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.

1. 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. 

2. 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

3. 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