Team
Executive Director
Dr Rajiv Khosla
Associate Professor Rajiv Khosla is the Director of Research Centre for Computers, Communication and Social Innovation (RECCSI). Rajiv Khosla has a multi-disciplinary background in management, engineering and computer science. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, a Master’s degree in Management and Systems from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), and a Masters and Ph.D. in Computer Science from La Trobe. He has been a visiting research scientist and professor at NEC corporation Japan, Kyoto University, Japan, Wayne State University, Michigan, USA, Uppsala University, Sweden, University of Otago, New Zealand.
Rajiv's research in three disciplines, namely, Information Systems, Computing, and Engineering has been published and reported in journals like Pattern Recognition, Expert Systems with Applications, IEEE Transactions in Engineering Management, IEEE Multimedia, Communications of the ACM, and IEEE Transactions in Power Systems. He has filed patents, commercialized his research, and is director and chief inventor of Human Mind Innovations Pty, Ltd. He has received several teaching excellence awards and has pioneered the industry-orientation and design of undergraduate and postgraduate programs at La Trobe University since 1994. He is also director of externally funded Business Systems and Knowledge Modelling research laboratory.
He has authored four research books in areas like Emotionally Intelligent Systems (to be published) , Human-Centred e-Business, Multimedia based Socio-technical Information systems, Engineering Intelligent Hybrid Multi-agent Systems. Additionally he has edited five books and published over 120 refereed journal and conference papers. His research has made significant impact nationally and internationally including interviews with ABC Radio, reports in major news papers in several countries, citations of research in several US patents and collaborations with reputed international research institutions. He has also successfully chaired large international conferences in intelligent information systems.
He has been the Associate editor of the International Journal of Pattern Recognition (2000-2007), Regional editor of Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing (Springer-verlag), and Action Editor of Journal of Cognitive Systems Research and Associate editor of IEEE Intelligent Informatics Bulletin.
Executive committee members
Prof Toyoaki Nishida
Prof Toyoaki Nishida is a professor of Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University. He received the Doctor of Engineering degree from Kyoto University in 1984. His research focuses on Social Intelligence Design and Conversational Informatics. His representative work is Nishida (ed.) Conversational Informatics -- An Engineering Approach, Wiley, 2007.
He was appointed an associate member of the Science Council of Japan, a vice-president of JSAI (Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence), and a member of the board of directors of IPS (Information Processing Society) of Japan, in 2008. In 2001, he founded a series of international workshops on social intelligence design. Later, he broadened the scope of research to include understanding and augmenting conversational communication, and opened up a new field of research called “Conversational Informatics”.
He serves as an editorial board member of several academic journals, including Web Intelligence and Agent Systems, AI & Society, and is the editor-in-chief for Journal of JSAI. Visit Professor Nishida's homepage, or his laboratory website.
Dr Keiji Yamada
Dr Keiji Yamada is the General Manger of C & C Innovation Research Laboratories at NEC Corporation, Japan. He received his B.E., M.E., and PhD in Engineering degrees in information science from Kyoto University in 1982, 1984, and 1987 respectively. In 1987, he joined the C&C information Technology research laboratories, NEC Corporation. From 1990 to 1991, he was a visiting scholar of Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of California at San Diego.
He is tackling with development of a new research management strategy to create society thirty years in the future. His research interest covers knowledge processing and human communication based on pattern recognition, computer vision, artificial neural network, machine learning, human interaction, and intelligent network. He is a member of the IEEE, the IEICE Japan, and the IPSJ.
Dr Terri Joiner
Dr Terri Joiner has an honors degree in economics and a PhD in the area of international management from La Trobe University, Australia. She had previously worked as a Charge Nurse in private and public hospitals in Melbourne and New South Wales. Terri has over 18 years teaching experience in the areas of international management, organization theory and organization behavior at undergraduate and post-graduate levels both in Australia and abroad. She has held visiting teaching and research fellowships at University of Melbourne, University of Western Australia, Victoria University and Kasetsart University, Bangkok. Terri has published widely and presented papers at international conferences in the areas of international management, management education and organization behavior on issues such as organization citizenship behavior, decision making delegation, organization commitment, job stress and performance.
Terri is currently the Head of the School of Management which is responsible for teaching and research in the following discipline areas: marketing, general management, sport management, human resource management, hospitality and tourism management, and management information systems. Terri is also an invited member of the University Curriculum Taskforce (La Trobe University), charged with the responsibility of curriculum review and renewal within the University. Terri plays an active role and takes a lot of interest in the centre’s activities. View Dr Joiner's profile.
Research team members
Prof Rhonda Nay
Rhonda Nay is Professor of Interdisciplinary Aged Care and Director of the Institute for Social Participation. She is also Director of the Australian Institute for Primary Care and Ageing and TIME for Dementia. She heads the La Trobe partnership in the Dementia Collaborative Research Centre for Consumers and Carers. Rhonda’s research is focused on getting evidence into aged care practice particularly in relation to person centred care: pain, sexuality , family/staff relationships and innovative workforce models. She serves on numerous government and industry committees; has Chaired the Ministers’ Awards for Excellence in aged care; is a Director on the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency Board and has published and presented extensively.
Prof Richard Tay
Professor Richard Tay, PEng. CPEng, is currently the Chair in Road Safety and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Law and Management at La Trobe University. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Transportation Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering and an Adjunct Professor in Injury Prevention in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary in Canada. He graduated with a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University, M.Sc. in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University and Ph.D. in Economics from Purdue University. He has extensive international experience in transport economics and policy and has taught in Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. He was also a visiting scholar at MIT. He has completed many consultancy projects for multinational corporations and government agencies around the world. He has also been invited to many government panels, committees & task forces on transportation policy and road safety in Australia and around the world. He served on the editorial board of several scientific journals and has been invited to speak at and has chaired technical sessions at many road safety conferences around the world. He has published over 200 scientific peer reviewed articles in addition to numerous reports and book chapters.
Prof Peter J. Dowling
Peter J. Dowling (Ph.D, The Flinders University of South Australia) is Professor of Human Resource Management at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. His current research and teaching interests are concerned with International Human
Resource Management, International Management and Strategic Management. Previous academic appointments include The University of Melbourne, Monash University, the University of Tasmania, University of Canberra and Victoria University of Wellington. He has also held visiting appointments in the United States at Cornell University and Michigan State University and in Germany at the University of Paderborn and the University of Bayreuth. He has co-authored a number of books including International Human Resource Management: Managing People in a Multinational Context (5th Ed.), International Business (Asia-Pacific 1st Ed.) and Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalisation (Pacific Rim 3rd Ed.) and has written or co-authored over seventy journal articles and book chapters. He serves on the editorial boards of International Journal of Human Resource Management, Journal of World Business, Management International Review, Journal of International Management, Thunderbird International Business Review, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Management & Organization and ZfP-German Journal of Human Resource Research.
Peter is President of the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management (IFSAM), a Vice-President of the Australia & New Zealand International Business Academy, a Fellow of the Australian & New Zealand Academy of Management, a Life Fellow of the Australian Human Resources Institute and a Senior Research Affiliate of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell University. Former roles include past National Vice-President of the Australian Human Resources Institute and Editor of Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources (1987-1996).
Prof Xuefeng Liang
Xuefeng Liang is currently associate professor of Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan. He has extensive research and experience in deterministic and heuristic algorithms and their applications on computer vision and pattern recognition problems. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science (intelligent algorithm design) from Xidian University, China, and Ph.D. in Information Science (Computational Geometry) from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan. He then held JST research fellowship at National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and worked on large camera network surveillance study. Afterward, he worked at both University College London and Queen Mary University of London on the multidiscipline research which involved visual perception and computer vision.
His current research interests are in the high resolution dynamic 3D construction, behavior analysis, particularly in the imitation of dynamic 3D facial expression, encoding, decoding and analysis of the dynamic facial behavior.
Dr Outi Niininen
Dr Outi Niininen is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing in the School of Management, La Trobe University. Outi’s research interests fall broadly under the headings of consumer psychology, the role of vacations in our overall well being, human-computer interaction, the psychology of consumer loyalty towards destinations and short break holidays as a travel product. Since 2005, Outi has contributed to several specialist research projects valued at approximately AU$200,000, our latest report on Short-break holidays: a competitive destination strategy; CRC for Sustainable Tourism Pty Ltd, is also available as a free download from the STCRC website. Outi’s current research projects centre on the impact Short Break Holidays can have on overall well being, the activities tourists engage in during their short break holidays and the Australian ‘No Leave-No Life’ campaign aiming to get Australians to spend accrued annual leave entitlement.
Dr Cheryl Dissanayake
Assoc. Prof Cheryl Dissanayake is Founder and Director of the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre in the School of Psychological Science at La Trobe University, which is the first research facility in Australia dedicated to Autism Spectrum Disorders. She is a developmental psychologist, and has been an autism researcher since 1984. Cheryl serves on the Professional Panel of Autism Victoria, and is co-founder and convenor of one of its reference groups, the Autism Spectrum Disorder Research Group.
Dr Hideyuki Sawada
Hideyuki Sawada is an Associate Professor in Faculty of Engineering, Kagawa University. He received the B.E., M.E. and Dr. Eng. degrees in Applied Physics from Waseda University in 1990, 1992 and 1999, respectively. From 1992 to 1995, he engaged in the development of optical sensors for measuring the sweetness and color of fruits at Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co., Ltd. He was a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from 1995 to 1998, and conducted a research on the music information processing and neural networks. In 1999, he engaged in researches on gesture recognition and speech signal processing as a Research Associate of Waseda University. His current research interests include sound and image processing, neural networks, robotics, human interfaces and assistive technologies. He is a member of IEEE, IPSJ, IEICE, RSJ, SICE and JSME.
Assoc Prof Jacinta Douglas
Assoc Prof Jacinta Douglas from the School of Human Communication Sciences at La Trobe University is a speech pathologist and clinical neuropsychologist. She has extensive research and clinical experience in rehabilitation of adults with acquired brain injury. Jacinta’s major research interests involve cognitive and communication disorders and their relationship to social participation after brain injury. Her recent work has focussed particularly on non-verbal processing (facial expression and intonation) and its role in social interaction. Jacinta is a Fellow of the Australian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment and is founding co-editor of the journal Brain Impairment.
Dr Shogo Okada
Shogo Okada received the B.S. degree in engineering from Yokohama National University, JAPAN, in 2003, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering of computer science from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, JAPAN in 2005 and 2008, respectively. From April 2008, he was Project Assistant Professor in the Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University. His research interests include pattern recognition, and neural networks,
autonomous robotics. Visit Dr Okada's homepage.
Dr Debbie Chu
Debbie Chu is currently a Lecturer in School of Management at La Trobe University. She has done her Bachelors in Sociology (National Taipei University, Taiwan), Masters in Technology Management (National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan) and PhD (La Trobe University). She has been teaching several Information Systems subject at La Trobe and also has previous teaching experience in several universities such as Minghsin University of Science and Technology (Taiwan) and Hsuan Chuang University, Taiwan. She was a consultant and engagement manager at International Technology Research Institute for four years where she has coached and co-ordinated 40 Communities of Practices. She has also worked as a consultant for several other organizations from 2002 to 2004. She has published several referred journals and conference papers in diverse areas such as knowledge management, multi-agent systems, Communities of Practice, computational intelligence, expert systems and engineering management.
Dr Kerstin Denecke
Kerstin Denecke is a researcher in the L3S Research Center. She received her Diploma (2004) and Ph.D. degree (2008) from the Technical University of Braunschweig. Before joining the L3S, she worked as Software Engineer at ID GmbH, a software company in the medical domain. Her research interests are natural language processing in general. The specific areas she has been working on include information extraction, knowledge retrieval, sentiment analysis and data mining. She has published a number of research papers in several international conferences.
Mr Yong Xu
Yong Xu graduated in Computer Software and Applications from Suzhou Vocational University in 1993, and received his Master's in Circuits and Systems from the Department of Electronic Science and Technology at the University of Science and Technology of China in 2001. He is a PhD student at the Department of Intelligence Science and Technology of Kyoto University in Japan.
Currently he works as a Honorary Visiting Research Assistant at the Research Centre for Computers, Communication and Social Innovation, at La Trobe University in Australia. His research centers on human-robot interaction, especially on a mutually adaptive human-robot interface. His current research focuses on modeling and design of real-time emotionally intelligent health care robots. Visit Mr Yong's homepage.
Mr Muhammad Hedjvani
Muhammad Hedjvani has completed his bachelor degree on Industrial Engineering (Industrial Production) in Bu-Ali Sina University (Iran) and his Master degree on Business Information Management and Systems at La Trobe University. In 2009 he has joint RECCSI as a research assistant. Prior to this, he has worked for more than two years as research assistant and project team leader in Institute for Research and Planning for Higher Education a division of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of Iran. He is also tutoring for La Trobe's School of Management and Department of Computer Science and Engineering. In 2010 he won the scholarships to do his second postgraduate degree in La Trobe University on the area of Knowledge Sharing Behaviour and Emotional Intelligence.
Ms Isabelle Bounkeua
Isabelle is a 3rd year undergraduate student at Stanford University this year, majoring in symbolic systems with a focus in Human Computer Interactions. Symbolic systems is an interdisciplinary degree which combines core computer science requirements with courses in the philosophy, psychology, and linguistics departments. She spent 6 months in Japan during the spring and summer of 2010 as a participant of the Stanford Bing Overseas Program. This included a three month internship working as part of the Co-Creative Programming project at NEC’s Computer & Communication Innovation research laboratory in Nara, Japan.
Mr. Hirofumi Takase
Hirofumi Takase completed his bachelor degree from the department of Intelligent Mechanical Systems of Engineering in Kagawa University, Japan in 2009. His main research topic is Gestural Interface and Tactile Feedback for Virtual Reality. In October 2009, he was awarded the Excellent Student Branch Award in the IEEE Student Branch Leadership Training Workshop at Tokyo City University.
Mr. Takafumi Ohara
Takafumi Ohara completed his bachelor degree from the department of Intelligent Mechanical Systems of Engineering in Kagawa University, Japan in 2010.His main research area is Emotion Recognition.
Mr Jason Murphy
Jason Murphy is the Web Developer of RECCSI and of La Trobe University's Faculty of Law and Management. An honours graduate of Sydney University, Jason has over a decade's experience in developing web technologies, both in the public and private sectors.
Professional affiliates
Prof William I. Grosky
William I. Grosky is currently professor and chair of the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Before joining UMD in 2001, he was professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Wayne State University, as well as an assistant professor of Information and Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. His current research interests are in multimedia information systems, databases, and the semantic web. He is a founding member of Intelligent Media LLC, a Michigan-based company whose interests are in integrating the new media into information technologies.
Grosky received his B.S. in mathematics from MIT in 1965, his M.S. in applied mathematics from Brown University in 1968, and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1971. He has given many short courses in the area of database management for local industries and has been invited to lecture on multimedia information systems world-wide. Over the years, he has been invited to give over 70 invited talks/tutorials/panel presentations, including three keynote talks and three talks at NSF sponsored workshops, has been on the editorial boards of 10 journals/magazines, including an editor-in-chief position for an IEEE magazine, has been co-editor of five journal special issues, and has served on over 235 conference program committees. Visit Professor Grosky's homepage.
Prof Jiming Liu
Jiming Liu is a Professor and the Head of Computer Science Department at Hong Kong Baptist University. His current research interests include: Autonomy-Oriented Computing (AOC), Web Intelligence (WI), and self-organizing systems and complex networks, with applications to: (i) characterizing working mechanisms that lead to emergent behavior in natural and artificial complex systems (e.g., phenomena in Web Science, and the dynamics of social networks and neural systems), and (ii) developing solutions to large-scale, distributed computational problems (e.g., distributed scalable scientific or social computing, and collective intelligence). Prof. Liu has contributed to the scientific literature in those areas, including over 250 journal and conference papers, and 5 authored research monographs, e.g., Autonomy Oriented Computing: From Problem Solving to Complex Systems Modeling (Kluwer Academic/Springer) and Spatial Reasoning and Planning: Geometry, Mechanism, and Motion (Springer). Prof. Liu serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Web Intelligence and Agent Systems, an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics – Part B, and Computational Intelligence, and a member of the Editorial Board of several other journals. Visit Professor Liu's homepage.
Prof Ishwar K. Sethi
Ishwar K. Sethi is currently professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, a position he has held since 1999. From 1982 to 1999, he was affiliated with the Department of Computer Science at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in various ranks. Before joining Wayne State University, he was a faculty member in the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. His current research interests are in bioinformatics, data mining, pattern classification, and multimedia information indexing and retrieval. He has authored or coauthored over 150 journal and conference articles. He has served on the editorial boards of several prominent journals in his field of research including IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, and IEEE Multimedia. He was elected IEEE Fellow in 2001 for his contributions in artificial neural networks and statistical pattern recognition. Recently, he has been also interested in developing computer courses for general education requirements at four year colleges in the United States, and has written a textbook, Computing with Excel and VBA: A Problem Solving Approach, published by Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Visit Professor Sethi’s homepage.
Dr Ravi Seethamraju
Currently working in the University of Sydney, Business School, Ravi teaches and researches in enterprise systems, business process management and business/IS education. He is currently working on the influence of enterprise systems and enterprise services on business agility and performance and process-centric service oriented enterprises.
Earlier, he worked in University of Western Sydney, Queensland University of Technology, Macquarie Graduate School of Management (as an adjunct) in Australia and taught subjects such as business process management, enterprise systems, service management, supply chain & operations management. In 12 years of his academic career, he has so far published more than 80 refereed articles and conference papers on enterprise systems, supply chain management, business/IS education and process management. He was awarded School of Business teaching excellence award at the University of Sydney, ACPHIS Kit Dampney Prize by the Australasian Council of Professors and Heads of Information Systems discipline and two best research paper awards. He is currently serving several boards i) ANZ Board of the Supply Chain Council, an industry body as its Strategic alliances chair, ii) Vice President, International Consortium for Electronic Business and iii) Vice President, Association of Information Systems: Special Interest Group on Education (AIS SIG ED: IAIM).
Before his move into academe, he had 12 years of corporate management, training and consulting experience in business information systems and operations/supply chain management and trained hundreds of managers. He has a Ph.D. in management, a post graduate diploma in adult education with distinction, a Masters in industrial engineering and a Bachelors degree in Mechanical engineering.
