AAi NewsBytes February 2015
Feb., 2015 Edition
Welcome to the first AAi Newsletter of 2015. We would first like to wish all our readers a happy and successful year.
AAi was fortunate in experiencing a good year in 2014, which culminated in the award of ARC Discovery Project funding for research into complex coupling relationships in big data. Prof Longbing Cao will work with Prof Phillip Yu of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Prof Eric Gaussier of the Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, on a project to develop breakthrough theories and effective modelling and learning tools for big data applications.
Also announced in September 2014 was the NSW Government’s “Digital First” strategy, which highlights the significance of a progressive approach to government engagement with the populace, as well as the value to be derived from sharing data with the private sector. NSW minister Dominic Perrottet is leading the drive to change an outdated mindset in service delivery, and has highlighted Service NSW as an example of the successful implementation of a network of agencies to support government/citizen interactions. Members of AAi continue to work closely with a number of government departments to further develop this strategy.
AAi has a busy year ahead in Research, Education and Development, including a focus on corporate collaboration to develop an Analytics Capability Framework, as well as involvement in a growing number of major local and global events.
Skills in data analytics remain a critical issue, and AAi will continue to offer a range of well-structured short courses in the theory and practice of data mining and analytics. These courses are tailored to professionals and practitioners at three levels of ability, across multiple fields, and are designed to satisfy the knowledge and skill requirements necessary for today’s data-intensive environment.
Remember: there’s no shortage of useful data in most organisations and government departments which, when properly mined and interpreted by AAi, can create unexpected opportunities for driving productivity and business growth.
Advanced Analytics Institute
Skills and Team Building The three most prominent technology issues broadly recognised as confronting both business and government today are the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and Big Data. A recent blog article highlights the anticipated ‘democratisation’ of big data analytics, suggesting that predictive analytics will become the norm within all organisations. At the same time, there is widespread acknowledgment that skill shortage in data analytics is rapidly becoming a global issue. Universities worldwide are expanding their program offerings to satisfy this need, and an increasing number of students recognise the value of adding career-related analytics to their skill set. Business schools, for example, are adding business analytics to their portfolio of programs, and it’s a given in technology sectors that understanding how data can be used effectively to make decisions is essential. AAi has for several years offered two highly successful programs: the Master of Analytics (Research ) and Doctor of Philosophy, and these are now complemented by a new transdisciplinary offering from the Connected Intelligence Centre (CIC), Master of Data Science & Innovation. Data scientists not only need a suite of technical skills – they also need to be creative, have sound communication skills, and be good collaborators. The archetypal image of the data expert poring over a computer in isolation is fast giving way to the expectation that data analysts will work as team members to achieve the best solution, whether in business, telecommunications, finance, law, healthcare, or any other field. As such, the person whose paper qualifications fit the profile may not be the best person for the job, unless they also have strong interpersonal skills. AAi is working on an Analytics Capability Framework to address this issue. Contact us at austin.andrade@uts.edu.au if you would like to know more, or have a view to share. | |||
International Knowledge Centre for Engineering Sciences and Technology Visit of Chinese Academy of Engineering delegation A five member delegation from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, led by Prof Xu Liu, Vice President, met with Prof Ian Burnett, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology on 3rd February to learn about UTS’s research capability in data knowledge and analytics. Their visit included discussions with the Centre for Quantum Computation and Intelligent Systems (QCIS) and the Advanced Analytics Institute (AAi). Prof Liu gave a presentation on the progress of work at the International Knowledge Centre for Engineering Sciences and Technology (IKCEST) at the Academy, which falls under the auspices of UNESCO. The purpose of the delegation was to explore the potential for cooperation between the Academy and UTS, and Prof Liu expressed great interest in AAi’s RED business model. Read more here. | |||
Key Technology Partner Strengthens research collaboration Under the Key Technology Partner (KTP) scheme, Prof Yao Lu from the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) visited UTS in late December and was hosted by AAi’s Jian Zhang. Prof Lu is the Director of the Research Centre for Intelligent Computation. He has strong research achievements in the areas of image/video processing, object detection and tracking, face hallucination, video event analysis and neural network. During his visit, he gave an AAi Seminar presentation on the topic of Abrupt Motion Tracking. Prof Lu has agreed to work with UTS to plan the creation of a dual degree program plan and an international collaboration project through the National Science Foundation in China. Assoc Prof Jian Zhang, from AAi, visited Shanghai University as a KTP Visiting Fellow from 6-23 January 2015. Hosted by Prof An Ping, Head of the Department of Electronic & Information Engineering at the Shanghai University, Assoc Prof Zhang and Prof An Ping have agreed to collaborate on project work related to public safety and security. Prof An Ping is a leading researcher in the area of video processing and coding at Shanghai University and collaborates closely with local government and industry. Read more here. | |||
Adversarial Data Science for Business Security Existing predictive methods mostly assume that data in the future will arise from the same underlying distributions as it has in the past. However in adversarial settings, future data might be deliberately constructed to maliciously increase the error rate of prediction models. A prominent example is email spam, where words and images are intelligently transformed to deceive spam filters. AAi data scientist and lecturer Dr Wei Liu is using game theory principles to solve adversarial learning problems in big data analytics. Dr Liu’s research takes the behaviour of potential adversaries into model training processes and produces learners that make robust predictions. His work provides business solutions that take proactive steps against fraudulent insurance claims, spam, fake product reviews, false service ratings, etc. Read more here | |||
Want to Get Ahead of the Field? As highlighted in our feature on the critical skills shortage, there is an increasing demand for people in all areas to gain an understanding of data analytics at a level appropriate to the individual. By taking advantage of AAi’s range of short courses, designed to develop the skills you need to get the most out of your organisation’s data, you can ensure that you’re ahead of the field in today’s highly competitive environment. Click here for information on upcoming courses. Our next course in the series is R Programming – Stage 1 on Wednesday 18 February, on the Broadway Campus. R is a very popular open source programming language for processing data that excels in statistics, visualisation and data analysis. Its most significant advantage is that there are now several thousand add-on packages that are available to perform specific analysis tasks, and the whole ecosystem is free of charge. To register, click here . Want to learn more? Read about more AAi short courses and 2015 Major International Data Science Events here . |