Researcher

Dr Aya Hussein

My Expertise

Human-Swarm Interaction

Curriculum Learning

Swarm Robotics

Human Factors

Keywords

Human-Swarm Interaction

reinforcement learning

swarm robotics

machine learning

human factors

Fields of Research (FoR)

Artificial Life

Biography

I am a research associate at the School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia. My current research focuses on combining human and machine intelligence by studying interaction schemes that allow humans to teach machines and to effectively team up with them in the field. I received my PhD in Computer Science from UNSW- Canberra in 2020. During my PhD, I investigated different aspects that...view more

I am a research associate at the School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia. My current research focuses on combining human and machine intelligence by studying interaction schemes that allow humans to teach machines and to effectively team up with them in the field. I received my PhD in Computer Science from UNSW- Canberra in 2020. During my PhD, I investigated different aspects that facilitates the realisation of high-performance teams that combine human and machine intelligence. In particular, I focused on both Human Factors and Swarm Robotics, where I studied performance, trust, and transparency in Human-Swarm Teaming. I got my Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Engineering from Cairo University in 2011 and 2015. My Master research was about Arabic text diacritisation where I used Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enable the automatic restoration of the diacritics which is an essential pre-processing task for many Arabic NLP applications.

My Grants

Chief Investigator, RG213520 Grant from Defence Innovation Network in Continual Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous shepherding ($20,000), 2021

My Qualifications

PhD in Computer Science from UNSW- Canberra in 2020
MSc in Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, 2015
BSc in Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, 2011

My Awards

Awards:

UNSW Arc Postgraduate Council Research Student Award 2020: for my contribution to both research and school life
Winner of the IEEE CIS Webinar Competition on "Emerging Topics and Applications of Computational Intelligence" 2019

Scholarships:

UNSW Tuition Fees Scholarship 2017-2020
Registration Grant for IEEE WCCI 2020
Student Travel Grant of the HFES Human Performance Modelling Technical Group 2019
Scholarship for attending "Research to Impact" program, Canberra Innovation Network 2019
Scholarship for attending Data61 & DST Cyber Summer School, Melbourne 2018

My Research Activities

Review Activities:

IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems
IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
Autonomous Robots
Computers in Human Behavior
Mathematics and Computers in Simulation
Environmental Modelling & Software
Others; my full list of verified reviews can be found on my Publons profile.

My Engagement

Activities:

Student representative in the Research Leadership Group (RLG) & School Board, School of Engineering and IT, UNSW-Canberra, 2020
Volunteer in IEEE SSCI, Canberra, Australia, 2020
Volunteer in Canberra Artificial Intelligence Summer School (CAISS2020), Virtual event, 2020
Session co-chair in the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual meeting, Seattle, USA, 2019
Volunteer in IEEE CIS YoWIENet Student Workshop- UNSW-Canberra, Australia, 2018
Volunteer in IEEE International Computer Engineering Conference (ICENCO), Cairo, Egypt, 2012-2016