patient management at point of care using electronic-based clinical pathways
ARC Linkage 2009-2010
Dr LL Dawson; Dr VM Plummer; A/Prof J Fisher; Dr AP Howard; Mr RM Ribbons; Mrs TM Harlem
Collaborating/Partner Organisation(s): NEC Business Solutions, Peninsula Health, Fraser & Jenkinson P/L trading as Print Media Group.
Clinical pathways have been adopted by most Australian hospitals and the development of a 'proof of concept' digitised clinical pathways management system (DCPMS) would provide significant benefits to the Australian healthcare system in improving the efficiency of this approach. These include improved outcomes of care arising from a better match of patient requirements to nursing care and other health resources and better management of resources where savings can be re-directed into front-line patient care. This Australian innovation can then be exported to international health systems that are increasingly turning to hospital funding models that utilise clinical pathway information.
Methods and software for efficiently solving the transportation crewing proble
ARC Linkage 2008-2012
Prof MG Wallace; Prof GI Webb; A/Prof NL Boland; Mr IR Evans; Dr H Gu This project will target major savings in airlines, trucking, rail and public transport, with resulting benefits for industrial logistics, travel and tourism. The results discovered within the project will enable the industrial partner, CTI, to develop solutions for major companies worldwide. The results can also be transferred to other industrial optimisation applications, such as mining, services and manufacturing. Finally the project will build on Australia's international prominence in data analysis and combinatorial optimisation, and capitalise on a major opportunity for the Australian software industry.
Sentiment detection from opinion surveys the quest for customer and employee satisfaction
ARC Linkage 2008-2011
Prof I Zukerman; Dr Y Marom scientific advances disseminated through high impact refereed publications and open source software. The advances made through the application of sophisticated probabilistic techniques to Language Technology problems will attract post graduate students, and promote commercial interest. The demonstration prototype will provide proof of concept of an application that enables business intelligence to automatically process free form feedback from customers and employees, with resultant recommendations leading to increased customer and employee satisfaction. The applicability of the outcomes of this research to service industries will further improve Australia's service reputation.