AIO Team

PROGRAM LEAD

Julian is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. Under his leadership, AIO collaborates with universities, policymakers, and civil society to develop evidence-based insights into the evolving online information landscape. Julian is a Board member of the Australian Communications Consumers Action Network (ACCAN), and an Advisory Board member of Humanitech, an initiative of the Australian Red Cross.

PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Amanda is the director of AIO at RMIT University and an Affiliate of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. She is a researcher, librarian, and project manager, she specialises in open knowledge, research infrastructure, digital systems, and public interest communication. She focuses on building research infrastructure, fostering open knowledge systems, and supporting ethical digital policy development.

RESEARCH LEAD, RMIT

Damiano is a Senior Lecturer and former DECRA Fellow at the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT University. His research areas are Information Retrieval (IR), Text Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). In particular, his research focuses on interactive IR, evaluation of information access systems, and responsible AI.

PARTNER LEAD, QUT

Dan is a Professor of Digital Communication in the School of Communication at QUT. His novel computational methods have improved our understanding of the nature of communication in medical consultations, conversations in aged care settings, television broadcast, social media, and newspaper reporting.

RESEARCH LEAD, QUT

Patrik Wikstrom is a Professor of Communication and Director of QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC). Most of his work over the past few years has been about how recommender systems shape the consumption and production of digital culture. He is a computational social scientist with a passion for developing computational tools and methods for fellow social science and humanities researchers. 

PARTNER LEAD, UQ

Nic is the Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and a Professor in the School of Communication and Arts at The University of Queensland. Nicholas’ research examines the algorithmic, promotional and participatory cultures of digital media platforms.

PARTNER LEAD, UNIMELB

Chris is a Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne. Prof Leckie has a strong interest in developing AI techniques for a variety of applications in telecommunications, such as cyber security, network management, fault diagnosis and the Internet-of-Things.

RESEARCH LEAD, UNIMELB

Shanika is a Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems and the Deputy Dean (Academic) in the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Melbourne. Her current research focuses on real-time analytics and data stream mining, with applications in Social Media Analytics and Autonomous Traffic Management.

RESEARCH LEAD, UNIMELB

Richard is the Professor of Applied Computing Systems in the School of Computing and Information Systems, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Melbourne. He established and leads the Melbourne eResearch Group and has been lead software engineer/architect on an extensive portfolio of national and international projects worth over $400m thus far at the university.

PARTNER LEAD, SWINBURNE

Anthony is a Professor in Media and Communication, and Deputy Director of the Social Innovation Research Institute at Swinburne University of Technology. He addresses digital inclusion and inequalities associated with technology adoption. His current work includes researching the social issues related to automation, machine vision and AI technologies, and the need for community led approaches to data and analytics.

PARTNER LEAD, DEAKIN

Matteo is an Associate Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University. His work spans social sciences, psychology, and data science, and he collaborates with colleagues across faculties to develop innovative methodologies and tools for addressing complex societal challenges, particularly related to online and offline hate.

RESEARCH LEAD, DEAKIN

Andrea is a Distinguished Professor in the fields of cultural heritage and museology at the Deakin University. She is also the Associate Dean Research for the Faculty of Arts and Education. Her experience informs the digitalisation of the cultural heritage and museum studies, that will translate to research support for GLAM and HASS researchers.

SENIOR DATA ENGINEER, QUT

Abdul specialises in data science, machine learning, and probabilistic models. With a PhD in Quantum Information Science, he researches computational methods and has industry and academic experience in development, IoT, data transformation, and teaching analysts at QUT.

DEVOPS SOFTWARE ENGINEER

With a strong background in AWS infrastructure automation, CI/CD, and cloud-native solutions, Anish brings invaluable expertise in optimising cloud resources, driving system stability, and streamlining application lifecycles.

RESEARCH TRAINING MANAGER, DEAKIN

Bogdan is leading the development of data science training for humanities and social science researchers. He has a PhD in Political Science from Griffith University and has published research on using computational analysis tools, machine learning, and large language models to generate event datasets and to analyse protests and how political regimes impact citizen participation.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER, UQ

Dan is a software developer at the University of Queensland. He is involved in supporting Abdul at The Australian Internet Observatory and actively contributes to various initiatives at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S). With a strong proficiency in web technologies, Dan is passionate about creating digital solutions that bridge the gap between data and decision-making.

RESEARCH ASSISTANT, RMIT

Futoon holds a PhD in Computer Science from RMIT University, Australia, where she developed cutting-edge deep learning methodologies to enhance sequence data modelling. Her work has been recognised through prestigious fellowships, including the DAAD AInet Fellowship for AI in Cyber-Physical Systems, and numerous awards for academic excellence and research impact.

PROJECT AND COMMS OFFICER, RMIT

Jigya completed her PhD in Information and Knowledge Management from Monash University. She specialises in the governance and ethics of technological solutions, along with streamlining data and records management within business information systems. Her industry experience spans from handling public relations of tech corporate clientele to working strategic comms and project management for non-profit community groups.

RESEARCH FELLOW, UQ

Lauren is completing a PhD at the University of Queensland. Her research considers how platform consumer cultures are structured by digital advertising, through an examination of alcohol promotion and online expression of drinking culture. Lauren draws on media, gender, and critical algorithm studies in her work, as well has her previous industry experience in marketing and advertising.

CLOUD ARCHITECT, UNIMELB

Luca is interested in innovative IT technologies and takes a holistic approach to software development, from the data up to the UX. He is currently working on his doctoral research about the application of Large Language Models to the geospatial domain at the University of Melbourne. His expertise is helpful for the API platform development for the national research infrastructure.

RESEARCH FELLOW, UQ

Luke is a Research Fellow in Digital Cultures & Societies at the University of Queensland. His wide-ranging work investigates the sociocultural impacts of digital cultures, from data infrastructures in Asia to platform labor and far-right radicalisation. Luke will be contributing research expertise on data visualisation and AI tools.

MANAGER - DIGITAL OBSERVATORY, QUT

Marissa is the Manager of the QUT Digital Observatory under the QUT Research Infrastructure. She holds a PhD in Business Information Systems, MBA from The University of Queensland Business School and MSc in Information Engineering from Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan.

SENIOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPER, QUT

Mat is a senior software developer and data scientist at the Queensland University of Technology. He received the post doctoral research fellowship at the Charles Darwin University, researching mobile technologies in indigenous communities for knowledge preservation. He specialises in prototype engineering and bleeding-edge technologies.

FULL STACK DEVELOPER, UQ

Michael Esteban is a senior software developer at the University of Queensland. Michael has extensive experience supporting interdisciplinary research projects. His interests include open source, electronics and education.

MACHINE LEARNING ENGINEER, UNIMELB

Mike has joined The University of Melbourne as an ML Engineer who will be assisting the technical team in creating the test environments for the national research infrastructure. He has strong research interests in anomaly detection and generative model trustworthiness and safety.

DATA GOVERNANCE MANAGER, SWINBURNE

Yong-Bin Kang is a senior data science research fellow at ADM+S at Swinburne University of Technology. With a PhD in AI from Monash University, his research is dedicated to advancing the responsible and impactful use of data and AI technologies to address complex societal challenges.

Jean is a Professor of Digital Media in the QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) and School of Communication at the Queensland University of Technology. She is the Associate Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) and a current member of the ARC College of Experts, and a Fellow of the International Communication Association, the Australian Academy of Humanities, and the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Nguyễn Hồng Hải Đăng is a Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne. She has been a Fox Fellow at Yale University and a Majority World Scholar at Yale Law School. Dang also serves as a media and technology expert on the International Panel for the Information Environment.

Ramon is a Professor of Digital Media at Swinburne University of Technology. A media industries researcher, he has a special interest in video distribution, and has written widely on piracy and informal media. Ramon’s current research projects investigate the cultural impacts of subscription streaming services and smart TVs in Australia.