Honours and Minor Thesis projects

The DNA inside a cell is not randomly distributed but rather organized in a structure called chromatin. This non-random distribution has important implications for the functioning of cellular programs. The basic building block of this organisation system is the nucleosome. The nucleosome consists of a short piece of DNA wrapped around a protein core, with millions of nucleosomes are present in the cell’s nucleus. The orientation of nucleosomes with respect to each other and the way they pack the genomic DNA determine the architecture of chromatin.…

Antimicrobial resistance poses significant medical challenge worldwide. Misuse, overuse or suboptimal dosing of antibiotics are major driving factors of antimicrobial resistance. Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) modelling is critical for designing optimal antimicrobial therapies to maximise the efficacy and minimise the emergence of resistance. However, conventional PK/PD modelling is generally based on viable counting on agar plates after overnight culture and employs a population approach.

In situ analysis of complex biochemical metrices, such as microbial fermentation products, has drawn substantial research interests in recent years. Compared to the commonly used chemical analysis technique, spectroscopic analysis has great potential for this purpose due to its advantages of being rapid, contactless, lossless, and solvent-free. The major obstacle for the further application of the spectroscopic technique in the analysis of biochemical samples is the lack of customized data mining methods for the highly complicated spectral signal of the organic mixtures.

Behavioural manifestations of epileptic seizures (ESs) and certain non-epileptic seizures (psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, or PNESs) have considerable overlap, and so discerning between these solely based on clinical criteria is difficult.  Video EEG (electroencephalogram) monitoring (VEM) has high resource demands and is also expensive.  We endeavour to classify seizures based on non-invasive measures.

Digital signatures are asymmetric cryptographic schemes used to validate the authenticity and integrity of digital messages or documents. The signer uses their private key to generate a signature on a message. Then, this signature can be validated by any verifier who knows the signer’s corresponding public key. Sometimes a digital message might require signatures from a group of signers. The naïve method to achieve this goal is collecting distinct signatures from all signers.…

Cloud Data centres are designed to support the business requirements of cloud clients. However, due to the complexities of data centre infrastructure and their software systems, cloud service providers often do not have access to quality data regarding their IT equipment. This hinders their ability to better optimise the quality of their services and system performance. A clear message from across the industry is that better data allows for better decision making and resource management.

Thanks to the widespread deployment of smart meters, high volumes of residential load data have been collected and made available to both consumers and utility companies. Smart meter data open up tremendous opportunities, and various analytical techniques have been developed to analyse smart meter data using machine learning. This project will provide a new angle toward energy data analytics and aims to discover the consumption patterns, lifestyle, and behavioural changes of consumers.

User reviews on app distribution platforms such as Google Play store and Apple App store are a valuable source of information, ideas, and requests from users. They reflect the needs and challenges users encounter including bugs, feature requests, and design. Recent research has shown that reviews can also serve as a proxy for understanding the values of the users and how users perceive that their values have been violated by the mobile app/mobile app developers. However, there are limited studies that show whether mobile app updates fix violations of the user's values and to what extent.…

Theory and applications in data analytics of time series became popular in the past few years due to the availability of data in various sources. This project aims to investigate and generalise Hybrid and Neural Network methods in time series to develop forecast algorithms. The methodology will be developed as a theoretical construct together with wide variety of applications.

Background: Insects are vital components of natural and agricultural ecosystems that interact with plants in complex ways. Monitoring can help us understand these interactions to improve crop production, and to assist us to sustain our natural ecosystems as we change the Earth's climate. This technology is vital to inform our strategies to protect global food supplies and manage our national parks and forests.