CORE News 2025

CORE Academy 2026

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 Wenjie Zhang to the CORE academy for 2026.

Professor Wenjie Zhang, The University of NSW

Wenjie Zhang FACS is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales. She is internationally recognised for her pioneering contributions to large-scale graph data processing and complex data analytics. Wenjie has been a driving force in advancing the Australian and global database research communities. As a long-standing member and recent Co-Chair of the Australasian Database Conference Steering Committee, she has played a key role in elevating the conference’s international profile, strengthening engagement with the Asia-Pacific database communities, and fostering the next generation of database researchers. As Head of a world-leading database research group at UNSW, Wenjie has cultivated and mentored emerging research leaders, guiding early-career academics and HDR students who have excelled in their careers and received recognition through prestigious ARC Fellowships and best paper awards. She has also demonstrated distinguished international leadership through her service as Program Committee Chair of ICDE and as Associate Editor of IEEE TKDE and The VLDB Journal.

Citations for Academy members are available on the CORE web pages at https://www.core.edu.au/the-core-academy

Published: 26 October 2025

CORE Award Winners 2026

I am delighted to announce the winners of the CORE awards for 2026. Congratulations to Alistair Moffat, Charanya Ramakrishnan, Jack Li, Xin Yu, Chang Xu, Xin Zheng, Jianyuan Guo and Cody Lewis. The awards will be presented formally at ACSW 2026 in Melbourne and the winners will give keynote talks at the conference. Thank you to the members of the award selection panels for their excellent work in assessing the large number of applications for these awards. The award citations are also available on the CORE web pages at https://www.core.edu.au/awards

Rachel Cardell-Oliver, CORE president

Published: 26 October 2025

Alistair Moffat

Winner
CORE Distinguished Service Award 2026

Professor Alistair Moffat, University of Melbourne, has been a member of the Australasian Computer Science academic community for 45 years and has made many and varied contributions over this long period. He has been a substantive contributor to and participant in the Australasian Computer Science Conference and Australasian Computer Science Week activities, and served as a leader in the local and international communities via a number of key service roles through more than two decades. This includes CORE president and executive member for more than a decade, including instituting the CORE Academy. He has hosted a large number of conferences in Australia, enriching the local research community, including SIGIR and CIKM. He has provided significant university leadership via Head roles, major course development, department evolution and infrastructure advancements, benefiting past, current and future staff and students.

Charanya Ramakrishnan

Winner
Teaching Award 2026

Charanya Ramakrishnan exemplifies teaching excellence by integrating active learning, authentic assessment, and industry collaboration to elevate student engagement and success. Her innovations focused on inclusive pedagogies and demonstrated evidence-based impact across diverse student cohorts.

Jack Li

Winner
Teaching Award Early Career 2026

Jack Li, Deakin University, awarded for his approach to the indigenisation of the cybersecurity curriculum demonstrates a sustained and thoughtful commitment to embedding Indigenous perspectives in computing education and a focus on diversity. His use of portfolio-based assessment design is innovative and complemented by a diverse range of assessment strategies that foster authentic learning and reflective practice.

Xin Yu

Winner
CORE Award for Outstanding Research Contribution 2026
Dr Xin Yu, University of Queensland has made seminal contributions to the field of human-centred AI, advancing sign language translation, human pose estimation, and healthcare AI. His pioneering projects have delivered significant societal benefits, including InclusivePose, which enables pose identification for individuals with limb deficiencies; the YouFor2032 Talent Search App, supporting inclusive athlete identification across Australia; Auslan AI, translating sign language to assist the deaf community; and AI tools for the diagnosis of eye and brain diseases in healthcare. His outstanding research and its tangible translational outcomes have been recognised with awards at leading international AI conferences and major national research awards, reflecting both his scholarly excellence and commitment to inclusive innovation.

Chang Xu

Commendation
CORE Award for Outstanding Research Contribution 2026

Dr Chang Xu, University of Sydney, is highly commended for his influential research in machine learning and computer vision, advancing efficient deep representation learning of multimedia data. His pioneering work on data and computational efficiency has shaped the design of lightweight AI systems and achieved wide adoption in industry. He has demonstrated both scholarly excellence and lasting impact on the AI research community and beyond.

Xin Zheng

Winner
CORE Award for the Australasian Distinguished Dissertation 2026

Dr Zheng's thesis "Automated Graph Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) Workflow" tackles several challenges in contemporary graph machine learning and considers the whole lifecycle from data engineering to automated network design through to model deployment. Her research outcomes appear in prestigious publication venues including NeurIPS, WWW, ICDM and ICLR. Dr Zhang's thesis was examined by two experts of international standing, who gave unanimous ratings of exceptional to all aspects of the work. The thesis has been praised for its clear structure, the importance of the topic, and the novel technical contributions made to the field of computer science.

Thesis link: Monash University

https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/thesis/Automated_Graph_Machine_Learning_Operations_MLOps_Workflow/26818294

Jianyuan Guo

Commendation
CORE Award for the Australasian Distinguished Dissertation 2026

Dr Jianyuan Guo is awarded a commendation for his thesis "Neural Architecture Design and Compression for Efficient Vision Perception," which makes several novel and important contributions to making large-scale AI models more computationally efficient and tackles problems in deployment on edge devices. The significance of his research has been recognised by the community through numerous well-cited publications at top-tier conferences in the field.

Thesis link: University of Sydney

https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33792

Cody Lewis

Commendation
CORE Award for the Australasian Distinguished Dissertation 2026

Dr Cody Lewis is awarded a commendation for his thesis "On the Security and Robustness of Federated Learning with Application to the Smart Grid Infrastructure." The contributions in his thesis have advanced the field of security and robustness in federated learning, an important area of machine learning that is increasing in importance in recent years as researchers tackle challenges of robustness, privacy, and fairness. The thesis is very well written and received glowing reports from his examiners.

Thesis link: University of Newcastle

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1517607

Awards and Academy

Applications for the CORE Awards for teaching, research and service are now closed.

We have received a record number of entries and institutions this year. Thank you!
The applications are now with the selection panels for review.

CORE Academy nominations close on 31 August. Pls see Details, nomination process and timeline at https://www.core.edu.au/the-core-academy

Published: 20 August 2025

ACSW 2026

The 2026 Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW) will be held at Deakin University’s City Campus in Melbourne, Victoria, during the week commencing 9 February 2026. The conference will include tracks for ACE, AISC, and AusPDC. An HDR workshop is also planned. Contact Asef.Nazari asef.nazari@deakin.edu.au if you have ideas for or can help with the HDR workshop. ACSW is a great opportunity for research or teaching communities in Australasia to meet - could be for planning eg a new research initiative, to present your work, networking, a tutorial, or whatever else you think of. Let us know if you have an activity in mind.

ACSW 2026 will be co-sponsored by CORE and ACDICT, continuing our successful joint conference in 2025.

Updates will be posted on https://acsw.core.edu.au/
Conference chairs: Michael Hobbs m.hobbs@deakin.edu.au and David Abramson david.abramson@uq.edu.au
Published: 20 August 2025

CORE Members mailing list

The CORE Members mailing list has over 1000 members. Even so, many new staff in CORE Schools are not registered.

I am seeking a local champion in each CORE school who will forward CORE members emails to their School mailing list.
That way, we reach everyone.

The volume of posts on the members list is low (<2 messages a month), so forwarding them won’t be an arduous task.

More importantly, the exec would love to receive more feedback and ideas from schools, and we’d like the local champion to help with that role.

Email CORE president rachel.cardell-oliver@uwa.edu.au cc-ing your Head of School if you can help as a local champion in your School.

Published: 20 August 2025

CORE Webinar on Translational Computer Science

Thank you to David Abramson for his presentation and all those who attended the most recent CORE webinar on Translational Computer Science on 6 August.

The slides and recording are now available from the CORE website at https://www.core.edu.au/webinars

Published: 20 August 2025

Special Projects 2025: JumpStart Update

The JumpStart program is underway. Workshops have already been held in Perth, Adelaide, and Sydney with Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland workshops to come.

JumpStart Hubs are supported by local champions, who are academics identified by HoS. There is an online community of practice supported by a Google Group

Activities are initiated through a face to face workshop and pre-workshop preparation with the Local Champions.

The goals of JumpStart are to:

Identify career pathways for education focussed staff
Identifying areas where L&T innovation has highest impact
Broaden understanding around ways to build evidence of L&T impact
Approaching evidence in a systematic way

Thank you to Claudia Szabo and Cheryl Pope from Adelaide University for proposing and leading the JumpStart initiative.
CORE and Adelaide University are co-funding the workshops.
Published: 20 August 2025

Special Projects 2025: EOIs for Advocating for Computer Science

Discussions have been held about how CORE can best support advocacy for Computer Science research and teaching.

We looked at ideas for an over-arching communications activity to enhance visibility and understanding of Computer Science by the government, industry, and the public.

But it was agreed that now is not the right time to lobby, for example, the ARC since they are in the process of making major revisions to grant programs. Hopefully some of these address the points raised in CORE’s submission to the ARC grants program review.

Instead, in 2025 CORE is open to supporting local initiatives for wider visibility and understanding of the importance and required support for Computer Science in research and teaching in Universities in Australasia.

Do you have an idea for publicising these themes?

Please prepare a short EOI proposal with other CORE members and discuss this with a member of the CORE executive.

Small grants are available from CORE to support these initiatives.

For example, CORE members could get together to publish an article for the Conversation, write a submission for a review, prepare a narrative for future Computer Science students about Computer Science being much more than AI-assisted programming, and so on.

We are looking forward to hearing your ideas.

Published: 20 August 2025

CORE Webinar by Justin Zobel Wed 14 May 2025

Professor Justin Zobel will present a CORE webinar on Wednesday, May 14th, 2025

Please save this date in your diary.

A meeting link for the webinar has been sent out on the CORE members list (7 May).
We plan to record this session and it will be published on the CORE web pages.

Prof Justin Zobel: Wednesday 14 May 2025

10am Perth, 12noon AEST (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne), 2pm Auckland

When Measures Mislead: Proxies, Decoys, and Mirages

Abstract: We design and optimise systems that interact with humans, and the human world, through benchmarks and standardised measurements. But are these measurements truly reliable? There is a deep literature examining how best to make such measurements, but this literature has only rarely considered an underlying principle: that measured scores are inherently incomplete as a representation of human behaviour. This talk, drawing on arguments made in the field of economics, argues that neglect of this principle has consequences in practice – blind pursuit of performance gains based on optimisation of scores, and analysis based solely on aggregated measurements, can lead to misleading or even meaningless outcomes.

Justin Zobel is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. Professor Zobel received his PhD from Melbourne in 1991 and, prior to returning to Melbourne in 2008, worked at RMIT University and NICTA. As a researcher, he is best known for development of algorithms underpinning web search. He is also known for work on measurement techniques, data structures and algorithms, bioinformatics, and research training. His contributions were recently recognised in Australia by election to the CORE Academy and internationally by being made a Fellow of the ACM.

Published: 15 April 2025 updated 9 May

CORE Special Projects 2025 : Call for EoIs and Participation

The 2025 CORE AGM approved a motion authorising the CORE executive to budget for additional special projects in 2025.

A number of projects have already been proposed by CORE members and are being considered by the CORE executive.
If you would like to propose an Expressions of Interest for a new project, or if you are are able to help with existing proposals,
then please contact the CORE executive or any of the contacts below.

Jump Start your Learning and Teaching Career (Approved)
(Claudia Szabo, Cheryl Pope, Abelardo Pardo)
This initiative focuses on creating a sustainable and wide-reaching community of practice of computing learning and teaching innovation across Australasia, with a focus on jump starting career pathways for academic staff to explore, identify and implement impactful contributions in the area of CS education.

Australasian Computer Science Museum (In progress)
(David Abramson, Pearcy Foundation, Judy Sheard Monash)
Proposal to establish a Virtual Museum of Computer History in collaboration with Monash University and the Pearcey Foundation

Advocacy for Computer Science Research and Research Funding (In progress)
(Shazia Sadiq)
Discussions in progress. See also the CORE submission to the ARC Policy Review of Grant Programs below.

Published: 15 April 2025

CORE Activity Grants Funding : Call for EOIs

CORE has a long-standing policy on CORE Activity Grants Funding which can be found on the CORE Constitution and Policies web page.

The CORE exec will consider requests from conference organisers for activities such as student or ECR awards to support attendance at International Conferences held in Australasia. The awards should ideally be targeted for students with higher needs (e.g., based on distance). Other requests in line with the guidelines are also welcome.
Published: 15 April 2025

iCORE Rankings 2025/2026 Conference Rankings

The rankings activity is now a joint effort managed by CORE and similar bodies in Spain and Italy. Submissions for the ICORE rankings are opening May 1st and will be open for 6 weeks until June 12. Evaluation committees are being formed and the new rankings will be published in early 2026. Further information can be found at https://www.core.edu.au/icore-portal.
Published: 15 April 2025

ARC Policy Review of Grant Programs (April 2025 response)

Thank you to John Grundy and his working group for preparing the CORE Submission to the ARC Policy Review of National Competitive Grant Program Discussion Paper submitted n April 2025. The submission is available from the CORE Submissions and Endorsements web page.
Published: 15 April 2025

Science Meets Parliament 2025 Reports

Congraulations to Shazia Sadiq and Matthew Butler who were awarded CORE scholarships to attend Science Meets Parliament in February 2025. You can read their reports on the CORE web page: https://www.core.edu.au/science-meets-parliament-reports

Published: 15 April 2025

ACSW 2025 Report

Thank you to all attendees and speakers and our hosts University of Queensland for a successful ACSW 2025 this February. You can catch up on the program and speakers here https://acsw.core.edu.au Thank you to David Abramson for his photos of ACSW. A few samples below, but see the link for more.
Published: 15 April 2025

Congratulations International Award Winners

Congratulations Justin Zobel for being elected as a Fellow of the ACM for contributions to data structures and algorithms for efficient search

https://www.acm.org/media-center/2025/january/fellows-2024

Congratulations to 2025 ACM Distinguished Members celebrated for their innovation and service:

Zi Helen Huang, University of Queensland

Kim Marriot, Monash University

Simon, Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE)
Read the ACM press release and their citations here:

https://www.acm.org/media-center/2025/february/distinguished-members-2024

Congratulations to John Grundy of Monash University who has recently been made a Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to automated software engineering.

https://www.monash.edu/it/news/2025/australian-laureate-professor-john-grundy-receives-ieees-highest-grade-of-membership-ieee-fellow

Congratulations to all the Australasian colleagues elected as Fellows of the IEEE for 2025:

Tsong Yueh Chen, Swinburne University of Technology

for contributions to software testing through the invention of metamorphic testing and adaptive random testing

Jiankun Hu, University of New South Wales, Australia

for contributions to biometrics security and anomaly intrusion detection

Zi Huang, University of Queensland

for contributions to multi-modal data management

Kai Qin, Swinburne University of Technology

for contributions to synergy machine learning and intelligent optimization

See this link for the full list of 2025 IEEE fellows (my apologies if I have missed anyone – pls let me know for the newsletter)

https://www.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee-org/ieee/web/org/about/fellows/fellow-committee/2025-fellows-class-announcement.pdf

Congratulations also to the CORE colleagues who have recently been elected as Fellows of the ACS:

https://www.acs.org.au/professionalrecognition/hall-of-fame/Fellows20232024.html

Published: 28 Jan 2025, 30 Jan 2025, 13 Feb 2025

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