Learning to Pinpoint Emerging Software Vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop learning-based software vulnerability detection techniques to improve the reliability and security of modern software systems. The existing techniques relying on conventional yet rigid software analysis and testing techniques are ineffective and/or inefficient when detecting a wide variety of emerging software vulnerabilities. The outcomes of this project will be a deep-learning-based detection approach and an ....Learning to Pinpoint Emerging Software Vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop learning-based software vulnerability detection techniques to improve the reliability and security of modern software systems. The existing techniques relying on conventional yet rigid software analysis and testing techniques are ineffective and/or inefficient when detecting a wide variety of emerging software vulnerabilities. The outcomes of this project will be a deep-learning-based detection approach and an open-source tool that can capture precision correlations between deep code features and diverse vulnerabilities to pinpoint emerging vulnerabilities without the need for bug specifications. Significant benefits include greatly improved quality, reliability and security for modern software systems.Read moreRead less
Improving Modern Programming Language Performance: A Memory-Conscious Approach. The performance of modern programming languages such as Java and C# lags that of imperative languages such as C and Fortran. A significant source of the performance gap is poor memory behavior, which future computer architectures will exacerbate. This project addresses the problem of poor memory behavior in modern programming languages such as Java and C# through an integrated attack that incorporates new garbage c ....Improving Modern Programming Language Performance: A Memory-Conscious Approach. The performance of modern programming languages such as Java and C# lags that of imperative languages such as C and Fortran. A significant source of the performance gap is poor memory behavior, which future computer architectures will exacerbate. This project addresses the problem of poor memory behavior in modern programming languages such as Java and C# through an integrated attack that incorporates new garbage collection algorithms, run-time techniques that optimize running programs, and new compiler analyses with both static and dynamic optimizations. The project will give Australia an
international presence in a research area of great academic and commercial importance.
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Micro Virtual Machines: Abstraction, contained. This project will address a systemic source of inefficiency in widely used software which leads to many programs running as much as ten times slower and using considerably more energy than necessary, shortening battery life on mobile phones and increasing costs for large server farms. This inefficiency is endemic because it is due to the underlying languages rather than the particular software. This project will address this problem by developing a ....Micro Virtual Machines: Abstraction, contained. This project will address a systemic source of inefficiency in widely used software which leads to many programs running as much as ten times slower and using considerably more energy than necessary, shortening battery life on mobile phones and increasing costs for large server farms. This inefficiency is endemic because it is due to the underlying languages rather than the particular software. This project will address this problem by developing a high efficiency substrate, called a micro virtual machine, on which languages may be built.Read moreRead less
Finding and exploiting interesting paths in multidimensional information spaces. This project will invent a new approach for searching within a large complex information space, finding interesting paths between points within the space, visualising the results, and supporting rich, human-centric user interaction with queries and results. This project will embody these techniques in a novel, internet-scale framework to support rapid development of large path search and visualisation applications. ....Finding and exploiting interesting paths in multidimensional information spaces. This project will invent a new approach for searching within a large complex information space, finding interesting paths between points within the space, visualising the results, and supporting rich, human-centric user interaction with queries and results. This project will embody these techniques in a novel, internet-scale framework to support rapid development of large path search and visualisation applications. Evaluation will be via development of several exemplar applications. The techniques and framework will be applicable to a broad range of economically important problems in areas as diverse as health, travel, scientific publication search, product marketing and software engineering.Read moreRead less
Machine-checked Foundations for Verified Vote Counting. The project will deliver a general methodology for developing formal logical specifications of the Acts of Parliament for many common systems for counting votes in preferential elections. The project will deliver corresponding computer programs to count votes according to these systems and will deliver formal independently checkable proofs that the programs meet their specification. Such formally verified computer programs provide a legally ....Machine-checked Foundations for Verified Vote Counting. The project will deliver a general methodology for developing formal logical specifications of the Acts of Parliament for many common systems for counting votes in preferential elections. The project will deliver corresponding computer programs to count votes according to these systems and will deliver formal independently checkable proofs that the programs meet their specification. Such formally verified computer programs provide a legally sound basis for counting votes by computer. The methodology will also allow electoral commissioners to improve the natural language descriptions of the relevant Acts of Parliament which are often woefully out of date with current practice.Read moreRead less
Rigorous Privacy Compliance in Modern Application Ecosystems. Modern network applications such as mobile applications and browser extensions have become the primary gateways for consumers to access the Internet in today’s digital landscape. This project aims to address privacy issues in these ecosystems by developing a new privacy-compliance assessment framework. The framework will evaluate the current privacy practices of application ecosystems, enabling users and developers in Australia and wo ....Rigorous Privacy Compliance in Modern Application Ecosystems. Modern network applications such as mobile applications and browser extensions have become the primary gateways for consumers to access the Internet in today’s digital landscape. This project aims to address privacy issues in these ecosystems by developing a new privacy-compliance assessment framework. The framework will evaluate the current privacy practices of application ecosystems, enabling users and developers in Australia and worldwide to reliably identify potential privacy risks and issues on their applications. The intended outcomes should endow data controllers with the capability of evidencing their compliance of data protection legislations such as Australia Privacy Act 1988 and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).Read moreRead less
Development and implementation of efficient new models for electron correlation. The two new approaches will allow researchers in the chemical, pharmaceutical and materials sciences to predict the physical and chemical behaviour of moderately large molecular systems with an accuracy and efficiency that has not previously been possible. The software that will result will enable cost and time savings in the design of advanced materials in the medical and agricultural contexts.
Enhanced ultrasound-based imaging using image-based registration and acoustic impedance reconstruction. The project will nurture the development of a new centre for medical image analysis work in Australia at the ANU. This is in line with the vision of ANU's Department of Engineering for the growth of biomedical engineering research. The project is directed at the creation of new surgical and imaging techniques based on ultrasound. These will have a direct effect on improved healthcare and new c ....Enhanced ultrasound-based imaging using image-based registration and acoustic impedance reconstruction. The project will nurture the development of a new centre for medical image analysis work in Australia at the ANU. This is in line with the vision of ANU's Department of Engineering for the growth of biomedical engineering research. The project is directed at the creation of new surgical and imaging techniques based on ultrasound. These will have a direct effect on improved healthcare and new clinical procedures. The creation of a new ultrasound imaging modality will have commercial applications, enhancing the growth of biomedical engineering in Australia. The training of new PhD students and postdoctoral fellows will provide a basis for further development in this area, and its extension to other imaging research in Australia. Read moreRead less
MemberGuard: Protecting Machine Learning Privacy from Membership Inference. Machine Learning has become a core part of many real-world applications. However, machine learning models are vulnerable to membership inference attacks. In these attacks, an adversary can infer if a given data record has been part of the model's training data. In this project, the team aims to develop new techniques that can be used to counter these attacks, such as 1) new analytical models for membership leakage, 2) ne ....MemberGuard: Protecting Machine Learning Privacy from Membership Inference. Machine Learning has become a core part of many real-world applications. However, machine learning models are vulnerable to membership inference attacks. In these attacks, an adversary can infer if a given data record has been part of the model's training data. In this project, the team aims to develop new techniques that can be used to counter these attacks, such as 1) new analytical models for membership leakage, 2) new methods for susceptibility diagnosis, 3) new defences that leverage privacy and utility. Data-oriented services are estimated to be valuable assets in the future. These techniques can help Australia gain cutting edge advantage in machine learning security and privacy and protect its intellectual property on these services.Read moreRead less
User-task co-adaptation for effective interactive simulation environments. This project aims to deliver smart interactive simulation environments in which users and simulation tasks work together. This project aims to create novel adaptive algorithms to automatically discover those user and task features that vary together to smartly adapt users and simulation tasks to work together harmoniously, seamlessly and effectively. Interactive simulation environments are the backbone for evaluating conc ....User-task co-adaptation for effective interactive simulation environments. This project aims to deliver smart interactive simulation environments in which users and simulation tasks work together. This project aims to create novel adaptive algorithms to automatically discover those user and task features that vary together to smartly adapt users and simulation tasks to work together harmoniously, seamlessly and effectively. Interactive simulation environments are the backbone for evaluating concepts, designs, products and advanced training systems in industry and government organisations. By bringing the user naturally inside the simulation as a task's component, users can improve their experience while task performance is simultaneously optimised. Intended outcomes include novel dynamic user-task profiling algorithms and new adaptive algorithms for user-task co-adaptation. Practical outcomes may include robust and highly effective simulation environments.Read moreRead less