Early Career Researchers

Hui Sheng Lim

  • Hui Sheng is a postdoctoral researcher focusing on the development of autonomous marine systems to support sustained marine observations under CSIRO’s Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform project. Hui Sheng specialises in engineering and computational research in the maritime sector. His research work aims to extend the development and optimization of AI for the operations of autonomous and manned marine systems. He is proficient in the modelling and simulation of marine vehicles and ocean environments. During his PhD studies, he focused on path planning and optimisation of autonomous underwater vehicles operating in high-risk and uncertain marine environments.
  • Dr Hui Sheng Lim is working on the “Autonomous Systems for Marine Observations” project under the supervision Andrew Filisettii and Dr Andreas Marouchos.

Jiasheng Su

  • Jiasheng Su is working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Pest Detection and Management Technologies under the Pest Management system group, and in the Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform (AS FSP) project. His main research interest lies in the development of innovative techniques for autonomous detection of pest infestations in fresh produce, which includes but is not limited to X-ray, Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Currently, his research focuses on understanding how changes in infected fruit influences CT signals/images to identify biomarkers for pest infestation, development of reconstruction algorithms for fast imaging, and implementing machine learning for automatic pest-infected detection.
  • Dr Jiasheng Su is working on the “Extending the limit of X-ray technologies; detection of biosecurity threats in agricultural produce” project under the supervision of Dr Maryam Yazdani.

Bryan Pi Ern Tee

  • Bryan is a postdoctoral researcher in the mineral resources X-ray team. His PhD project was on investigating low-energy (down to 0 eV) Auger electrons emitted after nuclear decays, through precise measurements and modelling. The aim of his PhD project was to utilise the Auger electrons for highly targeted cancer therapy. Bryan is currently working on developing a high-energy XRF technique to analyse the Au content in ore samples.
  • Dr Bryan Pi Ern Tee is working on the “X-Ray scattering” project under the supervision of Dr Brianna Ganly.

Mihiri Ekanayake

  • Mihiri Ekanayake is working as a Postdoctoral fellow in hyperspectral sensing under CSIRO’s Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform. Her research will be focused on developing new sensing-based methods to predict regionally significant distinctions in soil and agricultural products to verify the product origin and associated goods. Mihiri’s Ph.D. project title is “Plasma Assisted Nanomaterial Synthesis From Sustainable Sources”, which involved the synthesis of nanomaterials using plasma technology, characterisation and applications in CO2 capture, desalination and catalysis.
  • Dr Mihiri Ekanayake is working on the “Hyperspectral sensing” project under the supervision of Dr Nina Welti.

Moid (Muhammad) Sandhu

  • Moid Sandhu is a postdoctoral researcher working on the design and implementation of sensing technologies for human centric applications, in particular, for elderly care. Previously, he completed his PhD in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering from the University of Queensland. During his PhD, Dr. Sandhu worked on smart wearable IoT devices for human activity, fitness and health monitoring applications. He developed a novel mechanism for human activity recognition which can enable the self-powered and autonomous operation of wearable IoT devices without the requirement of any external energy source alleviating the need for human intervention. He has published several research papers in various well-reputed peer-reviewed international journals and conferences. His research interests include eHealth, wearables, IoT, pervasive computing and embedded machine learning. Dr. Sandhu was awarded a Gold Medal and Academic Roll of Honor for his outstanding performance during his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering, in 2012.
  • Dr Moid Sandhu is working on the “Internet of robotic things for smart aging” project under the supervision of Dr David Silvera.

Tian Cong

  • Tian Cong is a postdoctoral fellow in the Mineral Resources Business Unit working in the science, geoscience and algorithms team. Her PhD project was about statistical reasoning analysis of fault occurrences in industrial applications. Currently, Tian’s research is supported by CSIRO’s Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform. She will be focusing on extracting actional insights from multi-sensor data to support end-users to make decisions with more confidence. The research outcomes will benefit multiple disciplines, such as the marine science domain and the mining and aquaculture industries.
  • Dr Tian Cong is work on the “Communicating qualitative uncertainty in multi-sensor data” project under the supervision of Dr Neil Francis.

Tarun Sanders

  • Tarun Sanders is a postdoctoral fellow under CSIRO’s Autonomous Sensing Future Science Platform. His work will focus on developing a low cost, in situ optical sensor for detection of various water quality parameters. This work is part of the AquaWatch mission for developing an in situ sensor network for the monitoring of water quality in Australia. Tarun’s previous Ph.D. project in University of Western Australia involved advancing coherent optical fibre bundle technology for imaging applications in the visible (VIS) to short-wave infrared (SWIR) range.
  • Dr Tarun Sanders is working on “In Situ Water Quality Sensor Development” project under the supervision of Tim Malthus, and Stephen Gensemer.

Mickey Wang

  • Mickey Wang is a postdoctoral fellow in the space optics manufacturing team. His research is focused on developing high-altitude pseudo-satellite optical sensing systems for agricultural and horticulture surveillance. Mickey came from an agricultural science background with a focus on plant science. Mickey worked in various agricultural and horticultural sectors after his Master’s degree. In 2010, he started work in a fully automated vegetable nursery as a technical officer in charge of water and potting mix quality and monitoring plant health. Mickey was involved in a soil amendment research project in the NSW Department of Primary Industry as a technician in 2013, which aimed to assess the benefits and risks of applying the compost made from municipal waste to farmlands. Mickey started work for South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) in 2016 as a technical officer. The role involved various research projects, including water stress detection in grapevines with thermal sensing technology, assessing water use efficiency with UAV (drones), and irrigation trials for almond trees. Mickey is passionate about remote sensing, UAVs, and optical sensing technology. He believes the technologies have great potential for crop surveillance. In 2019, Mickey decided to pursue further knowledge and skills by doing a Ph.D. in the remote sensing area. His Ph.D. research topic was using low-altitude remote sensing hyperspectral images for grapevine virus disease detection.
  • Dr Mickey Wang is working on a ‘Pseudo-satellite remote sensing instrumentation for the agriculture’ project under the supervision of Dr Stephen Gensemer.

Renuka Sharma

  • Renuka is a CERC postdoctoral fellow in the Data61 team at CSIRO Brisbane. She has completed her joint-PhD from Monash University (Dept of Data Science & AI), Melbourne and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT, Dept of Computer Science and Engineering), Mumbai. Her PhD thesis focused on anomaly detection in images using various one-class and multi-class learning based approaches for computer vision. During her PhD, Renuka also worked with the Woodside Future Lab to automate the task of corrosion detection in images to alleviate the loss incurred by the corrosion industry. Renuka has a Master’s degree from IIT Roorkee in Computer Science and Engineering and has conducted work experience for two years as a Systems Engineer. Renuka is an explorer and loves sharing ideas on topics of interest.
  • Dr Renuka Sharma is working on the “Accelerating deployment of intelligent sensor platforms” project under the supervision of Dr Reza Arablouei.

Larissa Huston

  • Larissa Huston is a postdoctoral researcher in the Magnetic Resonance Development Team in the Sensing and Sorting Program at CSIRO Minerals Resources, and in the Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform. Her research involves developing electromagnetic sensing techniques for the detection of minerals. Larissa completed a PhD in Physics at the Australian National University. She also completed a postdoctoral appointment at Los Alamos National Laboratory prior to joining CSIRO.
  • Dr Larissa Huston is working on the “Non-linear Electromagnetics for Real-Time Materials Detection” project under the supervision of Peter Coghill.

Shahbaz Khan

  • Shahbaz is an Early Research Career Postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO. His research is focused on the development of autonomous hydrogen gas sensors for safety applications in naturally occurring hydrogen gas sites under CSIRO’s Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform project. Shahbaz has more than 7 years of research and development experience in low-dimensional electronic devices, sensors and solar cells.
  • Dr Shahbaz Khan is working on the “Development of autonomous hydrogen gas sensors for safety applications in naturally occurring hydrogen gas sites” project under the supervision of Dr Ema Frery.

Bin Qian

  • Bin Qian’s Ph.D work was centred around design, synthesis and evaluation of a library of coumarin based organic molecular fluorophores and their nano-composites as optical sensors for the selective sensing of Cu(II) contaminants in water and soil extracts. The aim of his study was to understand the structural requirement for selective and sensitive sensing Cu(II) on site.
  • Dr Bin Qian is working on the “Development of sensing methods for detecting contamination in shallow regolith” project under the supervision of John Rayner.

Asma Akther

  • Asma is a postdoctoral researcher focusing on developing In-situ optical sensors for measuring water quality under the Space Optics Manufacturing and the Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform (AS- FSP) project. Her research interest lies in the development of low-cost optical sensors for the Aquawatch Australian Mission. She is a motivated researcher with broad experience developing miniaturized sensors and actuators along with microfabrication and characterization of sound waves-based devices. Asma has recently completed her PhD from RMIT University, Melbourne and move to Adelaide to start her early research career with CSIRO.
  • Dr Asma Akther is working on the project of “Low-cost optical sensor for monitoring water quality” under the supervision of Dr Stephen Gensemer.

Anand Kumar

  • Anand is a CERC postdoctoral fellow in the Environment Business Unit and the Autonomous Sensor Future Science Platform (AS-FSP). Anand has recently submitted his PhD thesis and started his early research career at CSIRO. Before joining CSIRO’s AS-FSP, during his PhD candidature, Anand worked in an interdisciplinary discovery project to unravel the complex ion-specific behaviour at various liquid surfaces employing neutral impact collision ion scattering and synchrotron-based X-ray absorption and reflectivity techniques. Anand was awarded the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE) postgraduate research award and the International travelling fellowship from BankSA and Flinders University to conduct research at the Australian synchrotron and the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Lab, Illinois.
  • Dr Anand Kumar is working on the shallow regolith contaminants project under the supervision of John Rayner.

Skylar Yao

  • Xinyue (Skylar) Yao is working as a postdoctoral fellow in National Collections and Marine Infrastructure (NCMI) unit. Currently, she is working on the Underwater Mesh Networks project in Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform. Her Ph.D. project was on structural health monitoring using acoustic emission testing on metallic materials. Her research interests include acoustic signal processing and structural health monitoring.
  • Dr Skylar Yao is work on “Micro-power underwater mesh networks” project under the supervision of Dr Jacques Malan.

Wayne Dillon

  • Wayne Dillon is a postdoctoral researcher in the Ocean Carbon Sensing project within the Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform (AS FSP). His PhD (University of Otago, New Zealand) aimed at increasing capacity to monitor the impacts of oceanic carbon uptake through the development of new optical fibre-based sensor technology and the development of embedded systems for autonomous sensor applications. His research at CSIRO intends to develop automated and improved quality control methods for deployable marine biogeochemical sensors, thereby enabling significant reductions in the size, cost, and complexity of moored sensor systems and providing greater capacity to determine ocean uptake of CO2 and the impact of ocean acidification on marine life on both global and regional scales.
  • Dr Wayne Dillon is working within the Ocean Carbon Observations team under the supervision of Dr Elizabeth Shadwick and Dr Erik Van Ooijen.

Galen Leir-Taha

  • Galen is currently a CERC fellow and is part of the Autonomous Sensors Future Science Platform. He recently completed a Master of Applied Science degree at the University of Toronto, in which he researched harvesting energy from ocean currents for powering moored sensors. As part of this research, he designed, built, and tested a metre-scale moored underwater turbine. Prior to that, Galen completed a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, also at the University of Toronto. Within this degree, he chose solid mechanics and mechatronics specializations, and was also significantly involved in a design team that each year built and raced a single-person off-road vehicle. Additionally, during and between these degrees, he worked in the R&D department at a medical device manufacturer.
  • Galen is working on the “Autonomous systems for marine observations” project under the supervision of Andrew Filisetti.

Reem (E.Mohamed) Sherif

  • Reem Sherif is a CSIRO Early Research Career (CERC) post-doctoral fellow within a Future Science Platform (FSP). She is working on networking aspects in the underwater mesh networking project at the Hobart site. She received her B.Sc. in Communication and Information Engineering, with honors, then an M.Sc. in Electrical Communications from Mansoura University. She completed her PhD. at the School of Engineering and Information Technology (SEIT) at University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Canberra. Her research interest includes the application of artificial intelligence in dynamic systems and Cognitive Radio Networks, as well as Wireless Networks.
  • Dr Reem Sherif is working on the “Micro-power underwater mesh networks” project under the supervision of Dr Jacques Malan.

Jack Webster

  • Jack Webster is a postdoctoral researcher, specialising in the field of X-ray Physics. During the course of his PhD Jack developed a prototype analyser capable of measuring toxic elements in food, water, and soil down to parts per billion concentrations through the use of X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray optics. Apart from this, Jack also worked on a separate prototype analyser that can measure X-rays at high-energy resolutions. Currently, Jack is focusing on developing advanced prototype analyzers that utilise the measurement techniques X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) simultaneously to measure and map mineral samples in both terrestrial and lunar environments. In addition, Jack is also working on a prototype analyser that can measure low Z elements using X-ray fluorescence, with specific applications in the mining industry.
  • Dr Jack Webster is working on the XRF/XRD/LIBS project and the Low Z Elements project under the supervision of Dr Brianna Ganly.