ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES)

We are very pleased to announce that applications are now open for the ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES) third Information Resilience PhD School! https://lnkd.in/gMyMH9kv    The PhD School is a 2.5 day, in-person event with the main program running from Tuesday 29th to Thursday 31st October 2024, held at The University of Queensland.    The event is targeted at current or prospective PhD students interested in exploring and understanding cutting-edge data science practices, pathways toward academic or industry careers, and prospects of next-generation research in the field. It will include:   Knowledge exchange and sharing, featuring presentations delivered by world-leading researchers including Prof Felix Naumann, Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) Germany, and Prof Lina Yao, CSIRO Data61 & UNSW. Social networking facilitated by interactive 3MT presentation and poster sessions, banquet, roundtable discussions, etc. Mentorship from both academic and industry, with the possibility of establishing long-term collaborations.   We have 50 places available with applications due on the 16th September.  You can find the online application form on the event webpage. https://lnkd.in/gMyMH9kv Applications will incur a selection process. There is no registration fee for the PhD School, and for the top 25 applicants based outside Brisbane, we can offer up to $1,000 grant for travel and accommodation purposes. We look forward to seeing you there!

It is amazing to see that work redesign approaches we proposed in our AI thought leadership report have been adopted by NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure for their Invoice Processing. The research takes a risk perspective to classify tasks and proposes four work redesign approaches based on risk levels and domain expertise/specialisation required. The approaches proposed are backed by case studies from the public sector. For the full report refer to: https://lnkd.in/gzh_mk2N The research is jointly published by UQ and the SAP Institute for Digital Government. Kudos to my collaborators! Reihaneh Bidar Tapani Rinta-Kahila Katie Williams PhD Marta Indulska Ian Ryan Ryan van Leent UQ Business School SAP SAP Australian User Group (SAUG) ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES) #AI #UQ #SAP #FutureofWork #ManagingAIRisks

👏 Congratulations to CIRES Chief Investigator Hassan Khosravi and the RiPPLE team on their nomination for this year's #QLDAIAwards. Learn more about this project via Hassan's video below 👇

👏 👏 Congratulations to our CIRES Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Junliang Yu from the UQ School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who has been awarded an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship! 📢 This week the ARC announced $92.9 million in funding for 200 early-career researchers under the the scheme. “The ARC Discovery Program has an impressive track record in generating new knowledge that addresses a significant problem or gap in knowledge, and it offers exciting opportunities for Australia’s promising early career researchers to develop in supportive environments,” ARC Acting Chief Executive Officer, Dr Richard Johnson said.  “As well as boosting Australia’s research and innovation capacity, DECRA projects result in new technologies and ideas, leading to new jobs, economic growth, and ultimately improved quality of life for Australians.” 💡 Training modern recommender systems often demands substantial #data and computational resource, leading to considerable financial costs and a notable spike in energy consumption. Junliang’s project “Distilling Data for Cost-Efficient Recommender Systems”, aims to reduce the computational resources required for recommender systems by condensing large datasets into smaller, highly informative ones. By focusing on data distillation, the project seeks to maintain model performance while cutting costs and improving #sustainability, making advanced AI tools more accessible to a wider range of users.   “I am excited to embark on this three-year journey to advance our understanding of data-centric AI and efficient and sustainable recommender systems. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all those who have contributed to the work that led to this fellowship, especially CIRES Director Prof. Shazia Sadiq, and Chief Investigators Prof. Yin Hongzhi, and Dr. Rocky Tong Chen. I am also grateful for all the support from the Centre.” Congratulations Junliang!! 👏 👏 See the full media release here: https://lnkd.in/gJpemsKx #DECRA #fellowship #recommender systems #ai #sustainability

💡 CIRES Chief Investigator Dr Ida Asadi Someh from the UQ Business School was interviewed by SBS on how big names in tech and social media should be questioned on the the #risks and #benefits surrounding #AI technology in Australia, as they front a senate inquiry. Listen via the link below 👇

CIRES PhD researcher Daisy Xu is at the Academy of Management AOM CTO Division annual meeting in Chicago to present the paper "Time to Reassess Data Value: The Many Faces of Data in Organizations" https://lnkd.in/gjuwTiUN co-authored with Professor Marta Indulska, Dr Ida Asadi Someh & Professor Graeme Shanks from the UQ Business School. The theme of #AOM2024 is Innovating for the Future, and examines the interplay of #innovation, #policy, and #purpose as a lens for rethinking conventional ways of leading, managing, and organising. 👏 👏 Congratulations on your presentation Daisy!

CIRES Centre Director Professor Shazia Sadiq FTSE recently joined CEO of Business Chamber Queensland Heidi Cooper, Brett Lightfoot Queensland State Director of Microsoft, and Jamie Wilson Founder & Executive Chairman of Cryptoloc Data Security for a panel discussion on building business success from AI and digital innovation. As Director of both CIRES, and the UQ AI Collaboratory https://ai.uq.edu.au/ Shazia spoke to the importance of acting now, to fully capitalise on the opportunities for Queensland #businesses to gain significant competitive advantages from AI and advanced digital transformation. “We are not in an AI moment but at the start of an AI decade, what Economics Professor Joshua Gans terms “the between times for AI” where the technology’s capability and the realisation of its promise is reflected in widespread adoption. The question is how do we navigate these “between times” for both Queensland, and Australia? We need to develop strong #partnerships between cross-disciplinary researchers, industry, and government to ensure we make collective progress towards an equitable and exciting future for the business community with AI,” Shazia said. Our national approach has been a narrative dominated by words such as adoption and use, with very little talk about creating and building, and even more importantly leading. It is imperative that Australia builds capability and leans into the opportunities AI presents for businesses. “Australia cannot afford to piggy-back off and rely on AI technologies that have been built overseas. We need to invest in homegrown talent and solutions, or our knowledge base will simply not gain the sophistication that comes with active experimentation,” said Shazia. “Recent advancements in AI have brought forth spectacular opportunities as well as potential risks. There is very little risk appetite and this is creeping into business sentiment and building up anxiety in the business community. System-level innovation will take time to emerge but to quote Sal Khan, of the Khan Academy, the biggest risk we have right now, is doing nothing.” Shazia is leading a major initiative at The University of Queensland to set up a national centre of excellence for Enterprise AI, to bring Australian organisations to the forefront of AI. It is a collaboration with researchers from Australian and international universities, and partners from industry and government. Find out more: https://lnkd.in/grv3uwBi

What a week! On Wednesday the Centre hosted our third Information Resilience Symposium in Brisbane welcoming #experts from #industry, #government, and #academia, data professionals, executives, managers, AI researchers, & policymakers, to explore the important topic of learning in the age of AI.  Thank you to our symposium Chair CIRES Chief Investigator & Theme Leader Associate Professor Hassan Khosravi for his leadership & coordination of the symposium program. “The symposium featured state-of-the-art insights through a dynamic panel discussion and two thought-provoking keynotes delivered by leading scholars and experts in the field. It also included an engaging Information Resilience Escape Room, which added a layer of fun, positive engagement, and mild competition, making the experience both educational and entertaining.” “Although AI and Education have an intertwined history over at least four decades, recent advancements in AI have brought forth spectacular opportunities as well as potential risks. Conversations that took place at the symposium point to the need for deep partnerships across cross-disciplinary researchers, industry and government to ensure we make collective progress towards an equitable and exciting future in the education of, for and with AI” said CIRES Centre Director Professor Shazia Sadiq. A huge shout out to all our participants for your excellent energy, and contributions during the event, and to all our speakers for your insightful presentations. Highlights below: 💡 Virtual keynote “Using Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Human Intelligence” from Dr Kristen Eignor DiCerbo, Chief Learning Officer at Khan Academy. 💡 Keynote from Associate Professor Paul Denny from The University of Auckland, on “Adapting Computing Education for the Age of AI.” 💡 Panel discussion on Future-Proofing Careers: Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI moderated by Professor Professor Kelly Matthews, and panel members Dr Aneesha Bakharia, Professor Jason Tangen, and Professor Xiaofang Zhou. 💡 An interactive session with virtual escape rooms designed and created by Hassan Khosravi. The objective: to learn more about the fundamentals of information resilience through a fun, (mildly) competitive, and interactive activity, based on the Centre’s research themes and manifesto principles. Congratulations to all participants – each table successfully completed all puzzles in the escape rooms, mastering the principles in the information resilience manifesto! https://lnkd.in/gsK5NAbz 🎂 And of course every great event ends with cake! The Centre celebrated its third birthday milestone. Thank you to all our CIRES researchers, colleagues, partners, and collaborators, it’s been a fantastic three years & we look forward to our continuing partnership. Happy CIRESday! Find out more about the symposium: https://lnkd.in/ghWJ2vmV Stay tuned for our highlights video!

👏 👏 Congratulations to our CIRES Chief Investigator & Theme Leader and UQ School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Associate Professor Gianluca Demartini who has been awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship!   📢 The ARC announced $106.7 million in funding this week for 100 new projects under the ARC’s 2024 Future Fellowships scheme.    “The ARC Future Fellowships scheme plays a significant role in facilitating research excellence in areas of national and international interest,” ARC Acting Chief Executive Officer, Dr Richard Johnson said.      “The breadth of topics that will be investigated in this round of the Future Fellowships scheme is a reflection of the ARC’s commitment to supporting outstanding mid-career researchers to undertake high quality research for the benefit of all Australians.   Gianluca’s project "A Principled Approach to Data Bias Management in Data Pipelines" aims to tackle the fundamental problems of #bias in #data and #AI, and proposes the new concept of bias management.   Being trained with massive amounts of human generated content, AI may reflect and reinforce human bias and #stereotypes and may be used for malicious purposes. Urgent action is needed to support the average person in better understanding if the output of AI systems can be trusted or not.   The aim is to empower end-users to make informed data-driven decisions and benefit Australia by accelerating #investment in responsible AI and fostering greater social acceptance in AI. "It is exciting to have the opportunity to work on this important research topic for the next four years. I would like to thank all the people involved in the work that resulted in this fellowship." Congratulations Gianluca! #researchersarerockstars 👏 👏 See the full media release here: https://lnkd.in/ges4j7cS

💡 New #publication from our Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Javad Pool with CIRES Chief Investigator Professor Andrew Burton-Jones and Associate Professor Saeed Akhlaghpour on the misuse of #health records and the significant challenge it presents for effective and #responsible use of #digitalhealth. Overview and link to article below 👇