Research projects in Information Technology

AI is now trending, and impacting diverse application domains beyond IT, from education (chatGPT) to natural sciences (protein analysis) to social media.

This PhD research focuses on the fusing AI research and cybersecurity research, notably one current direction is on advancing the latest generative AI models for cybersecurity, or vice versa: using cybersecurity to attack AI. 

The student is free to discuss with the supervisor on which topic is of the most interest to him/her, in order to shape the PhD topic. 

Many machine learning (ML) approaches have been applied to biomedical data but without substantial applications due to the poor interpretability of models. Although ML approaches have shown promising results in building prediction models, they are typically data-centric, lack context, and work best for specific feature types. Interpretability is the ability of an ML model to identify the causal relationships among variables. It is crucial for uncovering new insights, justifying a model performance and ultimately building trust in users for further applications.

Introduction

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most significant and immediate threats to health in Australia and globally. We are working on harnessing new technologies such as artificial intelligence and next-generation sequencing and to improve the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of AMR infections.

The specific aims of this project are:

1. Rapidly identify AMR and predict treatment responses through use of genomics and machine learning in a clinical context.

This PhD project aims to mitigate the data scarcity of new NLP and Multimodal applications by developing novel active learning algorithms. In this project, the student will leverage large foundation models, such as ChatGPT and GPT4, incorporating the cutting-edge techniques in the other areas, such as reinforcement learning, causality and GFlowNets, to devise novel active learning algorithms for NLP and multimodal applications.

Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are a set of cryptographic tools that allow information processing in a privacy-respecting manner. As an example, imagine we have a user, say Alice, who wants to get a service from a service provider, say SerPro. To provide the service, SerPro requests Alice's private information such as a copy of her passport to validate her identity. In a traditional setting, Alice has no choice but to give away her highly sensitive information. 

PhD Studentship Description:

Federated learning (FL) is an emerging machine learning paradium to enable distributed clients (e.g., mobile devices) to jointly train a machine learning model without pooling their raw data into a centralised server. Because data never leaves from user clients, FL systematically mitigates privacy risks from centralised machine learning and naturally comply with rigorous data privacy regulations, such as GDPR and Privacy Act 1988. 

Are you interested in applying your AI/DL knowledge to the medical domain?

This project focuses on the use of AI in Medical Imaging (e.g. CT, MRI, X-Ray, Ultrasound, etc). The work includes segmentation and classification; for example, segmenting tumour from the medical images, and then classify the grade of the tumour. We will use various Deep Learning techniques, such as CNN, and will experiment with a variety of Deep Learning frameworks, such as U-Net, ResNet, etc.

Portable point of care medical devices have revolutionised the way in which people receive medical treatment. It can bring timely and adequate care to people in need but also opens up the opportunity to address the healthcare inequality for the rural and remote.