Month: November 2024

The RIIS Hub held their 2024 wrap up event at The Coogee Bay Hotel, Sydney.

The Director and Deputy Director of our Research Institute started the day with a warm welcome and an update on our latest research achievements. This set the stage for a day filled with insightful presentations and networking opportunities.

We were pleased to introduce key members of our team and industry partners:

• Garry Mostyn: Chair of the Industry Advisory Board, who gave a summary of his expertise and what he will contribute to the future research direction of the hub.
• New Chief Investigators and Researchers who gave brief presentations on their research interests and the projects they would be participating in in 2025

                     Arman Khoshghalb – Associate Professor – UNSW Sydney

                    Jing Zhao –  ARC DECRA Fellow – UNSW Sydney

                    Huadong Mo – Senior Lecturer – UNSW Canberra

Our industry partners shared their latest innovations and research:

                   Dr Govinda Pandey – Rockfield Technologies Australia Pty Ltd – Chief Executive Officer

                   James Linke – GeoAI – Chief Technology Officer & Chief Financial Officer

                   Huadong Mo on behalf of Dr James Ciyu Qin – Advanced United Technologies Pty Ltd – Process Control and System Optimisation Specialist

We stopped for lunch which proved to be a great opportunity to network and discuss the morning’s presentations.

The RIIS poster competition was held from 2pm where Higher Degree Research (HDR) students presented their posters, showcasing their cutting-edge research projects. This session was a highlight of the day, offering a glimpse into the future of our field.  Our thanks to Arman Khoshghalb for convening this session.

The day concluded with A dinner which was a relaxing and enjoyable end to a productive day providing further opportunities for networking and collaboration.

Australia is a land of ‘droughts and flooding rains’*, and when they occur soils can swell or shrink, which can result in damage to buildings and homes, and pose a risk to human life.

The personal and collective financial cost of addressing flood-related structural damage to homes is not limited to Australia. It is an international challenge.
Damage to infrastructure could be minimised or avoided with a better understanding of soil behaviour under different conditions, and RIIS Hub is contributing to global learning on the topic.
To further explore international learnings on the topic, RIIS Hub team recently welcomed eminent scholar and researcher in soil-related structural impacts Associate Professor Mathilde Morvan from the Pascal Institute & POLYTECH Clermont in France to explore potential solutions.
A/Prof Morvan’s current research seeks to develop a better understanding of soil characterisation. She is also looking to develop new, inexpensive diagnostic methods that can predict swelling soils near detached houses.
A/Prof. Morvan’s work has close alignment to some of the and predictive techniques being developed in RIIS Hub’s Theme 3 Research program, where researchers are exploring the effect of temperature on the movement of soils using a thermo-plasticity model as part of flaw detection and failure avoidance research.
During her Seminar to the RIIS Hub team, A/Prof Morvan shared

• The cost of damage due to soil shrinkage and swelling on detached houses is the highest among natural disasters in France after floods.
• While methods for characterising these soils exist, they are generally not affordable for most households, and as a result, this foundational soil understanding is often neglected at building and planning development stages.
• One objective of A/Prof. Morvan’s work is to provide a methodology for characterising these soils, and to find simple. Another is to find affordable methods to help spur more due diligence soil investigations to inform structural planning and help prevent damage to homes during disasters.
• A current project proposes to develop a method for monitoring individual houses in high-risk areas, with the aim of providing reliable data.

Following the presentation A/Prof. Morvan spent 1:1 time collaborating with members of the RIIS Hub team, exploring future research and data sharing.
RIIS Hub Director Prof. Nasser Khalili shared:
“We want to make flood affected dwellings are as ‘safe as houses’, and ensure Aussies and their homes are better-prepared to weather future storms.
“Building a collaborative and close-working relationship with other researchers working on related infrastructure resilience projects is a practical way to expand and share knowledge and learnings at scale, and inform the development of more robust technical solutions to solve similar problems.”

Theme 3 RIIS Hub Research involves multiple universities in NSW (UNSW, UNSW Sydney, Western Sydney University) as well as QUT in Queensland. We note that this visit was made possible thanks to NSW Chief Scientist ‘RAAP’ funding.
Theme 3 RIIS Hub researchers are designing and applying:
• Modelling, simulations, and prognostics
• Predictive modelling simulation & performance assessment
• Physics-informed artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning & explanation

RIIS Hub was delighted to support multiple PhD researchers’ participation in the ‘2024 Information Resilience PhD School’ during October in Brisbane, hosted by the ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES). 

The event, now in its third year, gathers PhD students from around Australia to take part in a series of activities and updates that are designed to help them build peer-to-peer networks and explore data science practices and career pathways. 

RIIS Hub PhD student Masoud Kamali attended, and was awarded the ‘People’s Choice’ award for his 3-Minute Thesis Presentation 

 “The event workshops and sessions were incredibly informative and engaging, offering valuable insights that significantly broadened my expertise. PhD researchers from various ARC Hubs presented their work across diverse fields, including Generative AI, Data Quality, and Computer Vision, making it a comprehensive and engaging event.” 

 “My 3MT presentation focused on Zero-shot 3D Object Detection in complex industrial environments. This research involves designing and developing a monocular 3D object detection approach for industrial assets, leveraging vision-language models (VLMs), computer vision, and deep learning algorithms.” 

 RIIS Hub PhD student Ensiyeh Javaherian Pour was a Group Competition winner: Data Science and Analytics  

 “Attending the PhD school was a wonderful opportunity. I found the experience invaluable.  

It provided me with the chance to engage with other PhD students, learn about their projects, and share insights. Additionally, I thoroughly enjoyed the other sessions, particularly those led by esteemed presenters who discussed advancements in AI technology and data engineering. The event was both comprehensive and engaging, offering a wealth of knowledge and inspiration.” 

 The event featured a competition designed to expand student knowledge:  

“(Our winning group) achievement was particularly gratifying and impressive for RIIS Hub students, showcasing our capabilities and determination.” 

 RIIS Hub PhD student Alireza Haji Heidari attended, and was also a Group Competition winner
“The event was incredibly insightful and informative and valuable experience, allowing me to engage with leading researchers and fellow PhD candidates.”  

“A series of interactive sessions, including keynotes, workshops, panel discussions, 3MT and poster browsing provided deep insights into cutting-edge data science practices and the future of data-driven research.” 

 “The ‘Beyond Research’ day was particularly enriching, as I learned from industry professionals. These interactions have opened new avenues for potential collaborations and opportunities.”  

 “The Information Resilience PhD School 2024 has been a transformative experience. It has not only enhanced my knowledge and skills but also expanded my professional network. I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of such a prestigious event and look forward to applying what I have learned to my ongoing research.” 

 Program highlights included:
 

• Keynote talks with Professor Felix Naumann from the Hasso Plattner Institute on Data Quality Practices in the Age of AI, and Professor Lina Yao from UNSW on Towards Agentic Recommender Systems 

• Panel discussion including Research Careers in Industry with Rakalene Condon from TechnologyOne, Lawrence Kusz from Chatstat, and Dr Julien Monteil from Amazon; and ECR panel with Dr Solmaz Abdi, PhD from Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), Dr Lei Han from Queensland Police Service, Dr Ruihong Qiu from UQ, and PhD Researcher Kim Bente from the University of Sydney 

• Technical Tutorials with Dr Aneesha Bakharia from University of Queensland, and Dr Xin Zheng from Griffith University 

• Interactive sessions, writing workshop, industry engagement & entrepreneurship, 3-Minute Thesis (3MT), poster session, awards presentation and more
   

More information on the 2024 PhD Resilience School can be found here: https://cires.org.au/event/information-resilience-phd-school-2024/