Research areas
Information Technology research centres/groups/laboratories

General inquiries should be directed to:

University Graduate School
telephone (02) 9514 1336

or (within the Faculty)

Research Officer
telephone (02) 9514 4460

Applicants for research degrees should discuss their proposed research with either the Program Leader for Postgraduate Research Degrees or their chosen supervisor before submitting applications. The Faculty's Research Officer can assist applicants in contacting members of staff and in completing the application form.

Research areas

Areas of particular interest for work towards research degrees in the Faculty of Information Technology include:

• cognitive aspects of software design
• combinatorial optimisation
• computation and creative media
• computer graphics and animation
• computer vision and image processing
• computer supported collaborative work
• data mining
• data visualisation
• distributed computing
• distributed databases
• e-commerce
• enterprise systems design and development
• high performance computing
• intelligent interfaces
• information modelling and management
• knowledge-based systems
• multi-agent systems
• networking
• neural networks and machine learning
• object technology
• component-based software engineering
• mobile agents
• ontologies
• xlml-based systems
• programming language design and semantics
• project management
• requirements engineering
• search and visualisation methodologies for the Internet
• software quality
• social and personal impact of Internet applications
• systems development methodologies
• systems integration
• usability of mobile and web-based applications
• user–developer relationships
• virtual worlds and communities
• web services and semantic web.

A major unifying theme is collaborative and extended enterprises which takes in several of the above research areas.

Information Technology research centres/groups/laboratories

Within the Faculty, a wide range of information technology research is supported by a variety of research centres/groups/laboratories. Graduate research students, academics, visiting researchers and research assistants undertake collaborative research within these laboratories. The quality and relevance of research in the laboratories is enhanced by well-established links, both with industry and with overseas research institutions.

Research groups with formal external links are:

• CRC for Enterprise Distributed Systems Technology – the primary focus is on management security and performance for controlled and efficient access to the resources of distributed systems such as databases, collaboration software and distributed software tools (contact: Professor John Hughes).
• Capital Markets CRC – aims to be the technology provider of choice to global securities businesses/markets. It supports research programs in corporate governance, data mining, interoperability, language technology, market design and visualisation (contact: Professor Chengqi Zhang).
• Centre for Object Technology Applications and Research (COTAR) – has been instrumental in the development of object-oriented and component-based methodologies for software development. It has developed the third generation OO/CBD method called OPEN (Object-oriented Process, Environment and Notation) (contact: Professor Brian Henderson-Sellers).
• Cooperative Systems – focuses on the implementation and data modelling of distributed databases, client-server computing, cooperative workgroup systems, the development of methods for integrating databases with expert systems, the modelling of constraints, the development of design tools and the integration of groupware with databases (contact: Professor Igor Hawryszkiewycz).

In addition, the Faculty has research groups/laboratories in the following areas:

• Creativity and Cognitive Studios
  (contact: Professor Ernest Edmonds)
• e-Markets
  (contact: Professor John Debenham)
• Internet
  (contact: Dr Robert Steele)
• Networking
  (contact: Associate Professor Doan Hoang)
• Programming Language Design (contact: Associate Professor Barry Jay)
• Requirements Engineering
  (contact: Dr Didar Zowghi)
• Interaction Design
  (contact: Associate Professor Sue Fowell)
• VisLab
  (contact: Dr David Green).