About RECCSI

The Research centre was launched on 17th March 2009 by La Trobe’s Deputy Vice Chancellor Research Professor Tim Brown. In collaboration with NEC Corporation (NEC) and Kyoto University, the centre functions as an Australian-based resource centre linking Melbourne-based researchers with NEC scientists and researchers from Kyoto University in Japan. The centre has some of its early roots in collaborative research over several years between La Trobe’s Professor Rajiv Khosla and Kyoto University’s Professor Toyoaki Nishida in context-aware emotion based systems and conversational informatics.

NEC, Kyoto University and La Trobe University are collectively supporting research at RECCSI. It is a collaborative hub for researchers from the three institutions working in the design and development of emotionally intelligent systems for computers.

The Director of the centre is Dr. Rajiv Khosla, who works with his group of researchers from La Trobe University on various projects collaborating with researchers from NEC Computer & Communications Innovation Research Laboratories (CCIL) and Kyoto University led by Dr. Keiji Yamada and Professor Toyoaki Nishida respectively. The Research centre is located in the Technology Enterprise Centre at La Trobe’s Research and Development park.

Objectives

The centre’s broad objectives are:

  • To promote inter-disciplinary research in social sciences and Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) to shift the design focus away from convenience towards social innovation leading to the sustainability of human society.
  • To conduct research and training in socially intelligent ICTs which model and correlate verbal, non-verbal and written forms of human communication between people, teams and communities.
  • To develop ICTs in health care, aged care, human resource management, education, security, e-tourism, autism, and bushfire and critical event management.
  • To nurture collaboration nationally and international with other research centres and institutions
  • To leverage the global reach of research partners for research, development and commercialisation.
  • To organise international conferences and seminars in human-computer interaction, intelligent systems, and related areas.
  • To facilitate knowledge transfer to practitioners in the field.