News

• Congratulations to Associate Professor Ashad Kabir for receiving a National Industry PhD Program research grant with an amount of over $88,000 as the lead investigator in partnership with Foot Balance Technology Pty Ltd. This project aims to address the issue of generic medical and assistive device prescriptions for patients with diabetic-related foot disease by utilising and advancing artificial intelligence to guide personalised device prescriptions, allowing for individual patient preferences and lifestyles.
• Congratulations to Dr Jason Howarth who has won a Charles Sturt Teaching Academy grant with an amount of $5,000 to explore if ChatGPT can be used to assist with marking and providing feedback of Java programming assignments.
• Congratulations to Associate Professor Rafiqul Islam, Dr Quazi Mamun and Professor Zahid Islam who received $105,000 from Connectivity Innovation Network (CIN). The project title is “A Lightweight Adaptive Adversarial Attack-Resistant IDS”.
• Congratulations to Associate Professor Ashad Kabir, along with other Charles Sturt colleagues and external collaborators who received over $6.2 million from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. The project aims to investigate the interdependence and whole-system effects of cropping and livestock components and managing environmental and social impacts in response to seasonal variation.
• On the same page, please remove the news from (and including) “Members of DSERU have received…” onwards.

Dr Darren Yates, from the Charles Sturt School of Computing, Mathematics and Engineering along with Professor Zahidul Islam, Dr Sabih Rehman and other colleagues from Gulbali Institute of Agriculture, Water and Environment, has developed the Combined Location Online Weather Data (CLOWD) app which delivers an online tool to assist farmers in making better crop and pasture management decisions by analysing recent and historic weather for any location in Australia. The app is part of a Food Agility CRC collaborative research project with Charles Sturt University, SunRice and AgriFutures Australia. Further information is available from here.

Congratulations to Prof Mark Morrison, Prof Zahid Islam, Dr Arash Mahboubi, Dr Michael Bewong, A/Prof Yeslam Al-Saggaf, A/Prof Rafiqul Islam, Dr Sabih Rehman, Dr Arif Khan, Dr Anwaar Ul-Haq and Dr Ryan Ip, along with other colleagues from Charles Sturt and other institutes, who received $1,400,000 ($375,000 to Charles Sturt) from Cyber Security CRC.  The project title is "SCATES: Securing Critical Agriculture Technology and Emerging Solutions".

• Members of DSERU have received the following external funds. Congratulations to all involved!
  • Dr Michael Bewong, Prof Zahid Islam, Dr Arash Mahboubi, A/Prof Rafiqul Islam, Dr Ryan Ip, A/Prof Yeslam Al-Saggaf and Dr Arif Khan received $2,105,000 ($161,303 to CSU) funded by Cyber Security CRC (CSCRC) CISCO, Quintessence Lab, TCS and Government of Western Australia.  The project title is "Software security with a focus on critical technologies".
  • A/Prof Azizur Rahman received an international grant of $559,901 funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, Ireland. The project title is “An exploitation of remote sensing CMEMS products for monitoring of transitional and coastal waters”.
  • A/Prof Rafiqul Islam and Prof Zahid Islam received an amount of $135,000 from Food Agility CRC as PhD Scholarship for a PhD student. The project title is “Understanding the relationship between individual and mob-based animal performance metrics derived from autonomous livestock monitoring sources”.
  • Dr Arash Mahboubi, Prof Zahid Islam, A/Prof Rafiqul Islam, and Dr Michael Bewong received an amount of $850,000 ($425,000 to CSU) from Cyber Security CRC and Paraflare. The project title is “THRD: Threat Detection and Response with Heterogeneous Data Sources”.
  • A/Prof Rafiqul Islam, Dr Michael Bewong, Prof Zahid Islam, Dr Arash Mahboubi and Dr Ryan Ip received an amount of $50,000 from Cyber Security CRC. The project title is “Sharing Cybersecurity Research Data (SCReeD)”.

• Members of DSERU have received the following external funds. Congratulations to all involved!
  • A/Prof Rafiqul Islam, Dr Quazi Mamun, Prof Manoranjan Paul and Prof Zahid Islam who received an amount of $25,000 from GSK Global Pty Ltd. The project title is “Shipping Container ID Automation – Phase II”.
  • Prof Mark Morrison, Prof Zahid Islam who received an amount of $75,000 from Campus Plus under Discovery Translation Fund (DTF). The project title is “HEALTHDM - System Refinement and Early Adoption”.
  • A/Prof Azizur Rahman, Prof Zahid Islam, Dr Michael Bewong and Dr Ryan Ip who received an amount of $609,281 from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s Future Drought Fund. The project title is “Supporting rapid intervention through disaster cycles: Helping government, NGOs and community organisations identify where resilience support is needed through rapid identification of risk before, during and after extreme climatic events”.
  • Dr Michael Bewong, Prof Zahid Islam, A/Prof Yeslam Al-Saggaf  and Dr Ryan Ip who received an amount of $597,729 from Food Agility CRC and Meat & Livestock Limited. The project title is “Potential implications and benefits for the agrifood technology sector from the introduction of the Australian AgriFood Data Exchange”.
  • Dr Arash Mahboubi and Prof Zahid Islam who received an amount of $640,000 from Cyber Security CRC and Government of Western Australia. The project title is “Ransomware Resilient File Safe Havens for cloud data”
  • Prof Zahid Islam and Prof Tanveer Zia who received a total amount of $1,687,500 from Cyber Security CRC for two Research Fellows for the project “Privacy Preserving Data Sharing in a Hyperconnected World”.
  • A/Prof Lihong Zheng who received an amount of $4,368,791 from Meat & Livestock Australia Donor Company. The project title is “Evaluating a hyperspectral image analysis prototype for offal health and tissue integrity quality assurance for Australian red meat processing”
  • A/Prof Lihong Zheng who received an amount of $600,618 from The Department of Agricultural, Water and Environment. The project title is “Development of drone technology to enhance Tropical Soda Apple (TSA) control in rugged high-value grazing country”
  • A/Prof Lihong Zheng and Dr Ashad Kabir who received an amount of $105,000 from Food Agility CRC. The project title is “Trakka CattleID Scholarship”.
  • Dr Ashad Kabir and A/Prof Lihong Zheng who received an amount of $105,000 from Food Agility CRC. The project title is “Trakka MicroServices Scholarship”.
• The mobile app on vine nutrition developed by Prof Manoranjan Paul, A/Prof Lihong Zheng and team members have been commercialised. For more information, please visit this link.
• A/Prof Azizur Rahman received an internal fund with an amount of $2,500 to support in organising the 45th Annual Conference of the Australia and New Zealand Regional Science Association International (ANZRSAI). The core theme of ANZRSAI conference is “Data Science in Regional Policy: Housing And Workforce Dynamic”, and it will be held on 1-2 December 2022 in CSU, Wagga Wagga Campus.
• The Adaptive Decision Forest paper published by Dr Gea Rahman and Prof Zahid Islam in Pattern Recognition has received two external recognitions: Dr Gea Rahman was (1) selected for the “Global Awards on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics" under the category of "Best Researcher Award",and (2) invited as an “Invited Speaker” at the Robotics & AI Research Conference (RoboAICon2023, 23 March 2023 to 25 March 2023, Rome, Italy). Congratulations!
• Congratulations to Dr Yinhao Jiang for the extension of his Postdoc contract from the Cybersecurity CRC funding. Well-done Dr Jiang!

Associate Professor Yeslam Al-Saggaf has been successful in the ICS 2022-2023 Challenge: “Youth, Relationships and Psychological Well-Being”. He will be visiting the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) at the University of Navarra – one of the top five universities in Spain - as a Visiting Research Fellow. Congratulations!

Manoranjan Paul is the 91st most cited author in IEEE ACCESS journal (Q1 journal) in 2020 according to Exaly (https://exaly.com/author/895104/manoranjan-paul/rankings). In 2020, 18007 articles have been published in IEEE Access journal. Prof Paul and his research team published the highly cited paper with the collaborations of Charles Sturt, UTS and Manning Rural Referral Hospital, Taree and funded by Charles Sturt and UTS: M. J. Horry, S. Chakraborty, M. Paul, A. Ulhaq, B. Pradhan,  M. Saha, and N. Shukla, "COVID-19 Detection Through Transfer Learning Using Multimodal Imaging Data," in IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 149808-149824, 2020, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3016780.

The paper is related to COVID-19 detection using Artificial Intelligence (specifically transfer learning of deep machine learning) with x-ray image, CT, and Ultrasound data. The technique is highly effective when we have scarcity of sample data for training.

Dr. Anwaar Ulhaq has been successful in securing a Regional University Network’s (RAMHeaRT) research fellowship for one year as a mid-career researcher with the funding support of $42,000.

Congratulations to Dr Anwaar Ulhaq and Assoc Prof Aamar Cheema (Monash) for receiving the Monash University Research Fund with an amount of $200,000. The project title is “AI for Spatial Digital Twin”.

Congratulations to all colleagues who were successful recipients for Data Science and Engineering Research Unit’s Interim Funding schemes.  A successful total grant of $210,000 is being dispersed over a number of projects after receiving strong applications for many exciting projects which should enhance our industry connections and partnerships and result in the publication of high-quality papers.  Further details about the projects can be found on the Projects page.

Following the advice from relevant assessment panels, the Data Science and Engineering Research Unit (DSERU) awarded funding for the following schemes:
- Teaching buyout support of around $35,000 to 7 DSERU members. The goal is to free up some time for our colleagues so that they can spend more time on their research resulting in top quality publications, external funding, and impact.
- Lab Technician Support of around $30,000 for three DSERU labs: the Data Analytics Lab at Port Macquarie, Computer Vision Lab at Bathurst, and Advanced Networking Lab at Wagga. The purpose of this funding includes allowing remote access to some equipment, preparation of the lab manuals, maintenance of lab equipment etc. The underlying goal is to make our labs helpful towards increasing top quality publications and external funding.
- Research Pilot Projects for approximately $50,000 for 6 different pilot projects. The pilot projects aimed strong interaction with industry partners and create opportunities for further external funding. Each project had a collaborative team of investigators from DSERU. They were in collaboration with various potential industry partners including Wheat Quality Australia (WQA), GSK Global, Central West Farming Systems (CWFS), Mid North Coast LHD (MNCLHD) and TerraCipher. Some of these projects are currently negotiating external funding.
- Infrastructure funding of around $14,000 to support our colleagues. The equipment will belong to DSERU labs. The goal here is again to help DSERU members towards impactful research, top quality publications and external funding.
- DSERU Summer Scholarships were awarded to 12 students with total budget of around $36,000. The goal was to encourage our good students to experience research work and possible future opportunities.
- DSERU Good Idea scheme of $15,000 for 2 projects with multiple colleagues in each project. These projects aim to get groundwork for external funding from various sources including ARC DP and industry partners.

Congratulations to Dr Ashad Kabir, A/Prof Lihong Zheng and colleagues who received external funds from Food Agility CRC with an amount of $374,500. The project title is “TRAKKA – Making Data Flow”.

Congratulations to A/Prof Rafiqul Islam, Dr Ba Dung Le and Prof Zahid Islam. The project team working on a Cyber Security CRC (CSCRC) funded project (titled "Development of Australian Cyber Criteria Assessment") received the prestigious Cyber Security Researcher of the Year Award 2021 from the Australian Information Security Association (AISA). This is a collaborative project with researchers from Deakin University, Charles Sturt University, industry and government partners: the Quintessence Lab and Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC). Congratulations to all team members of the project.