Preterm birth is a major cause of neonatal death and cerebral palsy. This grant will provide proof-of-concept that a computer program can be developed to predict a pregnant woman�s risk of preterm birth. There is a large market (4M US and 8M Europe), there are no competing technologies. This is a unique collaboration between Biomedical Engineering and an Australian centre with an international reputation in preterm birth, assisted by a pathology company.
Overseeing the internet: new paradigms of network measurement. Like the electricity network, the internet is a core infrastructure, and so must be reliable and efficient. A gap in bandwidth supply is like a blackout in terms of lost business and productivity. This project will provide the measurement breakthroughs to ensure that network behaviour can be accurately and comprehensively monitored.
Intelligent Model Checking. Real-world systems are typically so complex that software engineers require specialised CAD tools to debug and verify a design. Model checking is a formal method that is used extensively for this purpose, particularly for mission-critical systems. In this work, a new kind of verifying tool, based on model checking, is developed. This new model checker is intelligent because a heuristic search is integrated into the underlying formalism. It is not exhaustive, and is mo ....Intelligent Model Checking. Real-world systems are typically so complex that software engineers require specialised CAD tools to debug and verify a design. Model checking is a formal method that is used extensively for this purpose, particularly for mission-critical systems. In this work, a new kind of verifying tool, based on model checking, is developed. This new model checker is intelligent because a heuristic search is integrated into the underlying formalism. It is not exhaustive, and is more efficient than a traditional model checker during the design phase because it does only a minimum amount of work in its search for a fault.Read moreRead less
Sustainability in Computing: A Holistic View. Green computing must provide sustainable processing capabilities with high energy efficiency (lower carbon footprint) and increased product longevity (reducing the need for product replacement). While advances in technology have afforded significant reduction in power requirements, they come with inherent challenges due to uncertainties in micro-scale behaviour, high complexity of quantifying/optimising energy cost or system lifetime in extreme scale ....Sustainability in Computing: A Holistic View. Green computing must provide sustainable processing capabilities with high energy efficiency (lower carbon footprint) and increased product longevity (reducing the need for product replacement). While advances in technology have afforded significant reduction in power requirements, they come with inherent challenges due to uncertainties in micro-scale behaviour, high complexity of quantifying/optimising energy cost or system lifetime in extreme scale computing, and the interaction of non-computing components with individual computing systems. This project addresses these challenges via a holistic, multi-scale paradigm for modelling, analysis, and optimisation of energy cost, carbon footprint, and product lifetime in emerging computing systems.Read moreRead less
Novel time-frequency techniques for analysing and modeling non-stationary physical and engineering data. This project addresses an issue of fundamental importance in science and technology, where non-stationary data (which have time-varying statistics) are ubiquitous. Therefore, the development of time-frequency tools to model and analyse non-stationary data has great potential for impact in a wide range of areas reaching from seismic data analysis to biomedical signal processing to sonar and ra ....Novel time-frequency techniques for analysing and modeling non-stationary physical and engineering data. This project addresses an issue of fundamental importance in science and technology, where non-stationary data (which have time-varying statistics) are ubiquitous. Therefore, the development of time-frequency tools to model and analyse non-stationary data has great potential for impact in a wide range of areas reaching from seismic data analysis to biomedical signal processing to sonar and radar. Employing techniques to be developed in this proposal, we expect to be able to classify and detect features of non-stationary data that were unrecognisable using hitherto known methods.Read moreRead less
Sound and Shape Synthesis Using Tensegrity Particle Systems. Pixar's Toy Story amazed audiences with its computer-generated images, yet the sound was still composed and ?tuned? almost wholly by human hand. In industry, virtual reality systems are increasingly applied to simulation and visualisation but, in general, 'sound? is poorly handled. In this project, we seek to research complex systems that will simulate an object's sound, shape and interaction characteristics in a unified approach. Our ....Sound and Shape Synthesis Using Tensegrity Particle Systems. Pixar's Toy Story amazed audiences with its computer-generated images, yet the sound was still composed and ?tuned? almost wholly by human hand. In industry, virtual reality systems are increasingly applied to simulation and visualisation but, in general, 'sound? is poorly handled. In this project, we seek to research complex systems that will simulate an object's sound, shape and interaction characteristics in a unified approach. Our proposed Tensegrity particle systems generate minimal, stable and robust descriptions of objects in interacting situations. This represents a new and unique approach to the unified representation of multimedia objects with applications in manufacturing and entertainment.Read moreRead less
Development and Validation of Conceptual Models and Transferable Architectures to Support Self-Sustainable Community Portals. There is growing worldwide interest in the study of community portals because of their potential to bridge the 'digital divide' and promote community innovation. However, community portals are still poorly understood and often fail due to lack of adequate sustainability mechanisms. The proposed research extends our knowledge about community portals by developing formal co ....Development and Validation of Conceptual Models and Transferable Architectures to Support Self-Sustainable Community Portals. There is growing worldwide interest in the study of community portals because of their potential to bridge the 'digital divide' and promote community innovation. However, community portals are still poorly understood and often fail due to lack of adequate sustainability mechanisms. The proposed research extends our knowledge about community portals by developing formal conceptual models and transferable architectures for community portals. The project aims to use emerging modelling techniques to model the complex environment of a local community and derive an architecture based on that model. The project outcomes will include a conceptual model and transferable architecture for community portals.Read moreRead less
Formalising and automating the elicitation and reconciliation of requirements from multiple stakeholders. It is well recognised that requirements specifications are often error-prone and that it is much cheaper to detect and fix these errors early in the software development life cycle than later. A major problem with requirements determination is that each and every stakeholder has his/her own representation of the enterprise reality. This project seeks to take these views and use set-theore ....Formalising and automating the elicitation and reconciliation of requirements from multiple stakeholders. It is well recognised that requirements specifications are often error-prone and that it is much cheaper to detect and fix these errors early in the software development life cycle than later. A major problem with requirements determination is that each and every stakeholder has his/her own representation of the enterprise reality. This project seeks to take these views and use set-theoretical techniques from Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to automatically generate and compare the underlying conceptual models. A process model based on FCA has been proposed which we will extend and empirically evaluate in this project. The result will be a more rigorous and yet pragmatic approach to requirements engineering which offers the greatest economic leverage.Read moreRead less
Modelling Virtual Transport Channel for Future Multimedia Heterogeneous Networks. Recent advances in network bandwidth and processing power have led to the emergence of real time multimedia streaming applications and it is expected that such applications will become an even more dominant source of traffic in future computer networks. Quality of service studies for real-time applications in high-speed networks, point to the importance of the transport layer functionality in admission control, mon ....Modelling Virtual Transport Channel for Future Multimedia Heterogeneous Networks. Recent advances in network bandwidth and processing power have led to the emergence of real time multimedia streaming applications and it is expected that such applications will become an even more dominant source of traffic in future computer networks. Quality of service studies for real-time applications in high-speed networks, point to the importance of the transport layer functionality in admission control, monitoring end-to-end delays, and network bandwidth adaptability. The project will study, design, develop and analyse a comprehensive model for the virtual transport layer to satisfy the necessary quality of service requirements for the next generation of multimedia-based applications.Read moreRead less
System Identification of Complex System Models. This project lies within an ARC Research Priority Area. Namely, "Frontier Technologies". It involves the development of new technologies and fundamental theory that take data records from physical or abstract systems and generate mathematical models for use in prediction, control and diagnosis of the underlying system. In light of this, the project also lies within the ARC Research Priority Area of "Smart Information Use",