What we do

Distinguished Professor Jie Lu
Director, Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, University of Technology Sydney

VISION
To achieve excellence and innovation in sustainable and comprehensible artificial intelligence by developing powerful theoretical foundations, innovative technologies and application systems and by leading knowledge advancement which translates into significant social and economic impacts. 

About AAII

The Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII), led by Distinguished Professor Jie Lu AO, is Australia's largest research hub in the field of artificial intelligence. AAII, previously known as the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, was established in March 2017 at the UTS School of Computer Science in the Faculty of Engineering and IT. The research entity became an institute in August 2020, in recognition of its high-quality HDR outputs, broad research scope, and significant local and international collaboration.  

AAII currently has 35 academic staff (including 3 distinguished professors, 1 FTSE, 2 FIEEE, 2 IEEE and 2 highly cited researcher and 1 ARC Laureate), 10 postdoctoral associates, and more than 200 PhD students.  AAII core members have won 24 Australian Research Council (ARC) projects (including ARC Discovery, Linkage, Future Fellow and Discovery Early Career Research Awards) and 60 national and international industry projects.  Since its inception, AAII staff have published over 1300 papers, with over 500 of these in high reputational international journals. 

Furthermore, AAII core members have delivered more than 30 keynote presentations in national and international conferences, and AAII students have received more than ten best paper awards from leading journals and conferences, including national and international awards. The UTS School of Computer Science is ranked in the top 17 worldwide (ARWU), and AAII is a key contributor to this outstanding achievement.

As the biggest centre for Artificial Intelligence in Australia, AAII has a team of world class researchers undertaking programs in major fronts of Artificial Intelligence.

Distinguished Professor Jie Lu

AAII consists of 8 key research laboratories with three main research areas: fundamental research, technology transfer research, and applied research.

Fundamental Research

Computational Intelligence Deep Learning Transfer Learning Large-scale Graph Processing Concept Drift Reinforcement Learning Pattern Recognition

Probabilistic Machine Learning Big Dimensionality Neuromorphic Computing AI-Driven Software Security Analysis Computer Vision Explainable AI

Technology Transfer Research

Brain-Computer Interface Recommendation Systems Social Networks Social Robotics Decision Support Systems Cloud Computation

Blockchain Human Autonomy Team Bioinformatics Data Science and Visualisation Text Mining AI Privacy & Security Network Analytics

Applied Research

Health Care Financial Services Internet of Things Business Intelligence Logistics Transportation

Education Defence Marine Safety Property Food Weather prediction

The Growth of AAII: From Centre to Institute

In 2007, a collaboration of four main laboratories in intelligent systems became a tier-one Centre: the Centre for Intelligent Information Systems (CIIS). In 2008, with the addition of a new Quantum Computation laboratory, CIIS became the Centre for Quantum Computation & Intelligent Systems (QCIS).

With the rapid growth of AI research in early 2017, four AI-related labs from QCIS and the Computational Intelligence and Brain Computer Interface (CIBCI) centre established the Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CAI), which was officially launched in March 2017, then renamed as the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute in August 2020.