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Caulfield and Clayton Schools of Information Technology

The Caulfield and Clayton Schools of Information Technology were created in 2005. The Caulfield School of Information Technology comprises the former School of Information Management and Systems and School of Computer Science and Software Engineering (Caulfield), bringing together staff with skills and knowledge in the organisation and management of information and information technology, as well as expertise in the construction of commercial software systems. The Clayton School of Information Technology comprises the former School of Business Systems and School of Computer Science and Software Engineering (Clayton), bringing together staff with expertise in both the business application of information technology and its scientific and engineering foundations.

Former School of Business Systems (Clayton)

The school is an internationally recognised centre of information technology and business excellence, attracting high-quality students and world-class staff. The school focuses on leading-edge research in different areas of business and IT, including finance, the corporate sector, health, the public sector, industry and logistics. Most of the research carried out arises from real business issues and situations, which gives the school an original and pertinent view of business and IT in the real world.

Our staff are experts in their field, using the most sophisticated and state-of-the-art methods and techniques for the cutting-edge research for which the school is known. Staff regularly publish papers in prestigious international journals, present at high-level conferences worldwide, are members of professional societies, and have worked in business relevant to their research area for most of their working lives.

The school has an enviable record of winning competitive research funding and is continually exchanging information and findings with industry and business on a global scale. In the last few years, the school has collaborated on research projects with organisations in Spain, Germany, Thailand, France and Canada - including student and staff exchanges.

The school also enjoys productive, close links with industry and commerce, collaborating extensively with local and international industries, universities and other organisations. Most of the starting points for the school’s research arise in the real business world.

The school focuses its teaching and research activities on the application of computer and related technologies to business problems. It publishes in a range of industrial journals, presents at international conferences, liaises with Australian industry and produces the Business Systems Research journal.

For further information on the school, visit infotech.monash.edu.au/clayton or email bsinfo@infotech.monash.edu.au.

Research

Business Decision Support Systems

Efficiency and productivity analysis; multiple criteria decision making; data envelopment analysis; project evaluation and analytical hierarchy processes; scheduling applications; fuzzy logic applications; multilingual decision support; architectures of integrated information systems.

Business modelling - optimisation and simulation

Sequential decision making; dynamic programming; global optimisation; event-driven process chains; discrete event simulation; simulation agents and software; risk analysis applications of simulations to epidemiology and public health.

Data mining

Business intelligence; database analysis; data utilisation; customer relationship management; consumer modelling; market segmentation; forecasting and prediction; neural networks; genetic algorithms; expert systems and applications to finance, marketing, retail, insurance telecommunications and health.

e-Business

Electronic commerce; electronic data interchange; automatic identity; bar coding; electronic funds transfer; data encryption; EDI-compatible business software; electronic marketing on networks.

Financial modelling and administrative systems

Financial modelling; option pricing models; financial index forecasting systems; financial and strategic planning; shareholder value analysis; corporate budgeting models; enterprise systems, applications of management science and operations research to finance, statistical and business modelling.

Health care systems

Epidemic modelling; hospital management; case mix funding models; integrated health information systems; genome analysis; diagnostic decision support.

Economic and social implications of IT

Information technology, people and society.

Former School of Computer Science and Software Engineering (Clayton)

The school covers a broad range of activities, mainly at the technical and scientific end of the computing spectrum. It conducts cutting-edge research and excellent education programs in the science of computing, information processing and communications, the underlying software and hardware of computing systems and software engineering. The undergraduate degree programs target both applied industry needs and formal computer science.

The school maintains modern teaching and research facilities and hosts a number of leading-edge demonstrator projects in its research laboratories.

It enjoys a close partnership in research, development and research training with a number of IT&T companies, and a large number of R&D projects funded by government funding bodies and commercial organisations such as the Australian Research Council, Australian Telecommunications and Electronic Board, Microsoft, Telstra and BHP.

Research

Many of our academic and research staff are internationally known and leading experts in their field of research and study. Representatives of the work are highlighted in research as can be seen from the publications by the staff and research students of the school in well-known international journals and conferences.

There are several major research groups at present in the school focusing on audiovisual information processing and digital communications, distributed systems and software engineering, optimisation and constraint-solving, and reasoning under uncertainty.

Audiovisual Information Processing and Digital Communications Group

The Audiovisual Information Processing and Digital Communications Group (AVIPAC), staffed by academic and research personnel of the school, researches the underlying principles and enabling technologies for representing, storing and processing audiovisual information and the effective telecommunication of audio, visual and computer data. Applications are in telecommunications, digital television, interactive computing, multimedia communications, tele-medicine and the entertainment industry. There are four focused research areas covered currently by AVIPAC, ie digital signal processing: theory and applications, telecommunications and computer networking, information and network security, and image processing, computer graphics and visual communications. These research activities are supported by facilities provided in our research laboratories, which include the Digital Signal Processing Research Laboratory, Digital Communications Research Laboratory, Laboratory for Intelligent Algorithms in Communications, Image Processing and Computer Graphics Laboratory, Digital Image/Video Quality Assessment Laboratory and Advanced Digital Design Laboratory - Ultrasonic Imaging.

Centre for Distributed Systems and Software Engineering

The Centre for Distributed Systems and Software Engineering (DSSE) is a university centre with its weight in the Faculty of Information Technology. It has offices and research groups at both Clayton and Caulfield. Also it has members in and collaborative projects with other faculties, notably Science and Engineering. At Clayton, there is a particular focus on component-based software engineering, distributed real-time analysis and prediction, software architectures and cluster and grid computing. The Caulfield groups work in mobile and distributed databases, image retrieval, mobile computing and network technology. With the school at Clayton, DSSE owns two PC clusters which can be operated as a single parametric modelling engine and run Linux, Windows NT and SUN Solaris. Refer to the entry for the DSSE at Caulfield for further details about the activities of this group.

Optimisation and Constraint Solving Research Group

The Optimisation and Constraint Solving Research Group (O&CS), staffed by academic and research personnel of the school (and other schools in the faculty), is devoted to solving difficult optimisation and constraint satisfaction problems such as scheduling, timetabling and graph and document layout. The group is interested in new techniques for solving these problems, developing software tools which facilitate their solution, and cooperating with business and government to solve difficult constraint problems occurring in industrially important application areas. The group is best known for its work in constraint programming languages, meta-heuristic optimisation techniques, constraint-based graphics, graph layout, simulation and business applications.

Reasoning Under Uncertainty Group

The Reasoning Under Uncertainty Group (RUUG) is staffed by academic and research personnel of the school. The group focuses on the development and use of artificial intelligence techniques for quantitatively reasoning about situations in which uncertainty is a significant factor. The methods employed are varied and include Bayesian networks, information theory, stochastic simulation, neural networks, decision theory and fuzzy logic. These methods are applied in diverse application areas including machine learning, data mining, bioinformatics, natural language processing, pattern recognition and image processing. The main areas of research by the group include minimum message length (MML) inference, machine learning, planning and plan recognition under uncertainty, natural language processing and argument generation, bioinformatics, pattern recognition and image processing, and fuzzy logic.

Other research activities

In addition to the aforementioned research activities, academic and research staff of the school also conduct research in digital systems hardware and architecture including embedded systems; logic and theory including logic programming, algorithms and computational complexity, combinatorial structures used in computing, theory of inductive inference, extracting (correct) programs from mathematical proofs; electronic media art with emphasis on the creative meshing of art, science and technology, including computer graphics, rule-based modelling, sound synthesis, information design and electro-acoustic composition, production and publishing of works and literature concerning new-media art and computer-based lexicography.

Members of the Clayton School of Information Technology also participate in research at the Caulfield campus. In addition, some members of CERG are located at Clayton. Further information is available from our website at www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/strengths/.

Former School of Information Management and Systems (Caulfield)

The school occupies the social science end of the information technology spectrum. Through teaching and research it advances the organisation, management and use of information and information technology, and enhances our understanding of the impact of information on individuals, institutions and society.

The school’s programs focus on the general professional discipline of information management and systems, as well as specialist professions within it including systems analysts, internet and intranet developers, information managers, records managers/archivists, electronic publishers and multimedia practitioners. Many of the academic staff have a high level of professional experience and expertise. The school enjoys close links with the relevant professional bodies and corporations that are leaders in the information field.

Research

Within its academic areas, the school is one of the most active research organisations in Australia. The school has excellent research facilities, and its research is well respected internationally. The school's research program is conducted through the Enterprise Information Research Group (EIRG) and by seven formal research groups: the Decision Support Systems Laboratory; the Knowledge Management Research Group; the Records Continuum Research Group; the Information and Telecommunications Needs Research Group; the Information Systems Management and e-Business (ISMEB) Research Group; the Centre for Community Networking Research and the Information Systems Development (ISD) Research Group. Each group has a large number of research and honours students.

The EIRG focuses on research in the areas of enterprise knowledge management, information and telecommunications needs, metadata, e-business, mobile-commerce, e-government, electronic recordkeeping, community networking, information policy and law, information systems development, information systems policy, strategic planning and management, records continuum theory and modelling.

Decision Support Systems Laboratory

The Decision Support Systems Laboratory, is investigating ways to design and implement systems to support management decision-making. The laboratory has projects in the areas of evolutionary development, decision biases, decision specification using influence diagramming, executive information systems, data warehouses, and organisational issues in DSS. The laboratory takes a strong behavioural view of decision support. It has created the Monash DSS Development Method and the Monash EIS Development Method.

Knowledge Management Research Area

The Knowledge Management Research Group is a virtual laboratory, a flexible state-of-the-art facility to support research, and research training and teaching in enterprise knowledge management. The group has projects in organisational memory information systems, knowledge reuse, hybrid soft computing techniques for intelligent decision support, adaptive decision support systems, and cognitive overload in decision support systems. It is extending the notion of decision support by adding techniques originating from artificial intelligence such as knowledge bases, neural networks, and genetic algorithms. The laboratory is based at the Caulfield campus of Monash University and serves staff and students on-campus and remotely.

Records Continuum Research Area

The scope of the Records Continuum Research Group includes the full information spectrum, comprising accountability information, knowledge-based information, and infotainment. These are interpreted in terms of attributes (action/structure, memory, technology and metadata) and dimensions (create, capture, organise and pluralise), which are in a continuous state of interplay.

Information and Telecommunication Needs Research Area

The Information and Telecommunication Needs Research (ITNR) group explores how people use telecommunications and new media. These new technologies are making new relationships and uses possible and challenging many traditional customs and values. Since 1992, ITNR has researched people's relationships with each other and their new communications environments. The ITNR is documenting the way new information and communication technologies are evolving as they become more responsive to business and social environments, and the adjustments people make or resist. The INTR is now a joint venture of Monash University and Charles Sturt University.

Information Systems Management and e-Business (ISMEB) Research

Research conducted by the ISMEB examines technological and organisational/managerial challenges and opportunities related to managing information systems and carrying out e-business.

Centre for Community Networking Research

The Centre for Community Networking Research at Monash is a cooperatively-funded centre whose mission is to develop and implement evaluation frameworks within the environment of emerging community uses of ICTs.

Information Systems Development (ISD) Research Group

The research focus of the information systems development (ISD) group is on a broad range of issues relating to all aspects of the development of information systems and innovation in teaching methods for teaching ISD as used in studios. The research includes systems on a variety of platforms including web technologies, multimedia systems and mobile informatics. The group’s research also encompasses education programs focusing on the teaching of all aspects of systems development. The group aims to become one of the leading groups internationally in the area of innovative teaching of information systems.

In addition to the formal research groups, research is also conducted into information systems strategy, quality management, information systems security, geographic information systems, information systems education and historical bibliography.

The first contact point for information on any of the school's programs is the school office, telephone +61 3 9903 2208, fax +61 3 9903 2005. Information may also be requested electronically from frontdesk@infotech.monash.edu.au or visit the school office at level 7, Business and Economics building, 26 Sir John Monash Drive, Caulfield campus. More details about the school’s teaching and research are at www.infotech.monash.edu.au/caulfield.

Former School of Computer Science and Software Engineering (Caulfield)

The school covers a broad range of activities, mainly at the technical and applied end of the computing spectrum. It conducts cutting-edge research and excellent education programs in information processing and communications, the underlying software of computing systems and software engineering. The undergraduate degree programs target applied industry needs.

The school maintains modern teaching and research facilities and hosts a number of leading-edge demonstrator projects in its research laboratories. It forms the Melbourne node of the Cooperative Research Centre for Distributed Systems Technology.

Research

Computing Education Research Group

The Computing Education Research Group (CERG) focuses on contemporary educational issues in computing and seeks to provide a vision for the pedagogical future of computing. The group studies and develops innovative technology in teaching, and different approaches to teaching computing topics are investigated and evaluated with the aim of determining their effectiveness and efficiency in improving the processes of human learning. CERG is a member of CSERGI (Computer Science Education Research Groups International). Some of the research of this group is carried out in the Clayton School of Information Technology.

Centre for Distributed Systems and Software Engineering

The Centre for Distributed Systems and Software Engineering (DSSE) is divided between the Caulfield and Clayton Schools of Information Technology. There is particular emphasis at Caulfield on mobile systems, mobile agents, image retrieval, databases and grid computing. The group focuses on methods and tools for modelling, analysing, constructing and maintaining large distributed software systems. The centre is the conduit for Monash's partnership in the Cooperative Research Centre for Enterprise Distributed Systems Technology. The DSSE research facility includes wireless local area networks equipment, a mobility library, and a number of servers and workstations for experimenting with mobility-related research issues. The facility is supported by Telstra Wireless Data network with a donation of wireless modems and free air time. With the school, DSSE owns two PC clusters, which can be operated as a single parametric modelling engine and run Linux, Windows NT and SUN Solaris. Refer to the entry for the DSSE at Clayton for further details about the activities of this group.

Other research activities

Members of the Caulfield School of Information Technology also participate in research at the Clayton campus. In addition, some members of the AVIPAC and Data Mining research groups are located at Caulfield. Further information is available from our website at www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/strengths/.

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