Postgraduate courses and subjects 2000 - Peninsula School of Computing and Information Technology

Peninsula School of Computing and Information Technology

General information
Research

General information

The Peninsula School of Computing and Information Technology has two interrelated roles: the provision of quality courses and the conduct of research in network computing.
The school offers the Graduate Diploma in Computing, the Graduate Certificate in Health Informatics, Master of Computing (by research or coursework) and Doctor of Philosophy.
The school teaches three semesters a year with the inclusion of a summer semester. The summer semester offers a full range of computing subjects. Students can use these summer semesters in several ways: to accelerate the degree, to spread subject load more evenly throughout the year, or to catch up on previously failed subjects.
The school is housed in modern accommodation and offers excellent computing facilities both for teaching and research. It is geared to the needs of international students, with a significant proportion of its students coming from overseas countries.
Further information can be obtained on the Peninsula School of Computing and Information Technology website at http:// www.pscit.monash.edu.au

Research

Much computing is now done in a networked context and relies on access to hardware and software resources that reside on many geographically dispersed computers. Current research concerns fundamental methods and techniques in network computing, together with novel applications of such methods and techniques in solving real-world problems in various application domains, ranging from industrial, governmental and financial to health care sectors.
Network computing draws on knowledge of data communications, computer equipment and operating systems, computer networks, Internet and web technologies, distributed computing, internetworking, software engineering, computer security and information systems. Within the networking computing initiative, research is carried out in the following principal areas/groups.
Computer and network security - This research group conducts research in information security, cryptography and security engineering. Current projects are provably secure private key encryption systems, one-way hashing algorithms, secure public key encryption systems, hierarchical information access control, security in databases, digital cash, electronic commerce, multimedia watermarking and intellectual property protection, security issues in smart cards, information sharing and dispersal, and security in mobile computing and communications.
Research in this group is conducted at the newly established Laboratory for Information and NetworK Security (LINKS), which is partially funded by Canon Corporation.
Computer-mediated education - This group is undertaking research in two main areas: methods of developing subjects for flexible delivery and models of web-based distance education. A methodology has been developed for approaching the development of new subjects for delivery in flexible modes. The model aims to provide a series of steps or phases that course developers can follow in preparing the delivery of courses using various electronic and print-based media. A prototype is under development and testing for the delivery of a subject over the World Wide Web. The prototype includes innovative features such as real-time video and audio contact between lecturer and students.
Distributed information systems engineering The distributed information systems engineering group conducts research in information systems engineering methods, system modelling techniques, CASE tools and their interoperability, and information systems method engineering. Current projects include integration of system modelling techniques, computer-assisted method engineering, integration of information systems through architectures, the impact of integrated CASE tools on system development and integration of hypermedia and CASE, all in the context of emerging network computing.
Health informatics - In cooperation with staff from the Faculty of Medicine's Centre of Medical Informatics and School of Nursing, school staff are working on a number of projects, including security and privacy enhanced medical information systems, web based access to patient information, health information repositories and development tools for health information systems in community health nursing.
Internetworking - The research activities of this group are focused on network protocol design, multimedia communications over the Internet, multicasting, network architecture design, network modelling, network simulation and network performance evaluation. This group offers an excellent opportunity to conduct application-oriented research on topics in key networking technologies such as mobile IP, integrated services Internet-based on IPv6/IPv4/ATM protocols, wireless LANs offering multimedia services, wireless ATM, internetworking of xDSL to ATM network and multimedia applications design.
Multimedia and information management - This group conducts research in multimedia support for concurrent engineering, management of multimedia objects, synchronisation in multimedia systems, and multimedia information systems. Current projects include a framework for multimedia synchronisation with agents, human perception of multimedia synchronisation, and synchronisation of multimedia streams in a distributed environment with CORBA DSOM.
Software systems - The software systems group conducts research in software engineering environments, software traceability and consistency, software object management systems, software process modelling and enactment, computer-supported cooperative work, object-oriented technology, and software components and architectures. Current projects include a document-based approach to software engineering environments, traceability support for object-oriented software development, an object management system for software engineering environments, computer-supported group work in software development, document-based software process modelling, and software composition and integration.
Research is also being carried out into models for web-based course delivery, with emphasis on technologies for the implementation of human interaction as part of the learning environment.