CORE News 2024 

CORE News

I am experimenting with a new format for the CORE news. News items added here as they arise (with a publication date) rather than in a quarterly digest.  Let me know how you find the new format.  Suggestions of items for CORE news or any other matters about the CORE web site can be emailed to admin@core.edu.au or the president rachel.cardell-oliver@uwa.edu.au

Rachel Cardell-Oliver
CORE President

Published: 24 September 2024

CORE Academy 2025

The CORE Academy is established to honour and recognise individuals who have made significant and cumulative contributions to the development of the computing disciplines in Australasia.   I am delighted to announce the election of five CORE academy members for 2025.

Their citations are also available online at https://www.core.edu.au/the-core-academy
24 September 2024

John Gough

Professor John Gough is one of the most important figures in the early development of Computer Science in Queensland and was a leading figure in the Australian Computer Science community over many years.  He is particularly recognised for his eminence as a researcher in compiler and software technology.   He conducted research on programming language implementation, including theoretical work on language translation and code generation. His compilers for programming languages, particularly those for the Pascal-family, were well known throughout the world, and have been used by many tens of thousands of programmers.  John was foundation Head of School within the Faculty of Information Technology at QUT and later served as Dean of the Faculty from 1996-2004. The Programming Languages (later Programming Languages and Systems) Research Group led by Professor Gough had a profound influence on the careers of students and colleagues over more than 15 years.

Published: 24 September 2024

Anton van den Hengel

Professor Anton van den Hengel is a leading AI researcher.  He has made significant contributions in the areas of vision and language navigation, visual question answering, machine learning theory and image-based modelling. He was the founding Director of The Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML) growing the group to 130 researchers.  The Institute has graduated over 50 PhDs and currently has 80 PhD students.  Anton is currently the Chief Scientist of the AIML and a Professor at the University of Adelaide.  His extensive industry contributions include commercialisation of 9 patents and being Director of Applied Science within Amazon for four years where he formed the Australian arm of Amazon’s International Machine Learning group.  He has won multiple competitions and prizes for his contributions including the Outstanding Service Award for leadership in AI at the Australian AI Awards in 2021. Anton was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering in 2020.

Published: 24 September 2024

Shazia Sadiq

Professor Shazia Sadiq FTSE is a professor of computer science at the University of Queensland. As a researcher and educator in data and process management, her work has focused on dismantling socio-technical barriers to technology-driven transformation. As director of the ARC Industry Transformation Training Centre for Information Resilience, she has helped link research and industry through industry-informed PhD training programs.  Shazia actively engages in policy advice and science advocacy activities, including the development of national strategic plans and expert submissions to government initiatives on emerging digital technologies, and was a core author on the government’s  Rapid Response Information Report (2023) on Generative AI. She is also a champion for equity and diversity through her work with the first Australian ACM-W student chapter and DEI@DB, an international group that leads diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts for the database community.  Shazia is the past Chair of the National Committee on Information and Communication Sciences at the Australian Academy of Science 2019-2022, is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and member of The Australian Research Council College of Experts 2018-2021. 

Published: 24 September 2024

Geoff Web

Professor Geoff Webb is a professor at Monash University. He has contributed many impactful algorithms and methods to the fields of artificial intelligence, data science, bioinformatics and computational biology, including minimum support and confidence techniques, multi-strategy ensemble learning and the use of black-box machine learning to make predictions about users.  Many of his AI technologies have been released as open-source software and are widely used in industry and research.  Geoff has a sustained track record of exceptional leadership and as a technical advisor to start ups, mentor and advisor to staff and students at all levels.  His contributions have  won many awards including the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Excellence in Data Science 2017 and  ARC Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award 2014.

Published: 24 September 2024

Justin Zobel

Professor Justin Zobel is a professor at the University of Melbourne.  His research contributions are notable for their significance and for being in multiple fields: information retrieval, string algorithms, research methods, and bioinformatics. He is the author of three highly regarded textbooks on writing and research study. Writing for Computer Science has been widely adopted as a text at graduate and senior undergraduate level and is generally regarded as the best of its kind in the field, with sales in the hundreds of thousands. He has led key initiatives for Indigenous education including the successful National Indigenous Engineering Summit in 2015.  He has used his University leadership positions as Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of School to promote the discipline of Computer Science, promote quality, and pursue social goals. He has also pursued quality through his textbooks, which are designed to improve research standards and enable stronger research training.
Published: 24 September 2024

Science and Technology Australia

On 20 September I attended STA's annual leadership dialogue on STA's lobbying priorities for the next Australian election.  The overall theme is for an "Australia made from Australian Ideas" to be achieved by putting STEM front and centre for Australia's prosperity and target to boost Australian R&D spending to 3% of GDP by 2035.  Current R&D investment is just 1.68% of GDP - a long way below the 2.7% average of our global competitors.  

STA's pitch is that: “STEM skills and ideas will create future jobs and prosperity, but we must give businesses, education, and the wider sector the tools to do this. On behalf of our member organisations and the STEM professionals they represent, we’ll be looking for politicians at the upcoming Federal election to commit to a future powered by innovation.”
https://scienceandtechnologyaustralia.org.au/a-comprehensive-plan-to-build-a-better-future-science-leaders/ 

I will shortly (Nov 2024) be calling for nominations from CORE members to attend STA's Science Meets Parliament 2025.  CORE funds apx 2 scholarships for attendance at Science Meets Parliament.  You can read reports from past CORE attendees here https://www.core.edu.au/science-meets-parliament-reports and more information about Science Meets Parliament for 2025 here https://scienceandtechnologyaustralia.org.au/science-meets-parliament-2025/ 


Rachel Cardell-Oliver, CORE president, Published: 24 September 2024

ACSW Brisbane February 2025

The conference will run during the week 10 to 14 of February 2025, hosted by the University of Queensland.  ACSW activities include the CORE AGM, annual HoDs and Profs meeting, invited talks by the winners of the CORE awards, and the Australian Computing Education Conference (ACE).  We would like to host meetings of research clusters and communities of practice.  Please contact David Abramson if you have a group meeting that could piggyback on the ACSW organisation.


Published: 24 September 2024

ICORE Rankings

As was reported at the AGM and in rankings emails, the CORE conference rankings has now become an international collaboration with Italy and Spain's peak computing bodies. It has been renamed to ICORE conference rankings and there are 3 members from Spain and Italy now on the Rankings management committee.

The ICORE committee is now actively working with the software programming team (led by Young Lee from Macquarie), on having a new ranking submission round in 2025, with the next rankings to be published in early 2026. Non-Australasian colleagues can sign up to the rankings@core.edu.au google group to be informed of developments and deadlines. Information will also go out through the CORE member list.

Published: July 2024

Australian National AI Committee Awards

The Australian National AI Committee is calling for the following three awards which will be announced at Australasian AI 2024, Melbourne, 25 - 29 November 2024 (onsite) https://ajcai2024.org/.  

(1) The Australasian Artificial Intelligence Distinguished Research Contribution Award 

The Australasian-AI Distinguished Research Contributions Award is given to an individual or a group with influential research contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence.  The award holder(s) should be resident(s) of Australasia at the time of nomination.   

Each nomination should consist of a maximum of 1 page making the case for the award covering the relevance and broader impacts of the research undertaken by the individual or group.
Evidence can be drawn using citations, practical impact, or by other means that can be verified independently by the committee.    

(2) The Australasian-AI Outstanding Service Award  

The Australasian-AI Outstanding Service Award is given to an individual or a group with major service contributions that have promoted and served the Australasian AI community. The award holder(s) should be resident(s) of Australasia at the time of nomination. 

Each nomination should include a maximum of 1 page making the case for the award covering the impact of the activities by the nominee and their roles in promoting Australasian AI research.    

(3) The Australasian-AI Emerging Researcher Award

The Australasian-AI Emerging Researcher Award is given to an individual who has been awarded PhD title within 5 years and has achieved significant research contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence.  The award holder(s) should be resident(s) of Australasia at the time of nomination. 

Each nomination should include the following pieces of information:  

(a) up to 3 significant publications in Artificial Intelligence 

(b) A maximum of 1 page making the case for the award covering the relevance and broader impacts of these publications.    

* IMPORTANT: The nominator should elicit the consent of the nominee before a nomination is forwarded to the Award Committee Chair before the closing date for nominations.  

Nominations should be sent to the Award Committee Chair Professor Toby Walsh as early as possible: tw@cse.unsw.edu.au by 15 September 2024

The award will be presented in the form of a certificate and reimbursement of reasonable costs to support the award winner to attend the AI conference.  Determination of reasonable costs will be at the discretion of the Australasian AI National Committee Chair. 

Prof. Toby Walsh FAA FACM FRSN
Chief Scientist       | Laureate Fellow & Scientia Professor of AI

UNSW's AI Institute | School of CSE, UNSW Sydney | CSIRO Data61

Published: July 2024 

Vale Emeritus Professor Dagan (David) Feng

It is with great sadness we report that University of Sydney Emeritus Professor Dagan (David) Feng died peacefully on the 4th of May 2024

 

David started at the University of Sydney in 1988 and became a professor in 1999/2000. Besides his research leadership in building the Biomedical Multimedia Information Technology (BMIT) research group and his own significant research contributions over a 35-year period, he was an inspirational leader, mentor, and administrator who served as HoS at a difficult time for the School (then known as the Basser Dept. of CS).  He was appointed HoS in 2000 with a mandate to turn the School around. During that time, he was the major force of the rejuvenation of Computer Science in Sydney.  His emphasis on consideration and inclusion, as well as academic values, made Computer Science a great place to work and to study. He successfully lobbied the then VC and senior management for significant funding boost which was invested not only in hiring a number of senior and junior academics but also in a major facelift to the School's facilities on the lower floor of the Madsen Building.  He was also instrumental in getting our current building built (2005-07) at a time when such approvals were very difficult.  He served a second term as HoS starting in 2012.

 

He had a number of honorary positions, including at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Shanghai JiaoTong University, Northwestern Polytechnic University, Northeastern University and Tsinghua University, and he published more than 1000 papers during his long career. Professor Feng was a Fellow of ACS, HKIE, IET, IEEE, and Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

 

David called the University of Sydney his ‘home’ for the last 35 years, and he took great pride in his work and contributions to the university.

He was very encouraging and supportive to me and many of our colleagues. We will miss him.

DR JOACHIM GUDMUNDSSON | Professor and Head of School

School of Computer Science | Faculty of Engineering | The University of Sydney

Image source: saiconference.com/IntelliSys


Published: July 2024