I graduated with a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Essex in 1989, worked at the University of Sydney until 1998, then spent three years at British Telecom Labs in the UK and one year at the University of Melbourne before joining UNSW in 2002. I am currently an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. My research ranges from theory...view more
I graduated with a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Essex in 1989, worked at the University of Sydney until 1998, then spent three years at British Telecom Labs in the UK and one year at the University of Melbourne before joining UNSW in 2002. I am currently an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. My research ranges from theory (intelligent agents, data mining, agent-based modelling), to practice (dialogue management, personal assistants, recommender systems, computational social science).
My Grants
- Australian Research Council Discovery Project, 2018–20 (F. Johns, W. Wobcke and D. Nelken): Data Science in Humanitarianism: Confronting Novel Law & Policy Challenges, $524,643.
- Data to Decisions Cooperative Research Centre, 2016–19 (with M. Bain and S. Schmeidl): Knowledge Mining, $939,319.
- Data to Decisions Cooperative Research Centre, 2015 (with M.Bain): Text Analytics, $146,055.
- Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre, 2014 (with M. Bain): Data Markets, $125,957.
- Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre, 2008–14 (with M. Bain, A. Mahidadia and P. Compton): Personalisation, $1,452,724.
- Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre, 2007–08: Interim Personalisation Project, $45,829.
- Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre, 2007: Evaluation of E-Mail Management Assistant, $14,950.
- Australian Research Council Linkage Project, 2007–09 (E. Coiera, J. Westbrook, W. Wobcke and F. Magrabi): Agent-Based Methods for Communication System Design in Complex Organisations, $554,194.
- Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre, 2006: Dialogue Construction with Ripple Down Rules, $21,357.
- Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre, 2005–07 (with P. Compton): Adaptive Mobile Personal Assistants, $903,895.
- Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre, 2004–05: Document Categorization with Ripple Down Rules, $15,000.
- Australian Research Council Discovery Project, 2003–05: Reasoning about Rational Agents from a Programming Languages Perspective, $172,473.
- Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre, 2003–04: An Agent Architecture for the Coordination of Personal Assistants, $344,000.
My Qualifications
- Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Essex, 1989: A Logical Approach to Schema-Based Inference.
- M.Sc. Computer Science, University of Queensland, 1985: Logic Programming and Language Specification.
- B.Sc. (Hons) Mathematics/Computer Science, University of Queensland, 1984.
My Awards
- UNSW Arc Postgraduate Research Supervisor Award, 2017, 2018
- AAAI Deployed AI Application Award, Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2014 (A. Krzywicki et al.)
- Best application paper runner up, 17th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 2013 (X. Cai et al.)
My Research Activities
Since joining UNSW in 2002, I have collaborated extensively with industry, serving for over 10 years as Programme Manager and Project Leader in three CRCs (Smart Internet Technology CRC, Smart Services CRC and Data to Decisions CRC). A highlight of Smart Internet Technology CRC was the development of a voice controlled mobile application for interaction with e-mail and calendar (a precursor to Apple's Siri). A major achievement through Smart Services CRC was the deployment of a people-to-people recommender system for suggesting suitable matches in online dating, fielded on one of Australia's largest online dating sites. In Data to Decisions CRC, I led a multi-disciplinary team of data scientists and social scientists, researching efficient methods for extracting information from high velocity streams of rich text data (such as social media and news feeds), and developing new methods for opinion mining and sentiment analysis for political tweets and Facebook posts.
I am currently working on the application of data science to digital humanitarianism in conjunction with UN Global Pulse (Pulse Lab Jakarta) and BPS (Statistics Indonesia), in a collaborative project with UNSW Law.
My Research Supervision
Supervision keywords
Areas of supervision
Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Social Science, Opinion Mining
Currently supervising
Siti Mariyah, Reliable Measurement of National Statistics using Big Data.
Stefano Mezza, Dialogue-Act Grounded Argumentative Dialogue Systems.
My Teaching
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