A huge congratulations to our CIRES PhD Researcher, Daisy Xu, who is the 2025 DeSanctis Award Winner presented by the Communication, Digital Technology, and Organization (CTO) division of the Academy of Management. This award recognizes outstanding scholarship in the area of communication and digital technology, specifically for a solo-authored conference paper based on a recent dissertation.
On 24th July, CIRES Centre Director, Professor Shazia Sadiq and the UQ Centre for Enterprise AI hosted the Kingston AI Group meeting at the The University of Queensland’s St Lucia campus.
The meeting allowed members to come together and strategise their advocacy for Australian AI sovereign capability, discuss emerging AI fields, and identify the clearest, most effective ways to drive the group’s engagement and advocacy with the federal government, including the Prime Minister.
Mike Bareja, Director of Digital Technologies, AI, Cyber and Future Industries at the Business Council of Australia (BCA) was in attendance, leading an informative discussion on BCA’s take on the role of AI in Australia’s corporate landscape. He also provided an overview of “Accelerating Australia’s AI Agenda,” a BCA report released in June that has been enthusiastically endorsed by the Kingston AI Group.
Much of the meeting was spent discussing AI’s impact on the economy as well as ways to increase investment in AI R&D in Australia. Members also discussed the importance of protecting Australian culture and values in AI, and increasing awareness of Australia’s burgeoning AI industry while raising the skills and capabilities of those working within it.
To read more, please visit ➡️ https://lnkd.in/ggpAkM-Z
Photo caption: Participants and visitors to the 24 July Kingston AI Group meeting in Brisbane, (L-R) Dr Nisha Schwarz, PhD, Dr Rocky Chen, Prof Shazia Sadiq, Dr Joel Mackenzie, Dr Kathy Nicholson, Prof Shane Culpepper, Dr Sue Keay, Dr Paul Dalby PhD GIA (Affiliated), Prof Michael Milford, Prof Simon Lucey, BCA’s Mike Bareja, Prof Anton van den Hengel, Prof Benjamin Rubinstein, Prof Stephen Gould, Prof Ian Reid, Prof Ajmal Mian, and Prof Marta Indulska at the Kingston AI Group meeting 24 July in Brisbane.
Not pictured but in attendance: Prof Joanna Batstone, PhD, Prof Dana Kulic, and Prof Toby Walsh FAA FTSE FRSN
Cross-disciplinary research fosters innovation by integrating diverse perspectives, leading to more holistic and impactful solutions. Complex global problems rarely fit neatly within disciplinary boundaries, and collaboration across fields is essential to address challenges that no single discipline can solve alone. As they say “Teamwork Makes The Dream Work”!
On 15 July, CIRES hosted a Q&A discussion at The University of Queensland as part of our Lunch & Learn series with guest speakers Professor Xue Li, Dr Aneesha Bakharia, and Dr Avijit Sengupta. These UQ experts span Computer Science, AI, and Business Information Systems, and key application areas of Education, Health, and Technology. They shared insights into:
They also discussed how different aspects of cross-disciplinary research, including collaboration, ethics, and decision-making, could be transformed with GenerativeAI proliferation.
“It was inspiring to hear from researchers across disciplines sharing not only their successes but also the real challenges of collaboration. Cross-disciplinary research pushes us to rethink assumptions and explore unexpected connections.” – Dr Zixin Wang, CIRES Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
“I learned that successful cross-disciplinary research depends on firstly understanding the specific and most important problems and needs of other domains, to effectively apply one’s expertise. For junior researchers, this involves strategically focusing on a publishable core contribution, ensuring clear communication, and prioritising critical aspects, like data quality, and incorporating a human in the loop, for responsible system deployment.” – Dr Javad Pool, CIRES Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
“Attending the session provided me with insights into the complexity of cross-disciplinary research and valuable lessons from experienced researchers. My main takeaways are ensuring we solve problems faced by domain experts and be ready to learn different things!” – Nova Sepadyati, UQ PhD Researcher
Huge thanks to our speakers for sharing their valuable experience with the group and to our CIRES Postdoc Team – Stanislav Pozdniakov, Javad Pool, Zixin Wang, and Xuwei (Ackesnal) Xu – for organising such a thought-provoking session!
Congratulations to CIRES PhD Researcher Pa Pa Khin & Chief Investigator A.Prof. Paul Scifleet from Swinburne University of Technology on their conference paper acceptance! Pa Pa will be travelling to Canada next month to present at AMCIS 2025 organised by the Association for Information Systems. Thanks to our industry partner Astral for supporting this work. Full details from Pa Pa below.
“I am happy to share that our paper, “From Chaos to Clarity: Identifying and Managing Personally Identifiable Information in Systems of Engagement”, has been accepted at the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) 2025.
Together with A. Prof Paul Scifleet, we explore the significant challenges organisations face in identifying and managing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) within Systems of Engagement, as described in the current industry discourse. Based on our findings, we develop a locus for control for sensitive and vital information management with five key elements in place (i) the identification and location of information assets, (ii) their traceability, (iii) protection and security, (iv) compliance and governance, (v) use and value creation.”
Read the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/gx3RYjQe
Two excellent publications & research insights from the CIRES team at The University of Queensland including PhD researcher Hechuan Wen, CIs Dr. Rocky Chen, Prof. Hongzhi Yin, and Centre Director Prof. Shazia Sadiq, and colleagues. Thank you to our partners Dr. Li Kheng Chai and Health and Wellbeing Queensland for supporting this work.
Delighted to share our two accepted works in FY2024 – 2025: “Progressive Generalization Risk Reduction for Data-Efficient Causal Effect Estimation” & “Enhancing Treatment Effect Estimation via Active Learning: A Counterfactual Covering Perspective” by KDD’25 & ICML’25, respectively.
Together with my supervisors and collaborators: Dr. Rocky Chen, Dr. Li Kheng Chai, Dr. Guanhua Ye, A/Prof. Mingming Gong, Prof. Yin Hongzhi, and Prof. Shazia Sadiq, we study the theoretical foundations for the budgeted causal effect estimation and propose simple yet effective data acquisition scheme to “valuate” the unlabelled data and prioritize the budget spending on labelling the most informative data. Huge Thanks to the ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES), Health and Wellbeing Queensland, and The University of Queensland for supporting this work!
Read the papers: https://lnkd.in/gH4HJwg7 and https://lnkd.in/gp_7xtGj.
What we did
We identify optimizable quantities by rigorous theoretical analysis, which serves as the guidelines to “valuate” the unlabelled data points and promote the efficiency of budget spending. That means, given the vast unlabeled data pool, the labelling budget can be spent most effectively for the proposed target when building up the dataset for causal effect estimation.
Key Insights
► The most valuable unlabelled pair (control and treated) is acquired with the highest estimation variance and smallest distance in between.
► The overall estimation risk (incalculable directly) can be well bounded (indirectly) by the computable terms, i.e., factual covering and counterfactual covering radii, to give theoretical groundings for unlabelled data valuation/selection.
Forward
The computational cost when operating the proposed algorithm on very large unlabelled pool set is considerable, the future work on improving the algorithm’s scalability is worth exploring.
What opportunities or risks do you see in building up the dataset for model training from scratch?
Publication and research insights from the CIRES team at Swinburne University of Technology. Great work by PhD researcher Lufan Zhang and Chief Investigator Assoc. Prof Paul Scifleet. Thank you to our industry partner Astral for supporting this work.
AI Explainability & Transparency in Enterprise Information Management (EIM)
Happy to share our paper “Charting the Transformation of Enterprise Information Management: AI Explainability and Transparency in EIM Practice” presented at the 16th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems.
Together with Paul Scifleet, we examine how AI (including Gen-AI) is reshaping the way enterprises manage critical information—and how to make these transformations more explainable and trustworthy for EIM practitioners.
Special thanks to ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES), Swinburne University of Technology, and our industry partner Astral for supporting this work.
Read the full paper here: https://shorturl.at/xHSoO
Our Approach:
We conducted an environmental scan of 20 leading EIM vendor platforms, analysing their publicly available content to explore how AI is being integrated into EIM platforms. We examined AI’s role across five areas:
▶️ AI Development
▶️ AI Techniques
▶️ AI-integrated EIM Capabilities
▶️ AI Applications
▶️ AI Impacts on EIM Practice
Key Findings
AI Development:
Only 12 of 20 platforms disclose details about how AI is developed—leaving 40% with minimal transparency. Fewer than half provide adequate information on model training data, explainability features, or human-AI interaction.
AI Techniques:
Dense AI techniques details for applying specific AI techniques across the EIM Lifecycle. Use of only generic terms such as “AI” and “ML” terms providing no useful information to determine AI tools for specific IM needs.
AI Applications & AI-integrated EIM Capabilities:
Many vendors highlight lower-level AI applications but do not fully connect these to higher-level EIM capabilities.
AI Impacts:
While benefits are frequently promoted, risks, limitations, and proven real-world outcomes are rarely addressed—raising concerns for transparency and trust.
Overall, those findings suggest a critical need for contextualised AI Transparency in EIM landscape, including both ✅ information transparency (disclosing information relevant to EIM practitioners) and ✅ transparency-in-use (intuitive user interface and human in the loop) to enable a better explainability: for understanding, trust and adoption of AI applications for EIM practitioners, and note the interdependency in these concepts.
Future Directions
⭐ Engage with IM practitioners to validate and refine the requirements for AI transparency within the EIM context.
⭐ Develop Explainable AI approaches that supports human agency in real-world EIM practices.
How can we make AI more explainable to EIM practitioners to empower their daily IM practices?
New publication from the CIRES team at The University of Queensland. Congratulations to PhD researcher Mehrnoush Mohammadi, Chief Investigators Assoc. Prof. Hassan Khosravi, Prof. Wojtek Tomaszewski, Centre Director Prof. Shazia Sadiq, and colleagues & co-authors Elham Tajik and Roberto Martinez-Maldonado. Full details & insights below.
“Delighted to share our newly published work, “Artificial Intelligence in Multimodal Learning Analytics: A Systematic Review,” in Computers & Education: Artificial Intelligence. We chart the evolving intersection of AI and Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA), providing the first comprehensive systematic review in this space. Huge Thanks to the ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES) for supporting this work!
What We Did: We reviewed 686 records (2019–2024), synthesising 43 peer-reviewed studies to develop a structured framework for integrating AI in the MMLA pipeline—from data collection and pre-processing to modelling and feedback.
Key Insights:
► AI is transforming MMLA’s modelling and analysis layers, but links to pedagogy and impact on learning remain underdeveloped.
► Research is concentrated in higher education and lab settings, with limited focus on early learning, diverse stakeholders, or ecological validity.
► While AI enhances real-time feedback and insight generation, challenges like small sample sizes, generalisability, and transparency persist.
Forward: With the rapid rise of generative AI, new opportunities are emerging to advance MMLA, enabling richer feedback, adaptive interventions, context-aware support, and deeper insights into human learning.
What opportunities or risks do you see in embedding AI across multimodal learning environments?
On the 26th and 27th June, the UQ AI Research Network, led by CIRES Director, Prof Shazia Sadiq, hosted the 2025 UQ AI PhD Showcase over two days at the St Lucia Campus. The event brought together over 40 PhD students from diverse disciplines, leading academics, industry experts, and members of the UQ community for two days of vibrant discussion, cutting-edge research presentations, and collaborative networking.
With AI continuing to reshape industries and societies worldwide, this showcase provided a timely platform for exploring the development, application, and implications of artificial intelligence across disciplines. From health and agriculture to digital safety and governance, the breadth of research on display highlighted UQ’s commitment to advancing responsible and impactful AI.
Special thanks to the organising team led by Dr Alina Bialkowski (Chair), CIRES CI Dr Rocky Chen, Dr Xin Yu, and Professor Shane Culpepper for an excellent event!
► We propose an operationalising research framework for harmlessness, structured around three core questions:
► How do foundation models amplify dataset harm?
► How can we ensure harmlessness under strict black-box settings?
► What proactive explanation strategies meet legal and societal expectations?
CIRES Alumni, Tianwa Chen, is excited to share, “How Do Experts Make Sense of Integrated Process Models?“, accepted at the 36th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2025), to be held in Vienna, Austria, June 16–20, 2025.
“This paper presents the latest findings from my PhD research, in collaboration with a fantastic team: Barbara Weber, Graeme Shanks, CIRES CI Gianluca Demartini, CIRES Research Director, Marta Indulska, and CIRES Director, Shazia Sadiq. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved together! This work advanced the understanding of sensemaking practices of process knowledge workers engaged in tasks on integrated modelling of business processes and rule. Utilizing cued-retrospective think-aloud interviews with eye-tracking as the cue, our study conducted a deep qualitative exploration that revealed diverse sensemaking practices and strategies experts employed during information foraging and information processing.”
A huge congratulations to our CIRES Chief Investigator Dr Rocky Chen who has been awarded the prestigious Lord Mayor’s Convention Trailblazer Grant. Congratulations Rocky!!
This important program led by the Brisbane Economic Development Agency (BEDA) is designed to support emerging leaders and help them bring international conferences to Brisbane. Dr Chen, a Senior Lecturer, data science researcher and ARC DECRA Fellow, will use the grant to attend a top-tier global computer science conference, such as the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining in Washington DC.
“This grant will allow me to advocate for my work on responsible data science to an international audience,” Dr Chen said. “It also gives me the opportunity to promote Brisbane as a future host city for one of the world’s most respected data mining conferences.”
Dr Chen’s research focuses on building trustworthy and scalable data mining systems – uncovering patterns in large datasets to support responsible decision-making across a range of sectors. He is also a Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES), where he leads research on secure and ethical data practices in collaboration with industry and government.
“I’m incredibly honoured and excited to receive this recognition,” he said. “I look forward to working with BEDA to help bring a global event to Brisbane and further strengthen our city’s reputation as a centre for technological innovation.”
The Trailblazer Grant not only supports travel to international events but also empowers recipients to grow their leadership skills, build global networks, and attract investment and talent to Brisbane’s research ecosystem.
“I highly recommend the Trailblazer Grant to other early career researchers,” Dr Chen said. “It’s a fantastic opportunity to accelerate your career and broaden your impact. All you need is passion!”
Find out more about the Lord Mayor’s Convention Trailblazer Grant.
It’s been a big week for the CIRES Team from The University of Queensland at The Web Conference in Sydney!
CIRES PhD Researcher Elyas Meguellati gave two presentations, including a workshop paper titled “Are Large Language Models Good Data Preprocessors?” on investigating whether Large Language Models (LLMs) can be good for cleaning text, and when to strategically alternate between LLMs and rule-based methods. The second day he presented his PhD topic, journey, and progress as part of the PhD Symposium. Elyas had the opportunity to be mentored by world renowned scholar in machine learning, Professor Irwin King from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“I received valuable input and questions from the scholars and audience to consider for my research. It was a great opportunity to make new friends and connections with similar interests from all over the globe,” said Elyas.
Our PhD Researcher Hongliang Ni also attended and presented her work on operationalising harmlessness in online AI systems.
“It was a fantastic experience attending the WWW-25 PhD Symposium. I was inspired by the breadth of research presented, especially through the keynotes and paper sessions. One key takeaway for me was recognising both the potential and the vulnerability of multi-agent frameworks. Moving forward, I believe it’s crucial to focus on building systems that are not only effective but also robust. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn, reflect, and connect with such a vibrant research community.”
CIRES Alum Dr Junliang Yu presented the Demo paper “BiasNavi: LLM-Empowered Data Bias Management.” BiasNavi is an LLM-powered toolkit developed by the Centre and designed to make bias management in data more accessible. It guides users through a structured, intelligent workflow – from bias detection to mitigation – leveraging the power of LLMs to streamline and simplify complex processes.
Congratulations to CIRES Chief Investigator Prof. Gianluca Demartini and PhD researchers Stefano Civelli & Pietro Bernardelle who won the best paper award at the Workshop on Multimodal Content Analysis for Social Good for their work “The Impact of Persona-based Political Perspectives on Hateful Content Detection“. Great work team!
Thank you to the ACM, Association for Computing Machinery and www25 organisers for an excellent conference.
Our PhD researcher Lufan Zhang from Swinburne University of Technology is in Japan for the CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction to present her work on Explainable AI. Congratulations Lufan!
“It’s such a pleasure to present our lbw work at CHI2025 in Yokohama, Japan. I came across another lbw work on the stats of XAI study that actually include human evidence of explainability, and it turned out that fewer than 1% of those XAI study include human study, among which less than a half involve the actual users into the design/development process of XAI approach… it poses a great opportunity for developing industry-based, context-aware XAI that involves the actual XAI stakeholder group into the co-design process of XAI to make the final solution useful and practical to address practioners’ prioritised needs.
Our work on “Placing Practice and Expertise at the Center of Explainable AI: A Participatory Design Approach to Explainable AI for Enterprise Information Architect” fills in the gap, where we believe industry practitioners have the agency in developing XAI approaches, and “explainability” in this study is seen as “a human-centred capability that practitioners develop to understand, interpret, and make AI useful in their work practices”. https://lnkd.in/gj4edj9m
Big shoutouts to our amazing industry partner Astral Marie Felsbourg (Minson) GAICD & Damian Felsbourg GAICD and their clients & our research center ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES), Swinburne University of Technology and Paul Scifleet for the ongoing support to produce the work we present here!”
CIRES Centre Director, Professor Shazia Sadiq, attended Science & Technology Australia’s Science Meets Parliament initiative. This annual event fosters meaningful connections between the STEM sector and policymakers. 2025 celebrated 25 years of SMP on 12 and 13 February.
Science Meets Parliament features a comprehensive training program designed to strengthen relationships between federal Parliamentarians and professionals in science and technology. It plays a vital role in integrating STEM expertise into national service. Participants gain valuable insights into effective engagement strategies with policymakers, while federal Parliamentarians have the opportunity to connect with leading experts in science and technology. This national gathering brings together STEM leaders for expert-led professional development, a welcome reception, a Parliamentary forum, a national gala dinner, a televised address at the National Press Club, and intimate meetings with Parliamentarians in small group settings. A highlight of the Parliamentary calendar, Science Meets Parliament provides exceptional opportunities to enhance the visibility and understanding of STEM within Parliament and Australian Government Departments.
The 2025 Australasian Computer Science Week, ACSW, will be held at The University of Queensland, 10th – 14th Feb 2025.
On 11 February, CIRES Centre Director, Professor Shazia Sadiq will convene a panel entitled “The vital role of Computing Researchers in Science Advocacy”. She is joined by panellists:
About the Panel: Computing research is often celebrated for its transformative contributions to diverse fields such as health, energy, agriculture, and more. However, this narrative frequently casts computer science as merely an enabling discipline, sidelining the critical role of fundamental computing research in shaping scientific and technological progress.
This panel aims to challenge this perception and advocate for computing researchers as first-class citizens in science advocacy. Bringing together leading experts, this discussion will spotlight the unique contributions of computing research—from theoretical breakthroughs to paradigm-shifting advancements in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and quantum computing.
Panelists will explore why these foundational innovations deserve recognition not just for their application potential but as pivotal drivers of scientific inquiry and discovery. The session will delve into strategies for elevating the visibility of computing researchers within broader scientific advocacy frameworks. How can the computing community assert its role in shaping research agendas, influencing policy, and inspiring the next generation of scientists? What messaging and collaborations are needed to emphasize computing as a cornerstone of scientific advancement? Join us to redefine the narrative and ensure that the voices of computing researchers are central to the future of science advocacy.
CIRES Chief Investigator, Professor Gianluca Demartini participated in the Fourth Strategic Workshop on Information Retrieval (SWIRL) in Lorne Victoria from 9-12 February 2025.
SWIRL is an invitation-only gathering of the leading international researchers who come together every 5-6 years to collaboratively develop a research roadmap for Information Retrieval research for the next 5+ years. The reports produced in previous SWIRL workshops are highly cited and have been influential on the research done by both academia and industry in Information Retrieval. The final report will be made available in the SIGIR Forum Journal.
Congratulations to our CIRES Chief Investigator Gianluca Demartini on his promotion to Professor at The University of Queensland!
Gianluca says: “I’m happy to share that I have been promoted to Professor at The University of Queensland. I have worked at UQ for 7 years (it’s the place I’ve worked the longest in my career!) and have been promoted twice since I joined. Thanks to all my PhD students and postdocs that over the years made this possible. Thanks also to all my mentors within UQ and beyond for all their amazing advice and support! Looking forward to the next challenge!”
Congratulations to our CIRES Chief Investigator Ida Asadi Someh on her promotion to Associate Professor at The University of Queensland!
Ida says: “I’m happy to share that I have been promoted to Associate Professor at The University of Queensland! While I’ve been fortunate to have a fantastic network supporting and cheering me on, I want to give a special shout-out to three extraordinary women who have been instrumental in this stage of my career: Barb Wixom, Marta Indulska, and Shazia Sadiq. Your guidance, mentorship, and friendship have been invaluable. You’ve helped me become a better researcher, a stronger leader, and a more well-rounded person and mother. Thank you for championing my growth and helping me navigate the complexities of this demanding career path. I am truly indebted to you!”
CIRES had a strong representation at the 35th Australasian Database Conference (ADC’24) with CIRES CIs Professor Hongzhi Yin and Dr Rocky Chen as the General Chair and Program Chair, respectively. ADC’24 has taken an innovative twin-city approach to host the conference in two cities, namely Gold Coast and Tokyo, where major events like keynotes were broadcasted and synced between two sites. By doing so, this conference was taken out of the Australasian region for the first time.
Additionally, the ADC’24 award committee recognised CIRES Centre Director Professsor Shazia Sadiq as a strong contributor to Australasia’s data management research with its Lifetime Contribution Award. Congratulations!
And as part of the ADC program, on December 18th 2024, CIRES hosted a highly engaging Information Resilience Bootcamp. The bootcamp featured four outstanding presentations, each shedding light on cutting-edge advancements in data and information resilience:
Tingting Wang (RMIT): Discovering and Assembling Data in Tabular Data Lakes – Explored advanced methods for uncovering and integrating structured data from vast tabular data repositories to enhance usability and insights.
Zixin Wang (CIRES, The University of Queensland): Online Test-Time Adaptation: A Journey Through Lost and Found – Delved into adaptive learning techniques for real-time model adjustment in dynamic environments, ensuring robust performance despite unseen distributions.
Junliang Yu (CIRES, The University of Queensland): Leveraging Large Language Models for Data Bias Management – Highlighted the potential of large language models to detect, manage, and mitigate biases in data systems to improve fairness and integrity.
Xin Xia (The University of Queensland): On-Device Recommendation Powered by Language Models – Unveiled the promise of language model-powered recommendation systems operating directly on devices to deliver personalized and efficient user experiences.
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the incredible speakers for their invaluable contributions and to everyone who joined us for this inspiring event! Your engagement and enthusiasm made the bootcamp a tremendous success.
Let’s continue to drive innovation and resilience in the face of evolving information challenges!
