Research opportunities

The Centre for Innovation in IT Services and Applications (iNEXT) seeks students interested in addressing the following focus areas:

  • next-generation IT services and applications
  • tackling missing and limiting characteristics of the current Internet, namely mobility, security, quality of service, collaboration, and service enabling on demand
  • developing enabling mechanisms that will allow the transformation of the current connectivity infrastructure into the service infrastructure of tomorrow's Internet.

iNEXT students will undertake innovative solutions for the next generation Internet and its applications with emphasis on m-commerce, m-health, and visual information processing.

Research Program (Seminars)

Service enabling mechanisms for next generation Internet service infrastructure

This program tackles comprehensively the core problems with the current Internet, namely mobility, security, service on-demand, and quality of service for breakthrough, next-generation Internet applications. The success of this program has been confirmed with the support of four ARC grants (three Discovery and a small ARC), one UTS Incentive grant and two Research Infrastructure grants. The program has produced two postdocs, five PhDs and three Masters and over 50 DEST publications in international journal and conferences.

Assistive healthcare infrastructure and m-health applications

This program has focused on developing a sensor/actor grid for assistive healthcare over the last 1.5 years. The program also aims to develop mobile health monitoring systems for elderly, pregnant women and at-risk people. Our research was recently rewarded with an ARC Discovery for 2007-2009 and a UTS Challenge grant for 2007.

Advanced video surveillance systems

This program has developed video surveillance systems of advanced conception for high-end security applications by using innovative algorithms and camera networks. The program has attracted one ARC DP 2004-2006 and one ARC LP 2006-2008, one UTS REG, one AusIndustry grant and produced a large number of high quality publications including journals such as IEEE T-PAMI.

Information visualisation for network, business intelligence and surveillance applications

This program focuses on defining innovative methods and systems for several areas of information visualisation, including: large-scale data visualisation, surveillance, software visualisation and program understanding, visualization of associated data attributes, visual web data mining, and visual user interfaces. This program has been awarded an ARC DP and several other grants.

Image processing and analysis on innovative architectures

This program focuses on the application of spiral and hexagonal architectures for improved pixel mapping and topological properties and explores several application domains such as video compression, face and signature recognition, in-vehicle road sign detection and number-plate recognition. This program has attracted an ARC DP led by an ECR and several other grants

Student Support

iNEXT provides an excellent support framework for its research students with a team of active, experienced supervisors and necessary equipment for a wide range of research projects.

The iNEXT research centre has four state-of-the-art laboratories for conducting experiments. Academic Staff, PhD and Masters students use these facilities to build prototypes and conduct experiments.

  • The networking lab is located in Building 10.4.240 and houses equipment for experimenting with network and router-related research. State-of-the-art equipment includes: Nortel Passports 8600 series routers, Norte Accelar 1100 series routers, Alteon Web Switch, Alteon SSL Accelerator, Red-M Bluetooth/GPRS server (Red-Access), an IBM Blade Server (with eight servers), e-health Server and various wireless routers interconnected into an ARN intranet.
  • The ubiquitous lab in Building 10 CS department comprises of equipment for mobile ubiquitous computing experiments. State-of-the-art equipment includes mobile devices, Bluetooth networks, WiFi networks, wireless medical sensors, Mote sensors and servers.
  • The computer vision and image processing lab is located in Building 10.4.419 and hosts equipment for image and video acquisition and analysis: three servers with large file storage and camera drivers, two Sony XCD-X710CR cameras, one high-resolution Basler camera and one high-frame rate Basler camera; plus tripods, illuminators, and various lenses. The lab is soon to be expanded by a dedicated surveillance lab.
  • The information visualisation lab currently is equipped with a number of large display devices to conduct an ARC discovery project, and a Capital Market CRC project in visual analytics of financial data. It will soon be equipped with multimodal interaction devices, multimedia equipments, user interface equipment to facilitate the ongoing and coming visualisation projects.

Further information

On applying to study at UTS as a postgraduate research student:

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.