Postgraduate research course information

General inquiries should be directed to:

or (within the Faculty)

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 strengths and laboratories

The Faculty has been active in research and has established strong links with industry, as well as significantly contributing to international research. It has developed a number of research strengths through research laboratories that bring together Faculty staff, experts, students and external organisations to develop new and innovative ideas and apply them in practice. The quality and relevance of research in the laboratories is enhanced by well-established links, both with industry and with overseas research institutions. Graduate research students, academics visiting researchers and research assistants undertake collaborative research within these laboratories. Within the Faculty, a wide range of information technology research is supported by a variety of research centres/groups/laboratories. The Faculty's research strengths, activities and associated laboratories are:

Distributing Knowledge and Intelligence

This research develops ways to provide higher value and extracts knowledge from both business practice and corporate data.

• collaborative learning and knowledge construction
• computer-supported collaborative work
• combinatorial optimisation
• business process modelling
• data mining
• distributed databases and computing
• e-markets
• knowledge-based systems
• multi-agent systems
• negotiation processes in e-business
• ontologies to create semantic webs
• extended enterprises.

Laboratories and contacts

Networking and Mobility

Research in Networking and Mobility develops service architecture, especially the provision of supporting mechanisms that emphasise intelligent assistance for the creation of on-demand services, and integration with mobile devices.

• high-performance computing
• network architecture
• mHealth
• mobile agents
• QoS and multimedia applications
• QoS control mechanisms
• parallel and grid computing
• P2P and overlay networks security
• web services and semantic web.

Laboratories and contacts

Software Engineering

This research involves developing techniques and processes, and tailoring methodologies to realise best practices and improve productivity of software development, taking organisational factors into account.

• enterprise systems design and development
• component-based software engineering
• information modelling and management
• programming language design and semantics
• project management
• software agent technology
• software process improvement
• method engineering
• software quality methodologies for commercial software development
• modelling (particularly with UML and MDA)
• systems development methodologies
• object technology systems integration
• systems/software architecture.

Laboratories and contacts

Technologies for Cognitive and Social Science

This research involves determining ways to use technology within organisational and social settings to improve communication and foster practices that employ creativity and innovation.

• cognitive aspects of software design
• computation and creative media
• computer–human systems
• creative practice in digital arts and design
• human work practice
• interaction design
• intelligent interfaces
• social and personal impact of Internet applications
• ubiquitous computing
• usability of mobile and web-based applications
• user–developer relationships
• virtual worlds and communities.

Laboratories and contacts

Visual Information Processing

The research into Visual Information Processing captures visual images through computer vision or other inputs, and processes these images to recognise and display patterns, or present data visually as graphs. It also generates computer graphics and develops games.

• computer vision and image processing
• information visualisation
• computer graphics and animation
• search and visualisation methodologies for the Internet
• visual pattern recognition.

Laboratories and contacts

Formal external research links

The Faculty research groups have a number of formal links to external organisations. These include:

• 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 – hughes@it.uts.edu.au).
• 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).
• CRC for Interaction Design – the primary focus is on innovative and creative interaction design for computer systems (contact: Professor Ernest Edmonds – ernest@it.uts.edu.au).
• 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 – brian@it.uts.edu.au).
• Institute for Information and Communication Technologies – is dedicated to research into advanced aspects of the networked world and undertakes such research in collaboration with industrial partners, and the key participating faculties, Engineering and Information Technology. The Institute initially supports work in the following areas: Communications, Networks and Architecture and the Smart e-Business Laboratory (contact: Professor John Hughes – hughes@it.uts.edu.au).
• Visual Image Processing – a key University strength that encompasses all those different kinds of processing dealing with information of a visual nature, such as computer vision, image analysis, visual pattern recognition, visualisation and computer graphics. The focus on this research activity is on algorithms and computational platforms (contact: Associate Professor Massimo Piccardi – massimo@it.uts.edu.au).
• ARC Research Network in Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII) – a network of 12 universities focusing on research in emerging advanced technologies and practices for large-scale enterprises, government agencies and community groups (contact: Professor Igor Hawryszkiewycz – igorh@it.uts.edu.au).