Research groups and centres

Audiovisual Information Processing and Digital Communications Group (AVIPAC)

The Audiovisual Information Processing and Digital Communications (AVIPAC) research group is staffed by academic and research personnel, and postgraduate research students within the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University. AVIPAC represents a broad spectrum of research and development expertise and experiences in the areas of audiovisual information processing and digital communications, as shown by the large volume of quality research publications in refereed international journals and conferences, successful industrial R&D contracts and consultancy work presented. It provides supporting research infrastructure and a team environment for the conduct of research, development, research training programs, and industrial consultation. AVIPAC collaborates with researchers and developers as well as academics both in Australia and elsewhere in joint efforts to advance and apply knowledge, to seek innovative solutions to contemporary problems, to assist technology transfer, and to develop and maintain a nurturing culture for academic and professional leaders in the field. AVIPAC aspires to lead the advancement and application of knowledge, and to be amongst the leading international R&D centres in the field. Members of AVIPAC perform research on the fundamental principles and enabling technologies which provide efficient methods to represent, store and process audiovisual information and the effective telecommunication of audio, visual and computer data. There are four focused research areas covered currently by AVIPAC: Digital Signal Processing: Theory and Applications; Telecommunications and Computer Networking; Information and Network Security; Image Processing, Computer Graphics and Visual Communications.

Centre for Community Networking Research (CCNR)

The Centre for Community Networking Research (CCNR) is a cooperatively funded centre that aims to understand how communities and community organisations use new technologies. The researchers within the Centre are interested in the practicalities of information and technology usage and the broader issues of community and institutional culture and memory as they are shaped through different understandings and uses of technology.

Centre for Decision Support and Enterprise Systems Research (CDSESR)

The Monash University Centre for Decision Support and Enterprise Systems Research (CDSESR) conducts an integrated set of programs in research, research training, graduate education, and professional engagement in the enterprise systems and decision support systems areas. In professional practice this involves personal decision support, executive information systems, ERP systems, inter-organisational systems, data warehousing, customer relationship management, corporate performance management, and business intelligence.

The Centre’s research includes case studies, design science, simulation, surveys, and experiments. Current CDSESR projects include: implementation and impact of enterprise systems, organisational adoption of information technology, understanding and evaluating the quality of information, conceptual modelling practices in information systems, development of systems to support managers, balanced scorecard systems, evaluation of business intelligence projects, governance of business intelligence and data warehousing, theoretical foundations of decision support, supply chain management, and transportation modelling.

Centre for Distributed Systems and Software Engineering (DSSE)

The Monash University Centre for Distributed Systems and Software Engineering (DSSE) aims at advancing foundations, methods and practice of distributed systems and software engineering. The centre focuses on methods and tools for modelling, analysing, constructing and maintaining large distributed software systems. Areas of particular interest are: component-based software engineering; grid, distributed and mobile middleware; service-oriented architectures; grid workflows; parallel job scheduling; portals; architecture-driven modelling; model-driven verification, testing and monitoring; relative debugging; agents and aspect-orientation; software design for large-scale reuse; agent-based reasoning and management; mobile data management; and security of wireless information systems. For details visit www.dsse.monash.edu.au.

Centre for Electronic Media Art (CEMA)

CEMA is an interdisciplinary research and production centre, established to explore theoretical and technical possibilities for electronic media art. It operates across the faculties of Arts, Art and Design, and Information Technology. CEMA's activities include research, training and production in electronic media arts. Major research interests include: evolutionary approaches to music and art; artificial life; generative and self-organising systems; computational aesthetics; theory and practice of interaction; computer graphics, visualisation and animation; history and philosophy of generative art; sound spatialisation and computer music composition. For details visit www.csse.monash.edu.au/cema.

Centre for Multimedia and Intelligent Computing (MIC)

Multimedia and Intelligent Computing (MIC) is a nominated research strength and one of the five proposed Research Centres at the Faculty of IT with a collaborative and balanced group of researchers. The aim of this group is to conduct and lead quality multidisciplinary research and to offer excellent research training opportunities for the most talented research students to be at the forefront of National Research Priority in Frontier Technologies for Building and Transforming Australian Industries. Major research of the group can be widely categorised into the three areas—Multimedia Signal Processing and Management, Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics, and Communications. Current projects include image, video, and audio coding; image and video segmentation; indexing and retrieval of image, video, and audio clips; machine learning algorithms in sequence analysis and protein folding/structure prediction; wireless sensor networks; mobile multimedia communications; communication protocols; and digital security.

Centre for Organisational and Social Informatics (COSI)

The Monash University Centre for Organisational and Social Informatics (COSI) contributes to the development of individuals, organisations, and society through research relating to human-centred design and deployment of information and community technologies. COSI focuses on understanding the people and organisational dimensions, the complexities and needs of the social networks that ICT serves, in order to optimize its social, cultural, and economic benefits. The Centre brings together researchers who work in knowledge management, information technology management, information systems development, archival systems, e-commerce and m-commerce, community networking, librarianship, and computing education and provides a focus for collaboration with national and international researchers, industry and community research partners, and other stakeholders. All members of the Centre teach into the Faculty of Information Technology’s Masters Program, providing graduate education in their particular specialisations.

Computing Education Research Group (CERG)

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 investigates and evaluates the use of technology in teaching and different approaches to teaching computing topics with the aim of determining their effectiveness and efficiency in improving the processes of human learning. CERG is a member of Computer Science Education Research Groups International (CSERGI).

Information and Telecommunication Needs Research Group (ITNR)

The Information and Telecommunications Needs Research (ITNR) Group examines people’s relationships with each other, and their new information and communications environments. They have particular interest in analysing user needs and understanding how systems and services can be developed or adapted to meet those needs. ITNR is documenting the way new information and communication technologies are evolving as they become more responsive to business and social environments, and the ways in which people adjust or resist. The Group is a joint venture of Monash University and Charles Sturt University.

Information Systems Development Research Group (ISD)

The Information Systems Development (ISD) Research Group looks at a broad range of issues relating to all aspects of the development of information systems including the innovation of teaching methods in this area. The research carried out by the Group includes systems on a variety of platforms including web technologies, multimedia systems and mobile informatics. The group aims to become one of the leading groups internationally in the area of innovative teaching of information systems.

Information Systems Management and e-Business Research Group (ISMEB)

The Information Systems Management and e-Business (ISMEB) Research Group conducts research in all areas of e-business, m-business and information technology management, including, the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technologies and systems integration, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies, e-health and m-health and the design and production of websites that address business needs.

Intelligent Systems Group

With 22 academic staff associated with more than $6 million per annum in National Competitive grant income, and a recently announced Federation Fellow appointee, Monash lays claim to the leading Australian research group in the area of intelligent systems.

The group’s strengths in the area of Intelligent Systems include Bayesian Reasoning, Complex Systems, Computer Vision, Constraint Based Graphics, Constraint Programming, Data Mining, Diagram Interpretation and Understanding, Machine Learning, Natural Computation, Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks, Optimisation, Reasoning Under Uncertainty, Robotics, and User Modelling.

Group members include a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers and the Editors-in-Chief of two international journals.

The research focus of the group relates directly to the Australian Research Council’s National Priority Area of Frontier Technologies for Building and Transforming Australian Industries and contributes to Monash University strengths and priorities of e-Research, Biomedical Sciences, Engineering, Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, and Medicine.

Knowledge Management Research Program

The Knowledge Management Research Program conducts studies towards a comprehensive approach to knowledge management for intelligent decision support. It studies the technological, organisational, and managerial challenges associated with introducing knowledge management into enterprises. 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 Program has created the KM Lab which is a virtual laboratory, a flexible state-of-the-art facility to support research, and research training and teaching in enterprise knowledge management. The laboratory is based at the Caulfield campus of Monash University and serves staff and students on-campus and remotely.

Optimisation and Constraint Solving Research Group (O&CS)

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 (RUUG)

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.

Records Continuum Research Group (RCRG)

The Records Continuum Research Group (RCRG) looks at methods of analysis which enable records to be controlled at different points in time throughout their lifespan. This includes the way records are represented, used, retrieved and disseminated. The Group is also examining how continuum models apply to information management and data archiving.

Suburban Ad Hoc (Area) Networking group

The Suburban Ad Hoc (Area) Networking group focuses its research activities on techniques for implementing Suburban Ad Hoc Networks. These are self organising, quasi-static ad hoc (typically wireless) networks which provide an alternative technology for providing high speed digital connectivity to households, small businesses and distributed campuses. Specific areas of research interest include security, low level routing protocols, access controls and propagation behaviour.

User Modeling and Natural Language Group

The User Modeling and Natural Language Group focuses on the application of Statistical and Machine Learning techniques to human-computer interaction. User modeling consists of inferring and representing the beliefs, preferences, skills or objectives of users interacting with a computer system. A user model enables a system to adapt its behaviour to the needs and requirements of a user. User models have been used in several applications, such as Intelligent Tutoring Systems (as student models), on-line help systems, and information filtering systems. Natural language processing consists of understanding and generating natural language discourse. Examples of applications of Natural language processing techniques are: understanding user queries, explanation generation, and document summarisation. The group conducts research in these areasand investigates statistical techniques and machine learning techniques for problems in user modeling and natural language processing.

For further information please visit www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/strengths/ or email research@infotech.monash.edu.au.

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