Monash University: University handbooks: Postgraduate handbook: Units indexed by faculty
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Peninsula School of Information Technology

The Peninsula School of Information Technology (formerly the School of Network Computing) has two interrelated roles: the provision of quality courses and the conduct of research in network computing.

The school offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs in the area of network computing. The postgraduate courses offered are the Graduate Certificate/Diploma in Network Computing, the Master of Information Technology by research, the Master of Network Computing, Master of Network Computing (Minor Thesis) and the Doctor of Philosophy.

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 website at infotech.monash.edu.au/peninsula.

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 that solve real problems. Application areas range from industrial, governmental and financial sectors 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.

The school has a research centre, which is housed in a separate building on-campus. This facility is solely dedicated to research and postgraduate study, and includes office accommodation, computer laboratories and is a 24-hour facility.

Mobile and ubiquitous computing

This research centres on greatly expanding the size and reach of the internet. With ubiquitous computing, people, places, and things in the physical world will have increasingly complex online representations, allowing them to participate in web services. They will become first-class citizens of the web. This will enable services to become more personalised, more spontaneous, and more responsive to the wide variety of contexts in which people live their lives. Particular activities involve the use of mobile agents for mobile and ubiquitous computing, internet device ownership and wireless networks.

Peer-to-peer computing

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing goes beyond the traditional client-server model to a more decentralised approach. In true P2P computing, every node in a network is of equal status, providing potential improvements in collaboration, resource utilisation and reliability. Our research in P2P involves virtual network architectures, protocols, serverless applications, self-organising clusters, internet-wide service discovery, communications, virtual routing, grids, networked intelligence, security and management.

Computer and network security

This activity centres on research in information security, cryptography and security engineering. Current projects are provable 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.

Computer-mediated education

This research addresses two main areas: methods of developing units for flexible delivery and models of web-based off-campus learning. A methodology has been developed for approaching the development of new units 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.

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.

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, Nursing and Health Sciences’ Centre of Medical Informatics and School of Nursing, researchers 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.

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 and middleware

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.

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