Staff of AUT's Knowledge Engineering & Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI)

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Staff of AUT's Knowledge Engineering & Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI)

This page has information about the researchers and support staff at AUT University's KEDRI, including their:

Contact details
Areas of research or responsibility
Qualifications and other biographical details

	Prof. Nikola Kasabov - Director Professor Nikola Kasabov is the Foundation Director of KEDRI, and a Chair of Knowledge Engineering at the School of Computer and Information Sciences at AUT, Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Fellow of the New Zealand Computer Society and a Fellow of IEEE. He holds a MSc and PhD from the Technical University of Sofia. His main research interests are in the areas of: intelligent information systems, soft computing, neuro-computing, bioinformatics, brain study, speech and image processing, data mining and knowledge discovery. phone: +64 9 921 9506 email: nkasabov@aut.ac.nz More information on Prof. Nik Kasabov
	Joyce D'Mello - KEDRI Admin. Manager Joyce is the Manager of KEDRI and also the Personal Assistant to the Director of KEDRI. Joyce provides administrative and secretarial services, maintains financial and personnel data and documentation of KEDRI, takes care of purchases, acts as a co-ordinator and contributes to the functioning of a high-performing team. phone: +64 9 921 9504 email: joyce.dmello@aut.ac.nz
	Assoc. Prof. Frances Joseph - Associate Professor Frances Joseph is Associate Professor in Art and Design at the Auckland University of Technology. She holds an MFA from the University of New South Wales and has worked as a designer in areas of sculpture, puppet design and animatronics. Since joining A.U.T. in 1997 her teaching and research interests have centred on design history and theory, with a focus on the representation of design knowledge. Frances was visiting research fellow at the Design History Research Centre, University of Brighton in 2002 and is a member of the Designers Institute of New Zealand. At KEDRI she is working on the development of design ontology and exploring potential applications of evolutionary computation to design problem solving. phone: +64 9 921 9999 # 8750 email: frances.joseph@aut.ac.nz
	Dr. Russel Pears - Associate Researcher Russel holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Physics, and Masters and PhD degrees in Computing Science from the University of Cardiff, United Kingdom. Russel is a Senior Lecturer at the school of Computer and Information Science at the Auckland University of Technology, where he teaches Data Mining and Research methods. He has a strong interest in Machine Learning and is currently involved in several projects in this area, including classification methods for imbalanced data sets, dynamic credit scoring methods, contextual search techniques and mining high speed data streams. phone: +64-9-9219999 ext 5344 email: rpears@aut.ac.nz
	Prof. Stephen MacDonell - Associate Researcher Stephen G. MacDonell is Professor of Software Engineering in the School of Computer and Information Sciences Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. He holds BCom(Hons) and MCom degrees in information science from the University of Otago and a PhD in software engineering from the University of Cambridge. His main research activities are in the areas of software engineering, software measurement, project planning, estimation and management, data analysis, and software forensics. He is a member of the ACM and NZCS. phone: +64 9 921 9773 email: smacdone@aut.ac.nz
	Prof. Ajit Narayanan - Associate Researcher Professor Ajit Narayanan is the head of school of computing and mathematical sciences. His teaching areas are artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, quantum computing, scientific computing and cognitive science.His research areas are application of artificial intelligence techniques in bioinformatics and systems biology; computational statistics, modelling and simulation. email: ajit.narayanan@aut.ac.nz More information on Prof. Ajit Narayanan
	Dr. Qun Song - Associate Researcher Qun obtained his Bachelor degree, Masters degree and PhD degree from Textile University of China, Tokyo University of Mercantile Marine, Japan and Otago University, New Zealand respectively. The research fields he specialises in are AI systems, neural networks, fuzzy systems and their applications in prediction, control and image processing. email: qsong@aut.ac.nz
	Dr. Lubica Benuskova - Associate Researcher Luba has got a Master degree in Psychology from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA and a PhD degree in Biophysics from Comenius niversity, Bratislava, Slovakia. Her research interests include biological modeling, e.g. modeling brain plasticity, and investigation of relationships between genes, brain functions and artificial neural networks.
	Dr. Mark Laws - Associate Researcher Mark has a Masters and PhD degree in Information Science from the University of Otago.He has a 3 year Post-Doctoral fellowship at KEDRI where he will integrate selected Polynesian languages using similar data models and language frameworks developed for the Maori language. This will provide the foundations for further research in to languages, linguistics and computing. Mark's primary research goal will be to piece together selected Polynesian language and linguistic elements to build a speech and language database management system. This database will contain the lexical, phonological and phonetic frameworks which will provide the core components for a Polynesian speech and language database translation system. Mark has just completed a visiting fellowship at the University of Hawaii, and is currently visiting the Tribal University of Te Whare Wananga O Awanuiarangi in Whakatane to assist in the development of indiginous speech and language information technology based degrees.
	Dr. Ilkka Havukkala – Associate Researcher Dr Havukkala received his PhD in Zoology from Imperial College, University of London and is a Docent of Zoology at University of Helsinki, Finland. His past research spans insect behaviour modelling by Markov chains, insect orientation and host selection behaviour, biological control, fungal enzymology and plant and microbial molecular biology. He worked in 1991-1996 as bioinformatician in the Japanese Rice Genome Program, and in 1996-2005 in New Zealand biotechnology company Genesis R&D working on plant, microbial and animal genomics and developing RNAi therapeutics. He is an inventor in a number of genomics related patents and was European Union Advising Expert on epigenomics and medical informatics in 2004-2005. His current interests include discovery and classification of non-coding RNAs from genomic data and utilization of neural computing methods in bioinformatics and biotechnology.
	Dr. Defoin Platel Michael - Associate Researcher Dr. Defoin Platel Michael received a M. Sc. in Bio-Informatics from the University of Paris 5, France and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Nice, France. His main research activities are the Evolutionary Algorithms (with emphasis on Genetic Programming), Inverse Problems solving and the development of new Machine Learning techniques. From 2004 to 2006, he was funded by the CNES (the French national centre for spatial studies) and worked at the LOV (a French Laboratory studying oceanography) on the ocean colour inverse problem. Since January 2007, he is now Associate Research Fellow at KEDRI to define the Dynamical Spiking Neural Networks Systems and create the future Quantum-inspired Evolutionary Algorithms.
	Dr. Dave Parry - Associate Researcher Dave's research interests are internet based knowledge management, health informatics and information retrieval. He is finishing a PhD thesis on the topic of "An intelligent system for finding useful information on the internet". phone: +64 9 921 9999 ext 8918 email: dave.parry@aut.ac.nz Publication List
	Dr. Simei Gomes Wysoski – Associate Researcher Simei received his B.E. in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Parana, Brazil in 2000, and M.E. degree in 2003, in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Nagoya Institute of Technology, Nagoya, Japan. His current interests include image processing, pattern recognition, evolving connectionist systems and modelling brain functions.
	Dr. Paul Shaoning Pang - Senior Research Fellow Dr. Shaoning Pang holds B. Sc. in physics, M. Sc. in electronic engineering, and Ph.D. in computer science. From 2001 to 2003, he worked as a research associate in Pohang University of Science and Technology, South Korea. His research interests include SVM Aggregating Intelligence, Incremental Machine Learning, Bioinformatics, and Industrial Business Intelligence Systems and Strategies. He has been serving as a program member and session chair for several international conferences including ISNN, ICONIP. ICNNSP. He was a best paper winner of IEEE ICNNSP 2003. He is currently acting as a paper reviewer for IEEE Transaction on SMC-Part B, Image and Vision Computing Journal and Pattern Recognition Letter, and a guest editor for International Journal of Computers, Systems and Signals. Dr. Pang is a Senior Member of IEEE, and a Member of IEICE, and ACM phone: +64 9 921 9580 email: spang@aut.ac.nz Publication list
	Paulo Gottgtroy - PhD Student Paulo Gottgtroy received the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree from the Brazilian Air Force Academy in 1984 and a post-graduate degree in system analysis from Pontificial Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in 1989. He received a MSc degree from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte - Brazil in 2000. His research interests are ontology learning, onto-mining, biomedical informatics ontologies, and mining techniques. Currently he is integrating ontologies and data mining in order to improve the knowledge discovery process. phone: +64 9 921 9577 email: pgottgtr@aut.ac.nz Publication list
	David Zhang - PhD Student David Zhang is a part-time research officer at Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI) and currently pursuing his PhD at AUT under the supervision of Prof. Nik Kasabov and Senior Lecturer Dr. George Coghill (Auckland University). David’s interests are in Artificial Intelligence and speech and image recognition with neural network technology. email: dzhang@aut.ac.nz Publication list
	Maggie (Tian Min) Ma - PhD Student Maggie is a PhD student of KEDRI, under supervision of Professor Nik Kasabov, Dr. Qun Song and Dr. Mark Marshall. Her study and research work is mainly on "Evolving Connectionist System for Medical Diagnosis and Prediction" which will enable patients to know their expected longevity on haemodialysis, administrators to engage in more accurate service planning, and medical care to be targeted at specifically those with high risk on haemodialysis. Maggie Ma has been awarded a Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship from the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC). phone: +64 9 921 9564 email: mmaa@aut.ac.nz Publication List
	Boris Bacic - PhD Student In his research Boris aims to make a contribution to automating the analysis of human sporting activity data using tennis as initial case study. The main goal is to develop a methodology and an environment that enable data analysis and modelling of sporting activity data for a single player. The topic of his PhD thesis is "Connectionist Methods for Data Analysis and Modelling of Human Sporting Activities" phone: +64 9 921 9999 ext 5115 email: bbacic@aut.ac.nz
	Raphael(Yingjie) Hu - PhD Student Raphael has received his MCIS degree (Hons) in Computer and Information Sciences from Auckland University of Technology in 2006. He is a PhD student at KEDRI under the supervision of Prof. Nikola Kasabov and Dr. Paul Pang and is currently working on the project of the construction of integrated models for gene data analysis. His research interests are in the areas of neural network computing, fuzzy logic systems and data mining techniques. phone: +64 9 921 9578 email: raphael.hu@aut.ac.nz Publication List
	Alex K Tjahjana - PhD Student Alex received his BEng in Software Engineering (Summa Cum Laude) from Tarumanagara University, Indonesia in 2000, where he was the best graduate university wide. He received a Post-graduate Diploma in Commerce majoring Information Systems and Operations Management from University of Auckland in 2006. His current research interests include ontology learning, integration of ontology and knowledge discovery process; decision support systems; neural networks, fuzzy logic, and their applications in pattern recognition; system dynamics and software development. email: alexkusuma@1sweetlove.com
	Stefan Schliebs - PhD Student Stefan received a Diploma in Computer Science at University Leipzig, Germany in 2006. He is currently enrolled in a PhD programme under the supervision of Prof N. Kasabov and Dr. Michael Defoin Platel. In his PhD thesis he will investigate novel evolving connectionist models inspired by the principles of quantum theory. phone: +64 9 921 9578 email: sschlieb@aut.ac.nz CV
	Haza Nuzly - PhD Student Haza's research interests are Swarm Intelligence inspired by quantum theory in Integrative Connectionist Environment for Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery. He currently works under the supervision of Prof. Nikola Kasabov and hold scholarship from Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia. phone: +64 9 921 9578 email: hnuzly@aut.ac.nz
	Harya Widiputra - PhD Student Harya received his Bachelor in Information Technology from Institut Teknologi Telkom, an institute of technology owned by Indonesian goverment telecommunication company in 2002. He received a Master of Science majoring in Information Technology from Swiss German University in 2005, where he graduated as first class student. He is a PhD student and the technical support at KEDRI working under the supervision of Prof N. Kasabov and Dr. R. Pears, and has been awarded a scholarship by the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences of AUT. In his PhD research, Harya will be working in developing a novel method for multiple time-series prediction. His research interest are in the areas of inductive learning, transductive learning, dynamic clustering, time-series prediction and bayesian inference and probabilistic computation in integrate-and-fire neurons. phone: +64 9 921 9564 email: harya.widiputra@aut.ac.nz
	Marin Karaivanov - PhD Student Marin received his MSc in Computer Science and Engineering from Technical University of Sofia in 1999 and Postgraduate diploma in Business in 2001. After several years of professional experience in corporate business environment , he joined The Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Researc h Institute (KEDRI) as a Ph.D. student. Marin holds PMP and ITIL certifications, as well as a number of industry related certifications in the area of software systems and information technology. His major research interests are decision support systems, fuzzy logic, knowledge engineering and forecasting techniques. His PhD research "Integrative Decision Support Systems: Methods and Applications" is under the supervision of Prof. Nikola Kasabov, Dr. Russel Pears and Dr. Qun Song. phone: +64 9 921 9564 email: marin.karaivanov@aut.ac.nz
	Gary Chen - PhD Student Gary received a B.Sc in Computer Science at University of Auckland in 2005. He is currently transferred from Mphil to PhD programme under the supervision of Dr. Paul S. Pang and Prof N. Kasabov. In his PhD thesis he will investigate high speed algorithms for outlier detection and classification over huge-size network data streams. Gary has been awarded a scholarship in connection with the NICT Project that KEDRI is involved with. phone: +64 921 9577 email: gchen@aut.ac.nz
	Kshitij Dhoble – PhD Student Kshitij has received his MCIS degree (Hons) in Computer and Information Sciences from Auckland University of Technology. He is a PhD student at KEDRI under the supervision of Prof. Nikola Kasabov. In his PhD thesis he will investigate novel connectionist based associative memory for image storage, recognition and retrieval. His research interests are in the areas of nature inspired neural network models, image processing and data mining techniques. phone : +64-9-921-9578 email: kdhoble@aut.ac.nz
	Linda Liang - PhD Student Linda Liang received her Master’s degree at AUT in 2009 with First Class (with Honors). She is a PhD student at AUT under the supervision of Prof. Nik Kasabov and Prof. Valery Feigin. Her research interests are in the areas of Personalised Modelling of Brain Data and Spiking Neural Networks. Linda received the Graduate Assistantship Award 2010 from the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies. As part of Linda’s study, she co-authored and gave several oral and poster presentations, a conference paper at the ICONIP 2008 conference, a short paper at the ICNN 09 congress in Munich, and a poster at the NZBIO Conference 2010. email: lliang@aut.ac.nz
	Nuttapod Nuntalid - PhD Student Nuttapod graduated a M.Sc. in Computer Science from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology,Thailand with outstanding thesis award. Currently he is enrolled in a PhD programme under the supervision of Prof. Nikola Kasabov and Assoc. Prof. Petia Georgieva from the University of Aveiro, Portugal. His PhD research will be focusing on modelling connectivity in large scale evolving probabilistic spiking neural network on EEG (Electroencephalogram) data. phone : +64-9-921-9341 email: nuttapod.nuntalid@aut.ac.nz
	Nuwan Gunasekara – Master Student Nuwan is currently working on the topic “SVM String kernel Optimization using Meta-learning” at KEDRI
	Huili (Alexander) Song – Master Student Huili(Alexander) Song is currently working on his Mphil programme in KEDRI with his supervisors, Dr. Paul Pang, Dr. Tao Ban (NICT, Japan) and Prof. Nikola Kasabov. His programme work mainly involves String Discrimination using Latent Dirichlet Allocation for Internet Security. The interesting domains of Huili are Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Topic Modeling. Real world string data has been used in his research. The main purpose of his research work is to allow the computer to make decision which topic of the coming document belonging to.
	Liu Fan Wen – Master Student Fan received a B.Sc in Computer Science at UNITEC in 2006. He is currently enrolled in a MCIS programme under the supervision of Dr. Paul S. Pang and Prof N. Kasabov. In his MCIS thesis he will investigate Co-Learning Multi-Task Pattern Recognition using Minimum Enclosing Balls. Fan has been awarded a scholarship in connection with the NICT Project that KEDRI is involved with.