Efficient causal discovery from observational data. Discovering cause-effect relationships is the ultimate goal for many applications. Randomised control trial is the gold standard for discovering causal relationships. However, conducting such trials is impossible in many cases due to cost and/or ethical concerns. In contrast, a large amount of data has been accumulated in all areas. It is desirable to infer causal relationships from data directly and automatically. This project aims to develop ....Efficient causal discovery from observational data. Discovering cause-effect relationships is the ultimate goal for many applications. Randomised control trial is the gold standard for discovering causal relationships. However, conducting such trials is impossible in many cases due to cost and/or ethical concerns. In contrast, a large amount of data has been accumulated in all areas. It is desirable to infer causal relationships from data directly and automatically. This project aims to develop fast and scalable data mining methods for identifying causal relationships from large and/or high dimensional data sets. The developed methods will mainly be evaluated in real world biological applications. The research outcomes will be useful in many areas for causal reasoning and decision making.Read moreRead less
Fairness aware data mining for discrimination free decision-making. This project aims to develop data mining methods to detect algorithmic discriminations and to build fair decision models. It expects to provide techniques for regulatory organisations to detect discriminations in algorithmic decisions, and for various companies and organisations to build fair decision systems. Expected outcomes are novel and accurate methods for discrimination detection, practical and versatile techniques for fa ....Fairness aware data mining for discrimination free decision-making. This project aims to develop data mining methods to detect algorithmic discriminations and to build fair decision models. It expects to provide techniques for regulatory organisations to detect discriminations in algorithmic decisions, and for various companies and organisations to build fair decision systems. Expected outcomes are novel and accurate methods for discrimination detection, practical and versatile techniques for fair decision model building, and improved understanding of the relationships between privacy preservation and discrimination prevention to enable new techniques to achieve both goals. The developed techniques enable society to tackle ethical challenges in the big data era where many decisions are analytics based. Read moreRead less
Developing novel data mining methods to reveal complex group relationships from heterogeneous data. This project aims to develop novel and effective data mining methods that will enable us to unravel the relationships between multiple, rather than individual, components of complex systems (such as genes, gene regulators and cancer), which is crucial to understanding how such systems work. Potential applications for such methods are extensive.
Online Learning for Large Scale Structured Data in Complex Situations. Online Learning (OL) is the process of predicting answers for a sequence of questions. OL has enjoyed much attention in recent years due to its natural ability of processing large scale non-structured data and adapting to a changing environment. However, OL has three weaknesses: it does not scale for structured data; it often assumes that all of the data are equally important; it often considers that all of the data are compl ....Online Learning for Large Scale Structured Data in Complex Situations. Online Learning (OL) is the process of predicting answers for a sequence of questions. OL has enjoyed much attention in recent years due to its natural ability of processing large scale non-structured data and adapting to a changing environment. However, OL has three weaknesses: it does not scale for structured data; it often assumes that all of the data are equally important; it often considers that all of the data are complete and noise-free. These weaknesses limit its utility, because real data such as those that must be analysed in processing social networks, fraud detection do not satisfy the restrictions. The aim of this project is to develop theoretical and practical advances in OL that overcome the existing weaknesses.Read moreRead less
Probabilistic Graphical Models For Interventional Queries. The project intends to develop methods to suggest how to optimally intervene so that the future state of the system will best suit our interests. The power of probabilistic graphical models to model complex relationships and interactions among a large number of variables facilitates many applications. However, such models only aim to understand the underlying environment. What is ultimately needed in many real-world applications is to su ....Probabilistic Graphical Models For Interventional Queries. The project intends to develop methods to suggest how to optimally intervene so that the future state of the system will best suit our interests. The power of probabilistic graphical models to model complex relationships and interactions among a large number of variables facilitates many applications. However, such models only aim to understand the underlying environment. What is ultimately needed in many real-world applications is to suggest how we ought to intervene or act, so as to alter the environment to best suit our interests. The proposed project aims to achieve this using probabilistic graphical models on massive real-world data sets, thus facilitating a variety of applications from health care to commerce and the environment.Read moreRead less
Efficient data mining methods for evidence-based decision making. This project aims to develop efficient data mining methods for causal predictions. Evidence-based decision making (EBD), such as evidence-based medicine and policy, is always preferable. To support EBD, causal predictions forecast how outcomes change when conditions are manipulated. Progress has been made in theoretical research on causal inference based on observational data, but few methods can automatically mine causal signals ....Efficient data mining methods for evidence-based decision making. This project aims to develop efficient data mining methods for causal predictions. Evidence-based decision making (EBD), such as evidence-based medicine and policy, is always preferable. To support EBD, causal predictions forecast how outcomes change when conditions are manipulated. Progress has been made in theoretical research on causal inference based on observational data, but few methods can automatically mine causal signals from the data and methods for efficient causal predictions based on data are even fewer. This project will apply its methods to biomedical problems. The outcomes could support smart and data-driven evidence based decision making in many areas, such as therapeutics and government policy making.Read moreRead less
Statistical Methods of Model Fitting and Segmentation in Computer Vision. Electronic sensors such as cameras and lasers can provide a rich source of information about the position, shape, and motion of objects around us. However, to extract this information in a reliable, automatic, and accurate way requires a sophisticated statistical theory of the process. Example applications include: video surveillance (better automatic detection of moving people and vehicles and of characterising what those ....Statistical Methods of Model Fitting and Segmentation in Computer Vision. Electronic sensors such as cameras and lasers can provide a rich source of information about the position, shape, and motion of objects around us. However, to extract this information in a reliable, automatic, and accurate way requires a sophisticated statistical theory of the process. Example applications include: video surveillance (better automatic detection of moving people and vehicles and of characterising what those people and vehicles are doing), industrial prototyping and inspection (measuring the size and shape of objects), urban planning (laser scanning streetscapes to create computer models of cities), entertainment industry (movie special effects and games), etc. Read moreRead less
Learning human activities through low cost, unobtrusive RFID technology. A rapidly growing aged population presents many challenges to Australia's health and aged care services. The outcomes of this project will help aging Australians live in their own homes longer, with greater independence and safety by providing an automated, unobtrusive means for health professionals to monitor activity and intervene as required.
Switching Dynamics Approach for Distributed Global Optimisation . This project aims to create a breakthrough switching dynamics approach and new technology to speed up finding optimal solutions. It will develop a distributed switching dynamics based optimisation scheme for global optimisation problems in industrial big-data environments where timely decision making is required. It will result in a practical technology for industry optimisation problems such as economic energy dispatch in smart g ....Switching Dynamics Approach for Distributed Global Optimisation . This project aims to create a breakthrough switching dynamics approach and new technology to speed up finding optimal solutions. It will develop a distributed switching dynamics based optimisation scheme for global optimisation problems in industrial big-data environments where timely decision making is required. It will result in a practical technology for industry optimisation problems such as economic energy dispatch in smart grids and optimal charging and discharging tasks in a large network of electric vehicles, helping Australian power industry improve efficiency and security, as well as training the next generation scientists and engineers for Australia in this emerging field.Read moreRead less
Automated analysis of multi-modal medical data using deep belief networks. This project will develop an improved breast cancer computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system that incorporates mammography, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. This system will be based on recently developed deep learning techniques, which have the capacity to process multi-modal data in a unified and optimal manner. The advantage of this technique is that it is able to automatically learn both the relevant features t ....Automated analysis of multi-modal medical data using deep belief networks. This project will develop an improved breast cancer computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system that incorporates mammography, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. This system will be based on recently developed deep learning techniques, which have the capacity to process multi-modal data in a unified and optimal manner. The advantage of this technique is that it is able to automatically learn both the relevant features to analyse in each modality and the hidden relationships between them. The use of deep belief networks has produced promising results in several fields, such as speech recognition, and so this project believes that our approach has the potential to improve both the sensitivity and specificity of breast cancer detection.Read moreRead less