Our people
Meet our team
Prof Stuart Perry, Professor, Co-Director of PILab
Co-leading the πLab, Stuart has 16 years’ experience conducting research in industry and government organisations and 10 years leading multi-disciplinary research teams. Stuart brings expertise on human vision, colour, image processing, image quality and signal processing to the team. Stuart also represents PILab and UTS on a number of international standards committees such as ISO/TC42 and ISO/SC29/WG1 (JPEG) and is also a member of SPINet. He is interested in light field technologies, 3D scanning and human perception in Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality environments. He currently serves at the Chair of the JPEG Pleno Point Cloud Ad hoc Group working toward the standardisation of learning-based compression algorithms. See Stuart's staff profile
Prof Min Xu, Professor, Co-Director of PILab
Min is a research leader in the fields of computer vision and machine learning. She has published about 200 research papers in prestigious international journals and conferences, including IEEE T-PAMI, IEEE T-NNLS, IEEE T-MM, IEEE T-MC, ICLR, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, ACM MM, AAAI, and many more. She possesses extensive experience in applying advanced machine learning techniques to a range of computer vision and healthcare applications. Recently, she has also developed a keen interest in Computer Vision and Radio Frequency integrated sensing. See Min's staff profile
Industry A/Prof Don Bone, Adjunct Fellow
Don was awarded a Ph.D. in physics from ANU in 1988 and worked there for a couple of years developing optical diagnostics for hyper-velocity flows. During his Ph.D and in subsequent years he developed or helped develop several seminal methods in fringe analysis which have important applications in interferometry, structured light and x-ray phase contrast imaging. For most of his career he has worked on image and video processing problems, working in and later leading and managing small teams in Government and private Industry, though he has interspersed this with other activities doing contract research and starting and operating several businesses. His interests range over transform based methods for image and video processing and analysis, perceptual science, optics, 3D Capture and 3D printing. Don joined the PILab in July 2016. Don retired at the end of 2021 and accepted an Adjunct Fellow position at UTS which allows him to continue to contribute in a limited capacity to the supervision and mentoring of students and to various research projects, focussing on image and video processing and analysis, data science, 3D capture and 3D printing. See Don's staff profile
Prof Massimo Piccardi, Professor
Massimo Piccardi is a professor of machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) at the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), that he joined in 2002. His course on machine learning for sequential data (video, text etc) can be accessed on GitHub. At UTS, Prof. Piccardi serves as leader for the Big Data Analytics program of the Global Big Data Technologies Centre, an international centre of excellence for the development of enabling technologies for big data science and analytics, and as Head of Discipline, Signal Processing and Analytics, in the School of Electrical and Data Engineering. Over his career, Prof Piccardi has been the author or co-author of over a hundred and eighty scientific papers in international journals and on conference proceedings and several book chapters. Since relocating to Australia from Italy in 2002, he has been the principal investigator of many advanced research projects including two ARC (Australian Research Council) Discovery Projects and an ARC Linkage Project, and a chief investigator in another Linkage Project and four Linkage Infrastructure Projects. Prof Piccardi serves as an Associate Editor for journal IEEE Transactions on Big Data and is a senior member of the IEEE, a member of the IEEE Computer and Systems, Man and Cybernetis Societies and a member of the International Association for Pattern Recognition. See Massimo's staff profile
A/Prof Wenjing Jia, Associate Professor
Dr. Wenjing Jia is an Associate Professor and established researcher in the fields of image processing and analysis, computer vision and pattern recognition, with applications to: 1) medical ultra-sound image analysis, 2) car license plate detection in complex environment, 3) text detection in the wild, 4) violence detection from video, and 5) document authorship analysis. Over her research career, Dr. Jia has successfully led several research projects and published over eighty scientific papers in international journals and on conference proceedings has received over 1000 citations. She received the award of Excellent Master Thesis of Fuzhou University in 2002 and a Provincial Science and Technology Award in 2004 from her contribution to the area of biomedical image processing. She has been a paper reviewer for journals including the IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, and IEEE Trans. on Intelligent Transportation Systems and many well-known international conferences. She has also played a major role in organising international conferences of TrustCom-2017, MMM2015, CIT2008, etc. See Wenjing's staff profile
A/Prof Nico Pietroni, Associate Professor
Nico Pietroni is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science within FEIT at UTS. His research focus is within the fields of computer graphics and geometry processing and investigates concepts and practical algorithms for the creation and manipulation of digital shape representation. A particular interest of his is in how geometry processing intersects with architecture, artistic modelling and digital fabrication. His primary goal is to push the boundaries of current industrial production pipelines by exploiting the theoretical foundations in geometry processing. This includes mesh parameterization, surface abstraction and global optimization applied to the entertainment industry, digital fabrication and architectural geometry. (www.nicopietroni.com)
A/Prof Eva Cheng, Associate Professor
Eva Cheng is the Head of the School of Professional Practice and Leadership at UTS. Previous to joining UTS in September 2017, she was a Lecturer in the School of Engineering at RMIT University. Eva actively collaborates on social justice and community engagement in STEM diversity and humanitarian engineering, including working with Tech Girls are Superheroes (which aims to engage 10,000 girls in STEM entrepreneurship by 2020), Girl Geek Academy, Laika Academy and Engineers Without Borders Australia. She is also engaged in cross-cultural and inclusive teaching and research, and developing global mobility experiential learning programs for students. Her research is in multimedia signal processing, including speech and audio signal processing and computer vision. Collaborative research projects have included working with musicians, visual artists, architects, biologists and non-profit organisations. She is a member of the UTS Perceptual Imaging Lab (πLab) and Centre for Audio, Acoustics and Vibration. See Eva's staff profile
A/Prof Daniel Franklin, Associate Professor
Daniel completed his PhD in Telecommunications Engineering, ``Enhancements to Channel Models, DMT Modulation and Coding for Channels Subject to Impulsive Noise'', at the University of Wollongong (2007) and also holds a Bachelor of Engineering (electrical) - Honours I, University of Wollongong (1999). He has been a member of the IEEE since 1998. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Data Engineering at the University of Technology Sydney. His current research and commercial interests are split between radiation engineering, including positron emission tomography, computed tomography, radiotherapy, radiation dosimetry and pharmacokinetic modelling - and telecommunications engineering, including multimedia, image and signal processing, wired and wireless communication systems, and communications protocols. See Daniel's staff profile
A/Prof Arti Argawal, Adjunct Associate Professor
Arti is a scientist and entrepreneur reflecting her dual expertise: in Photonics and in Diversity & Inclusion. In Science, she works on simulation of optical components with Finite Element, Finite Difference and other numerical techniques. She has over 15 years experience in modelling how light behaves (to optimise device design) in optical fibres, solar cells, sensors, non-linear effects, etc. She develops modelling and optimisation methods that can predict light paths and change these for applications.
Arti set up Vividhata Pty Ltd (Vividhata means Diversity in Sanskrit) to help organisations achieve business goals while making their culture inclusive and their people thrive. Combining her passion for research and inclusion, Arti works with colleagues at PILabs on using emerging and latest technology, such as VR, to create highly impactful training on inclusion, as well as studying how generation of empathy could reduce exclusionary behaviour patterns. See Arti's staff profile
Industry Prof Barry Drake, Associate Member, Adjunct Professor
Barry has been researching machine learning and artificial intelligence since the 1990s. He was awarded a PhD in computer science in 2004 by the University of New South Wales, after which he joined Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CISRA), where he was the Senior Principal Engineer and lead researcher for machine learning. Barry is inventor on over 20 filed patents and has 13 years of experience conducting research with commercial impact within Canon.
Dr Zenon Chaczko, Adjunct Fellow
Dr Zenon Chaczko is currently an Adjunct Fellow of Software Engineering at UTS, and an active member of CRIN. After 25 years of R/D experience in ICT and marine systems industry as well as concurrent 4 years of P/T lecturing at the University of Technology Sydney, he moved to full time academic position at UTS in 2002. Since then he has been Program Head of Information and Communications Technologies. He is an experienced lecturer and researcher, consistently receiving excellent teaching results and reviews from students. He is an expert software and system engineer, researcher and supervisor, having supervised/co-supervised many candidates to completion in the last 8 years. He has completed his PhD in Engineering at UTS. His specialisation is anticipatory (AI) and biomimetic middleware systems for Wireless Sensor Networks. He is an author and co-author of several innovative AI theories and computational models. His recent work in complex system simulation as well as sensor localisation, clustering, detection, data aggregation and tracking algorithms gained a very high recognition in the research community. See Zenon's staff profile
A/Prof Richard Xu, Associate Member
As the Director of Industry Analytics and Visualisation, at Faculty of Engineering & IT, and the creator of UTS's DataLounge initiative, I am constantly navigating between the demands of developing world-renowned machine learning research and finding practical machine learning applications in real industry scenarios.
This sees me managing a team of 20+ academics, Postdoc, PhD students and engineers; applying their minds and talents to an array of industry projects for many multinational and Australian businesses. See Richard's staff profile
Aside from my duties as Industry Director, I also publish a series of Statistics, Probability and Machine Learning (including Deep Learning) courses for PhD students and ML practitioners around the world:
Link to Machine Learning Notes
Prof Myriam Amielh, Professor, Honorary Member
Professor Myriam Amielh is a founding member of PILab and former Associate Dean of External Engagement in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (FEIT) and instrumental in the successful establishment of PILab. Her continuing support for PILab has been invaluable.
Professor Myriam Amielh is currently Australian Catholic University’s inaugural Dean, Innovation & Industry Engagement, having commenced this role in February 2021. With deep understanding of and numerous engagements with industry over her career, Professor Amielh is planning and implementing extensive industry engagement strategies across ACU.
Professor Amielh has worked in senior roles in the Higher Education sector in Australia since 2016, and prior to this held leading roles in Research and Development for the commercial sector. Professor Amielh holds a PhD and Masters in Computer Sciences and Mathematics, which she studied in France.
Dr Jayan Kurian, Lecturer
Jayan Kurian is a Lecturer and an experienced Information Systems researcher and developer who is passionate about the realisation of technology that aids humans in spatial computing, business process management and digital transformation. He has a particular interest in mixed and virtual reality systems and their application in aged care, emergency management, contact sports and education. He has led the development of institutional repository for the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore to address real-world problems faced in archiving scholarly articles in a university setting.
Jayan was a member of the DSpace Leadership group and was the primary mentor for two projects funded by Google and the DSpace Foundation while working at the Nanyang Technological University and the National University of Singapore. He was invited to attend the Google Summer of Code Mentors' summit at Google, California. He has professional certifications from PegaSystems, Oracle, Microsoft, SUN Microsystems, Prosoft and CompTIA. His research examines the communication patterns on the Social Networking Sites of Emergency Management Organisations and has been published in Computer and Education, Online Information Review, FirstMonday, Hawaii International conference on Information Systems, PACIS, ACIS, AIS-SIGEd, and AMCIS. Jayan also finds time to help his community through his volunteer work at the ACT State Emergency Services and is a recipient of the Canberra Citizen of the Year Award 2020.See Jayan's staff profile
Meet our Students
Mr Rishabh Sharma, PhD Student
Rishabh is a student in PILab studying toward a PhD in the area of the synthesis of light field images.
Mr Hoang Cong Quach, PhD Student
Hoang is a student in PILab studying toward a PhD in the area of advanced, low complexity systems for Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM).
Mr Zhe Luo, Phd Student
Zhe is a research student in the School of Electrical and Data Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and IT and a member of the Perceptual Imaging Lab (PILab). He is studying 3D point cloud compression.
Mr Hassan Bahrami, PhD Student
Hassan is a student in PILab studying toward a PhD in the area of physically-based 3D simulation.
Mr Minhui Wei, PhD Student
Minghui Wei is a Ph.D student at the School of Electrical and Data Engineering (SEDE), Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (FEIT), University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He received his Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology and a Master's Degree in Interaction Design from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
Ms Yuyang Cai, PhD Student
Yuyang is a research student in the School of Electrical and Data Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and IT and a member of the Perceptual Imaging Lab (PILab). Her research interests are in rendering imaging techniques for virtual reality head-mounted displays.
Mr Zexu Huang, PhD Student
Zexu Huang is a Ph.D. student at the School of Electrical and Data Engineering (SEDE), within the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (FEIT) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). As a member of the Perceptual Imaging Lab (PILab), his academic pursuits are deeply embedded in the realm of computer vision. Zexu's research is primarily focused on the field of 3D reconstruction, encompassing both human bodies and scenes, alongside the intricate technology of human pose estimation.
