Our Staff

Leadership team

Dr Surya Nepal | Group Leader and Senior Principal Research Scientist, Cybersecurity and Quantum Systems, Theme Leader Cyber Security CRC

  • Dr Surya Nepal is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61 and leads the Critical Infrastructure Protection and Resilience (CIPR) Mission. He has been working at CSIRO since 2000. His main research interest is in the development and implementation of technologies in the area of cybersecurity. He obtained his Bachelor of Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Surat, India; his Master of Engineering . from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand; and his PhD from RMIT University, Australia. He has more than 300 publications to his credit. Many of his works are published in top international journals and conferences such as IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, NDSS, ASIA CCS, RAID, WWW, ACM MM, VLDB, ICDE, ICWS, SCC, CoopIS, ICSOC, IEEE Transactions on Service Computing, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, ACM Transaction on Internet Technology, IEEE Transactions on Computers, Communications of the ACM and ACM Computing Survey. Some of his papers have received the best paper award at international conferences. Dr Nepal has received several publications and invention awards at CSIRO. Dr Nepal currently leads the Cybersecurity and Quantum System (CQS) group at CSIRO’s Data61, comprising over 50 research staff and over 50 research students, conducting research in different security aspects, including quantum-resilient and quantum AI/Algorithm and Software. He is a co-inventor of 6 patents in web services and security and has edited three books and several conference proceedings. Dr Nepal serves as program chair and committee member in many international conferences and workshops. He has delivered talks/tutorials/keynotes on trusted distributed systems in national and international avenues. He also serves as an editorial board member of IEEE Transactions on Service Computing, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, ACM Transactions on Internet Technology and Frontiers in Big Data: Cybersecurity and Privacy. He also holds the deputy research director of the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), a conjoint professor position at UNSW Sydney and an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney.
  • Contact: Link
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID |Google Scholar
  • Tags: Data Encryption | Computer System Security | Software Engineering | Database Management | Distributed and Grid Systems

Dr Dongxi Liu | Principal Research Scientist, Sciences Lead

  • Dongxi’s research focuses on developing novel security algorithms, protocols, and architectures for enabling new secure systems or enhancing security of widely-deployed systems. His work has covered the following areas: encrypted data management in cloud computing, IoT device authentication and management, new blockchain protocol, post-quantum security.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Applied Cryptography | Blockchain | IoT-Cloud Security | Programming Languages | Formal Methods
  • Highlight: EnerID blockchain aims to democratise the blockchain technique across every corner of the world; every one with a web browser, regardless of their (computing) power or wealth (stake), is able to create new blocks, recording their daily information or transactions into the tamper-resistant EnerID blockchain.

Dr Jason Xue | Senior Research Scientist, Supervisor

  • Jason Xue is a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61, Australia. His current research interests are machine learning security and privacy, system and software security, and Internet measurement. He is the recipient of the ACM CCS Best Paper Award Runner-Up, ACM SIGSOFT distinguished paper award, Best Student Paper Award, and the IEEE best paper award, and his work has been featured in the mainstream press, including The New York Times, Science Daily, PR Newswire, Yahoo, The Australian Financial Review, and The Courier. He currently serves on the Program Committees of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2023, ACM CCS 2022, USENIX Security 2022, NDSS 2022, and ACM ICSE 2023. He is a member of both ACM and IEEE.
  • Address:  KINTORE, SA 5000, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications:  Google Scholar
  • Tags: AI Security and Privacy | Mobile Privacy | System Security | Software Security | Internet Measurement

Dr Kristen Moore | Senior Research Scientist, Supervisor

  • Kristen is a Senior Research Scientist at Data61 and the Cyber Security CRC, working on cyber deception. Previously she was employed as a data scientist at Telstra and Gro Intelligence, where she worked on a broad range of domains and use cases. She completed her PhD in geometric analysis at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. Her broad research interests are in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
  • Contact: Link
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Cyber Deception | Machine Learning | Data Science

Dr Marthie Grobler | Principal Research Scientist, Team Leader

  • Dr Marthie Grobler is a Principal Research Scientist in human-centred cybersecurity at CSIRO’s Data61 and is the Deputy Mission Lead of the Critical Infrastructure Protection and Resilience Mission. Marthie’s research focus is on enhancing the usability of security solutions by considering human factors, with a strong interest in executive education, cybersecurity governance and critical infrastructure resilience and protection. Marthie spearheaded the establishment of the original human-centric security research team in CSIRO, which focuses on addressing the alignment and integration of human factors in the cyber domain to enhance security adoption and efficiency. Her research, management and consulting experience span multiple continents, national and state government departments, and a variety of domains linked with the digital domain. Marthie is keen to meet potential collaborators/co-authors, people interested to share a story/presentation with her team, or motivated PhD candidates with a keen interest in human-centric security.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID |Google Scholar |Loop |ResearchGate |Publons |DBLP
  • Tags: : Human-centric cybersecurity | Human factors and cybersecurity| Cybersecurity governance | Online risk resilience | Critical infrastructure protection and resilience
  • Highlight: I might be working with executives in the morning playing one of our in-house developed cyber games, and then in the afternoon join forces with senior stakeholders working on solving the protection and resilience challenges in the critical infrastructure space. There is never a dull moment when you work with people and security!

Dr Mohan Baruwal Chhetri | Principal Research Scientist, Supervisor

  • Mohan is an experienced researcher interested in developing intelligent solutions to facilitate decision support, decision automation and decision optimisation in cyber-physical-social ecosystems. Some notable examples of his research work include decision automation/optimisation for cloud cost management, enterprise-level decision support for cloud migration and automated performance benchmarking of cloud infrastructure. At CSIRO’s Data61, his research is focused on all things related to human-centric cyber security.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID |Google Scholar |ResearchGate |DBLP
  • Tags: Human Centric Cyber Security | Distributed AI | Decision Support | Decision Automation | Decision Optimisation | Autonomic Computing | Distributed Systems

Dr Muhammad Ejaz Ahmed | Senior Research Scientist, Supervisor

  • Ejaz is a Senior Research Scientist and serves as the Supervisor of the Automated Security research team. In 2014, he received his PhD degree from Kyung Hee University in South Korea. Ejaz’s current research interests lie at the intersection of cybersecurity and AI, with a focus on automating security tasks with minimal human intervention. Specifically, he is actively engaged in research areas such as software security, program analysis, malware/ransomware behavioral analysis, reverse engineering malware, and applied machine learning. Ejaz’s research on ransomware detection and continuous authentication has gained significant recognition and has been featured in prominent tech articles, including Bloomberg and ZDNET. He also holds the position of Honorary Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar |ORCID
  • Tags: Software Security | AI and Cybersecurity | Automation | Malware Analysis | Applied Machine Learning
  • Highlight: I’m passionate about investigating challenging research problems and doing impactful research that could benefit others. ‘The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly but one can think deeply and be quite insane.’, Nikola Tesla.

Dr Seyit Camtepe | Principal Research Scientist, Team Leader

  • Seyit is a principal research scientist at CSIRO’s Data61 leading the Autonomous Security and Software Security team. He is passionate about discovering unusual solutions to challenging cybersecurity problems with a specific focus on pervasive security. Seyit is a recipient of CSIRO’s prestigious Julius Career Award (2018) for his work on compression encryption. He was the first to introduce design theory in cryptographic key management, and to develop sandbox for dynamic analysis of Android malware. He was among the first to inform society about Android malware outbreak, and to realise the model-to-data paradigm in computing to enable research on data in captivity. Seyit received a PhD degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, USA, in 2007. From 2007 to 2013, he was with the TU-Berlin, Germany, as a senior researcher and research group leader in security. Seyit worked for five years as an ECARD lecturer at the QUT, Australia.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID |Google Scholar
  • Tags: Autonomous Security | Software Security | Malicious Cryptography | Pervasive Security
  • Highlight: I find the work at Data61 exciting and significantly motivational as we collaborate with the best academics and students in their respective fields using a wide range of services and resources, do innovative research to solve risky and challenging real-life problems and develop research outputs into mature solutions.

Dr Sharif Abuadbba | Senior Research Scientist, Team Leader

  • Alsharif (Sharif) Abuadbba is a Senior Research Scientist and Team Leader of Distributed Systems Security at CSIRO’s Data61. He received his Ph.D. from RMIT University, Australia.  He has previously worked with California-based technology company AgilePQ Inc as a senior R&D engineer and contributed to a number of US IP patents in the area of cybersecurity. He cofounded EyeCura Pty Ltd, a cybersecurity startup, which now has three online products on IOS, and Google Play used by +10K users. His research impact also includes 40+ publications in many prestigious CORE A conferences and journals such as IEEE S&P, NDSS, ACM AsiaCCS, ICDCS, ESORICS, ACSAC, and IEEE TIFS. He is a regular reviewer at IEEE TIFS, IEEE TDSC, and IEEE TSC.
  • Publications: ORCID |Google Scholar
  • Tags: Artificial Intelligence &  Cybersecurity | Big Data Privacy and Cloud Security | Internet of Things (IoT) | Cryptography | Watermarking
  • Highlight: I enjoy working at CSIRO’s Data61 because we are solving real-life problems that positively impact broader public good. We also have the opportunity to collaborate with the best research’s and students to solve critical research challenges collaboratively.

Dr Usman Muhammad | Principal Research Scientist, Team Leader

  • Dr Muhammad Usman is a Team Leader and Principal Staff Member at CSIRO’s Data61 which is Australia National Research Organisation. He has completed his PhD from Purdue University USA and has over 15 years of research and teaching experience in the field of quantum computing with a track-record of over 85 research papers in high-impact international journals and conference proceedings. At CSIRO, Dr Usman is leading a team of over 20 researchers working at the forefront of quantum algorithms, quantum software engineering, and quantum security. He serves on the executive editorial boards of two international journals published by the Institute of Physics UK, an executive member of the Australian Institute of Physics, a committee member of Standards Australia to help in standardisation of quantum technologies and have honorary Associate Professor positions at the University of Melbourne and Monash University. Dr Usman is the chair of organising committee of an international conference on quantum machine learning, has delivered numerous invited talks in international conferences and has been on several panel discussions at national and international meetings. He was nominated as Innovative of the Year 2023 Award by Defence Industry, Winner of the Australian Army Quantum Technology Challenges at the Chief of Army Symposiums in three years in a row (2021, 2022 and 2023), Rising Stars in Computational Materials Science by Elsevier in 2020, and Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research (Early Career) at the University of Melbourne in 2019. Dr Usman is recipient of prestigious international research fellowships from Fulbright USA (2005-2010) and DAAD Germany in 2010. He is a passionate quantum educator and has been promoting quantum education among school children as part of the CSIRO’s STEM Scientists in Schools program.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID |Google Scholar
  • Tags: Quantum Software | Quantum Algorithms | Quantum Processor Design | Quantum Security
  • Highlight: I am a passionate STEM educator and has been promoting science education among school children as part of the CSIRO’s STEM Scientists in Schools program.

Dr Gareth Parker | Senior Principal Research Scientist, Strategy

  • Dr Gareth Parker is a Senior Principal Research Scientist within Data61, with responsibilities for leading research strategies around Defence and cyber security.  From 2012 until June 2023 Gareth was the Defence (DSTG) Research Leader for Cyber and Signals Intelligence, a role which blended leadership in both S&T capability and the Defence and National Security program. Gareth led the Next Generation Technologies Fund (NGTF) Cyber theme since its inception in 2016 until mid-2022.  A key NGTF Cyber partner has been CSIRO’s Data61 and Gareth spent three months seconded to Data61 in late 2016 to build that relationship. The principal international S&T engagement within Defence is the ‘The Technical Cooperation Program’ (TTCP) and Gareth was Australian’s representative on the Command, Control, Communications, Cyber and Intelligence (C4I) Group from 2018 to 2021.  That Group was re-established following the success of the 2015-17 TTCP ‘Cyber Strategic Challenge’, an initiative of the TTCP Principals to bring a new sense of focus, urgency and impact to the TTCP community in key areas, including cyber. Gareth was the Australian lead on the Challenge in its latter years. The Challenge comprised three activities: Trustworthy Systems; Mission Assurance and Situational Awareness; and Electromagnetic Cyber, for which Gareth was the founding leader. During 2019 Gareth was temporarily appointed to the role of Program Leader Science Strategy and Policy, and in that role led the development and production of the 2020 More, Together Defence S&T strategy. Gareth graduated with an honours degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Adelaide in 1990 and was awarded a PhD from the University of South Australia in 2001 for his thesis entitled ‘Frequency Domain Restoration of Communications Signals’. He completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School in 2017.  Gareth has published and presented in communications signal processing and cyber.  He is committed to strengthening National S&T capabilities through collaboration and is particularly passionate about growing a strong and enduring Cyber capability in Australia.
  • Address: ADELAIDE, SA 5000, AUSTRALIA

Project Manager

Ms Regine Richelle | Project Manager

  • Regine’s career has been devoted to Training and Education in all shape and forms, taking care of staff, project management, operations, grants and academic management, training development and assessment, and stakeholder engagement particularly with academia, public sector and national security agencies.
  • Address: ADELAIDE, SA 5000, AUSTRALIA
  • Highlight: Professionally, I’m driven by my passion for team work. Nothing makes me happier than supporting a team to achieve great goals, especially teams composed of diverse and talented individuals, as you can find here at Data61. Also, I particularly enjoy driving innovation and continuous improvement.

Staff Team CYSA

Chandra Thapa | Senior Research Scientist

  • Chandra Thapa is a research scientist at CSIRO Data61. He completed his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2018 from the University of Newcastle, Australia. His expertise is in privacy-preserving distributed machine learning, e.g., splitfed learning, and machine learning applications in cybersecurity, such as network security. His research interests encompass various areas, including (1) strengthening the security aspects of distributed systems, particularly in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT) applications, (2) enhancing the resilience of machine learning algorithms to ensure robustness and defense against attacks, and (3) exploring the realms of quantum machine learning and its implications for cybersecurity.
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Distributed Machine Learning | Cybersecurity | Data Security and Privacy | Quantum Machine Learning | Network Information Theory

Dr Derui (Derek) Wang | Research Scientist

  • Derui (Derek) Wang received his bachelor’s degree from Huazhong University of Science & Technology (HUST), China. He obtained his doctoral degree jointly from CSIRO’s Data61 and Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. He is currently a research scientist in CSIRO’s Data61. His primary research interest resides in the joint distribution of adversarial robustness verification, neural backdoors, and real-world security & privacy issues of machine learning systems. He publishes papers in top journals and conferences, such as IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), and The Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium.

Dr Geoff Jarrad | Senior Data Scientist, Senior Research Engineer

  • Geoff is a senior data scientist and research engineer in CSIRO Data61’s Cybersecurity Automation and Orchestration team, involved with research and software engineering for AI Security. He has a long-term background in statistical machine learning, reasoning under uncertainty, and applied decision support systems. Currently, Geoff is working on Threat Hunting projects using AI/ML to automatically detect attacks on computer systems. Previous projects include: the detection of role/access conflicts for identity and access management (IAM) within the Australian banking system; and development on the StellarGraph ML library for data science approaches to anti-money laundering, spammer detection and other graph-analytic problems.
  • Address: ADELAIDE, SA 5000, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID | Research Gate
  • Tags: Reasoning Under Uncertainty | Statistical Machine Learning | Decision Support Systems | Graph Analytics
  • Highlight: I enjoy mathematical and computational modelling of general problems from a wide variety of fields. My particular passion is developing and implementing probabilistic models for machine learning to provide decision support for solving real-world problems.

Dr Hongsheng Hu | Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Hongsheng is a post-doctoral research fellow within CSIRO’s Data61. Hongsheng did his PhD at The University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research focuses on AI privacy and security, especially membership inference attacks and distributed systems security.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Machine Learning Privacy | Membership Inference Attacks | Data Provenance and Protection

Hua Ma | CERC Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Hua Ma was a Ph.D student at the University of Adelaide and is currently a CERC fellow located
    in the Marsfield site, Data61, Sydney. Her research interests are Machine Learning Security and
    Optimization.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar

Dr Junda Lu | Research Engineer

  • Junda Lu is a Research Engineer at CSIRO’s Data61. He received his PhD from the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where he developed a profound expertise in AI and Security. Following his PhD, he further honed his skills as a postdoctoral fellow at Macquarie University. His research interests include Malware Detection, Adversarial Machine Learning, Security and Privacy, and Information Retrieval.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Junda Lu – ‪Google Scholar
  • Tags: Adversarial Machine Learning | AI Security, Security and Privacy | Deep Learning | Information Retrieval
  • Highlight: ‘I am excited to work in CSIRO’s Data61, where I collaborate with talented researchers on valuable projects, publish high-level research papers and address real-world problems.’

Mr Leo Ly | Research Engineer

  • Leo is a software engineer in the cyber security team at Data61. He joined CSIRO with expectations to partake in developing novel technologies against cyber security risks. He completed his Bachelor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Queensland. During his undergraduate studies, he became one of the founding members and IP holder of a tech start-up, where he served as the lead software engineer. The start-up’s focus is on optimising the efficiency of large-scale solar farms while reducing operational costs. As of early 2023, the start-up has been valued at 3 million AUD. Leo’s background includes developing new technologies for both research and commercial purposes. He has experience in research and development (R&D), operations and maintenance (O&M), and collaborating with industry partners, venture capitalists, and investors.
  • Highlight: ‘Leo’s philosophy has always been aligned with creating a sustainable and positive societal impact.’

Dr Masooma Iftikhar | Research Associate

  • Masooma Iftikhar is a Research Associate at Data61, CSIRO. She holds a Ph.D. degree in computer science at the Australian National University, Australia, with the thesis titled “Privacy-Preserving Data Publishing”. Her research interests include private data analytics, privacy risk and vulnerability assessment in data, cyber security automation, privacy preserving techniques for data integration, mining, and publishing. Her publications span various top data science journals and conferences such as EDBT and PAKDD. Prior to her PhD study, she received a MS degree in Computer Sciences from University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore, Pakistan, and M.Sc. IT from Punjab University College of Information Technology (PUCIT), Pakistan. She also worked as a Software and Quality Assurance Engineer at i2c Software Solutions for a year and had five years of experience working in academics as a Lecturer IT at Institute of the Business Administration University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
  • Address: BLACK MOUNTAIN, ACT 2601, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Data Analytics | Privacy Risk and Vulnerability Assessment | Cyber Security Automation
  • Highlight: ‘I am enthusiastic about studying interesting research problems and contributing towards science and innovation.’

Mr Michael Robinson | Graduate Fellow

  • Michael is a multifaceted individual with a strong background in physical science, programming, and finance. He graduated from Macquarie University with a double degree in Science, specializing in Physics, and Commerce, with a focus on Finance. He further pursued Physics at the University of Sydney (Usyd), earning First Class Honours in the Bachelor of Advanced Studies.  With a passion for problem-solving and a drive to enhance data security for Australians and business at large, he brings a robust set of skills and experience to his role.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Highlight: ‘I’d like to have a positive impact on the wellbeing of people throughout Australia and across the globe!  Knowing the awesome potential of quantum computing and AI, the time for competent action has never been more pressing.’

Mr Minjune Kim | Research Engineer

  • Minjune is a research engineer at CSIRO’s Data61. Before joining CSIRO, he was a Ph.D. candidate in cybersecurity at the University of Queensland (UQ), Brisbane, Australia. Also, he worked for Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Suwon, South Korea as a senior software engineer for over 10 years. He had performed many embedded SW projects such as IGNIS from a scratch which provided 1000 thermal cameras for Korean firefighters in 2017, Samsung Connect app on Android (500M+ download), and a location framework in TIZEN as the 1st contributor. His research interests are (i) Moving Target Defence; (ii) Network security; (iii) Human Centric Security; (iv) Security in IoT; and (v) Location-based services.
  • Address: Dutton Park, QLD 4102, Australia
  • Publications: Orcid | Google Scholar
  • Tags: Autonomous Security | Network Security | Moving Target Defence | Software Defined Networking | Location Based Service

Mr Mohammed Bahutair | Research Scientist

  • Mohammed is a research scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. He holds a bachelor and masters degree in Computer Engineering. His research interests include cyber security, machine learning, Internet of Things, and trust.
  • Address:  MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Cyber Security | Machine Learning | Internet of Things

Dr Rayne Holland | CERC Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Rayne is a postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO’s Data61. They received their PhD from the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne. Dr Holland’s current research interests include mobile network security, software supply chain security, distributed machine learning, Oblivious RAM and differential privacy. Outside of the field of security and privacy, their research interests include succinct data structures and data streaming algorithms.
  • Publications: ORCID 0000-0001-6661-8258
  • Tags: Distributed Machine Learning | Differential Privacy | Oblivious RAM | Succinct Data Structures

Ruoxi Sun | University of Adelaide

  • Ruoxi Sun is a PhD candidate of School of Computer Science at the University of Adelaide. His research focuses on the privacy and security of the Android platform, including the first comprehensive study on Android contact tracing applications and a black-box syntax inference approach to fuzzing IoT firmware and Android companion applications, which has resulted in several security vulnerabilities disclosures to vendors with resulting positive feedback as well as the removal of offending apps from the Google Play Store.
  • Publications: ORCID 0000-0001-5404-8550 | Google scholar https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=Ei4jdwQAAAAJ
  • Tags: Cybersecurity | Mobile Privacy | Machine Learning Security
  • Highlight: Identifying a problem is often harder than solving it.

Dr Sajal Halder | Research Technician

    • Dr. Sajal Halder, a research technician at Data61, CSIRO, specializes in combating supply chain attacks through advanced data gathering systems and innovative methodologies for open-source software vulnerability detection. With a rich background spanning four universities and a multinational corporation, he has excelled as a lecturer, researcher, and project supervisor, consistently delivering impactful tech solutions within deadlines. Dr. Halder’s fervor for cybersecurity and data science fuels his engagement in discussions on diverse challenges. His research interests include Personalized Itinerary Recommendation Systems, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Social Network Analysis, and Open-Source Software vulnerability assessment. He boasts an extensive publication record in prestigious journals and conferences like WWW, PAKDD, KIS, DMKD, ASOC, and ESWA. Dr. Halder earned his Ph.D. from RMIT University, Australia, and has previously served as a faculty member at Jagannath University, Bangladesh. He holds a B.Sc. from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and a Master of Engineering from Kyung Hee University, South Korea.
    • Address: Clayton, VIC 3168, Australia
    • Publications:Orcid; Google Scholar
    • Tags: Vulnerability Assessment | Cyber Security Automation | Machine Learning | Recommendations
    • Highlight: I am driven by a passion for exploring intriguing research challenges and making meaningful contributions to the advancement of data science and innovation.

Dr Sarah Ali Siddiqui | CERC Postdoctoral Fellow

    • Sarah joined CSIRO’s Data61 as a CERC Postdoctoral Fellow in January 2023. Before joining CSIRO, Sarah completed her PhD from Macquarie University Australia where she worked on security of the Internet of vehicles. She is particularly interested in the intelligent transportation systems, trust management, and AI/ML-based security.
    • Address: Marsfield, NSW 2122, Australia.
    • Publications: Google Scholar
    • Tags: Intelligent Transportation Systems | Trust Management | Internet of Things | Internet of Vehicles | Machine Learning |Security and Privacy
    • Highlight: I am excited to be a part of this great team. It is an excellent opportunity to apply my knowledge and to learn from experts while working in the industry.

Dr Sebastian Kish | Research Scientist

  • Dr Sebastian Kish is a Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61 and leads projects on Quantum Key Distribution. He has been working at CSIRO since 2023. His main research interests are in the development and implementation of quantum key distribution protocols towards the goal of realizing a quantum encrypted network across Sydney. He obtained his Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Physics at The University of Queensland and his PhD in Relativistic Quantum Metrology also at The University of Queensland. Subsequently, he has held postdoctoral positions at UNSW and The Australian National University in the area of quantum communication and quantum information. Sebastian has an extensive background in quantum physics, quantum communications, quantum information theory, and general relativity. He has published articles in internationally recognized quantum physics and quantum engineering journals.
  • Address: Marsfield, NSW, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Quantum Key Distribution | Quantum Communication | Quantum Physics | Quantum security
  • Highlight: My driving force stems from curiosity and a deep passion for quantum technology and its boundless potential. I take pleasure in guiding others, equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills, and self-reliance to confront even the most formidable challenges.

Dr Shenlu Wang | Senior Research Engineer

  • Shenlu is a senior research engineer at CSIRO’s Data61 since 2023. She started her journey with CSIRO since 2011 as a vocation undergraduate student, followed by an internship. During this time, she has developed a practical encryption and query rewriting system to secure DaaS. She then conducted her PhD study at UNSW on spatial database and worked as research associated on Approximate kNN in HD space at UNSW upon graduation. She then obtained hands on industrial software engineering experience with Google and AWS. She is deeply passionate about Algorithms, and currently devoted to security, privacy and AI.
  • Address: Marsfield, NSW, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google scholar
  • Highlight: Deep interest in Algorithmic problem solving. Algorithmic competitive programmer (safarisoul) since 2010.

Dr Wei Kang | Research Scientist

  • Wei is a Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. He is passionate about developing Machine Learning and Data Mining solutions to real-world challenges in various areas including cybersecurity(e.g., phishing detection, access control), predictive modelling and social media analytics. Prior to joining Data61, he worked as a Research Fellow and Research Degree Supervisor at University of South Australia. Wei was also one of the key Research Scientists in the Beat The News (BTN) project at the Data to Decisions CRC which aimed to provide national security agencies with automated and continuous big data analytics capability. His work focuses on extracting insights from big/complex data, performing predictive analytics to support decision making, and developing ML solutions to various challenges in cybersecurity and many other areas. He has supervised several PhD/Masters/Honours students. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science at the National University of Singapore.
  • Address: ADELAIDE, SA 5000, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Data Mining | Machine Learning | Predictive Analytics | Social Media Analytics | Artificial Intelligence | Visualization
  • Highlight: I’m passionate about tackling real-world challenges through research that leads to positive impact.

Dr Wei Shao | Research Scientist

  • Wei Shao is a research scientist at CSIRO’s Data61, contributing to the AI and Cyber Security team. Before joining CSIRO, he expanded his expertise at institutions such as UC Davis, Arizona State University, and RMIT, Australia. Dr. Shao has a broad range of research interests, including reinforcement learning, graph neural networks, wireless sensing, the Internet of Things, and smart cities. His significant contributions to the field are reflected in his numerous published papers on subjects like spatio-temporal forecasting and context-aware ubiquitous sensing. In addition to his research, Dr. Shao actively engages with the academic community, serving in various roles for conferences and journals such as ICML, NeurIPS, AAAI, IJCAI, CIKM, TITS, JSAC etc., and mentoring Ph.D. students in cutting-edge fields such as ubiquitous computing and spatio-temporal deep learning.
  • Address: Marsfield, NSW 2122, Australia.

Staff Team Distributed Systems Security

Bushra Sabir | Postdoctoral Research Fellow

    • Bushra Sabir is a Cybersecurity Postdoctoral researcher at CSIRO’s Data61. She was a recipient of the prestigious Data61 scholarship during her doctoral studies. She achieved a gold medal in her Master of Software Engineering, reflecting her exceptional academic performance, and secured the second position in the Bachelor of Engineering in Software Engineering program, demonstrating strong foundational knowledge and dedication to academic pursuits.  Specializing in Adversarial Machine Learning for cybersecurity systems, Bushra has a particular interest in Secure Machine Learning for detecting data exfiltration attacks, such as Phishing, Malicious Domains, Spam text, and Insider threats. She has published her research in prominent venues such as IEEE TDSC, NAACL, ACM Computing Survey, MSR, and ICSA. Utilizing Machine, Deep, and Reinforcement learning methods, she has created adversarial examples of cybersecurity applications, such as phishing URLs and spam emails. Currently, Bushra is focused on creating tools and support for Machine Learning models that can help them to be resilient against Evasion Attacks. With over 10 years of hands-on experience in Machine Learning, she has explored its diversity in various applications, ranging from pedestrian detection (her MS research), Lung Nodule Detection (MS project Supervised), to Security of Machine Learning models.  to her current role and commencing PHD, Bushra worked as a senior lecturer for six years in Pakistan, teaching student’s multiple subjects ranging from Artificial Intelligence to Data Encryption and Security to programming (C++, JAVA, and PYTHON). She has also worked for two years in the industry as a software engineer, where she worked on the simulation of MICKEY stream ciphers using C++. In addition to her research and teaching experience, Bushra Sabir has been involved in several collaborative research projects and has supervised multiple students during her PhD and while working as a senior lecturer. She has also taught Python courses as a Teaching Assistant to Master of Data Science and Cybersecurity students.
    • Address:  KINTORE Avenue, SA 5000, AUSTRALIA
    • Publications: Google Scholar
    • Tags: AI Security | Machine Learning | Cybersecurity | Data Exfiltration | Deep Learning
    • Highlight: I am a passionate problem solver with an inquisitive mind, seeking to make a positive impact through innovative ideas and research. I am excited to explore new dimensions of knowledge and contribute to the field, and committed to learning, collaboration, and tangible solutions that benefit society.

Bo Yan | Senior Research Engineer

    • Bo is a senior research engineer at Data61, CSIRO. His research interests are distributed computing, deep learning, big data and blockchain. Bo worked in CMIS CSIRO from 2001 to 2006 as research engineer. After that, he worked in commercial software development industry for 6 years as senior software engineer and tech lead. In 2012, Bo re-joined CSIRO with first-hand commercial industry experience.
    • Address:  MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
    • Publications:  Google Scholar
    • Tags: Distributed Computing | Deep Learning | Software Engineering
    • Highlight: With both commercial and research background, I enjoy working on the challenges from the real world’s.

Dr Cody James Christopher | Postdoctoral Research Fellow

  • Cody is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working within both Data61 and the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC) on Cyber Deception. He gained his Doctorate from the Australian National University (ANU) in Computer Science, in explainable AI for formal systems diagnostics.
  • Address: CANBERRA, ACT 2601, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID | Publons | Research Gate | Google Scholar | DBLP
  • Tags: Cyber Deception | Machine Learning | Explainable AI | Algorithms | Optimisation | Diagnosis | Cryptology & Cryptography

Dr David Nguyen | Postdoctoral Research Fellow

  • David is a CERC Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO’s Data61. He attended School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW Sydney for his PhD in generative models for cyber deception, which was done in collaboration with the Cybersecurity CRC. David has broad interest in a range of topics at intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, including AI-based network security and trustworthiness and robustness of AI models.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ‪David D. Nguyen – ‪Google Scholar
  • Tags: Machine Learning | Generative Models | Cyber Deception | Cybersecurity

Farina Riaz | CERC Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Farina, through the Impossible Without You Programme, has commenced her CERC Postdoctoral Fellowship with CSIRO. Additionally, she has accomplished the submission of a collaborative PhD with CSIRO Data61 at the University of Southern Queensland(UniSQ), specializing in quantum Artificial Intelligence. Her educational background includes a master’s degree in computer software engineering from Pakistan, where she also completed an internship at CERN Lab in Switzerland, focusing on Grid Automation. In 2007, she gained experience as a Software Quality Assurance Engineer at NERO Company. With 9 publications in journals and conferences, she has made significant contributions to her field. During her PhD journey, Farina serves as the HDR Student representative at the UniSQ research group, actively participating in important research-related decision-making processes. She possesses 4 years of teaching experience as a lecturer in various universities in Dubai, UAE. Farina’s present research revolves around the utilization of Quantum Machine Learning Security. By conducting research at CSIRO Data61, she has created ground-breaking models that have surpassed the effectiveness of Classical Machine Learning methods. Her impressive portfolio includes over 11 journal publications, and she was also honoured as the runner-up for the People’s Choice Award in Quantum Australia 2023.

  • Publications: ResearchGate
  • Tags: Quantum Machine Learning | Quantum Cryptography | Quantum Artificial Intelligence | Signal Processing | Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks
  • Highlight: New technology always inspires me. I love working at CSIRO Data61 as it has opened a broad prospect towards the new challenging research and how to apply problem solving skills. CSIRO spotlight me as “Women in Technology 2022”on my work in Quantum Artificial Intelligence Research and the appreciation and love I have received in my PhD journey; I will always cherish.’

Dr Garrison Gao | Research Scientist

  • Garrison Gao is a Research Scientist (indefinite) at CSIRO’s Data61. He received his M.Sc degree from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 2013 and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Adelaide, Australia, in 2017.  His work has appeared in prestigious conferences (such as NDSS, ACSAC, DSN, and ACM AsiaCCS), as well as journals (such as Nature Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, and IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security). His current research interests are AI security and privacy, system security, and hardware security.
  • Publications: Google Scholar

Kane Walter | CERC Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Kane is a CERC Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO’s Data61, Australia. He undertook his PhD through the School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW Sydney in collaboration with the Cybersecurity Cooperative Research Centre focusing on defending federated learning systems against backdoor attacks. Kane’s primary research interests span the machine learning field with particular interest in adversarial machine learning, generative models and federated learning.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications:
    Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9759-4305
    Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Cyn7c8cAAAAJ&hl=en
  • Tags: Machine Learning | Cybersecurity | Generative Models | Federated Learning

Dr Nan Wang | Postdoctoral Research Fellow

  • Nan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Data61, CSIRO. He holds a Ph.D. degree in computer science at the Australian National University, Australia. His research interests include various privacy-enhancing technologies, such as cryptographic protocols, zero-knowledge proofs, distributed system security, blockchain security and AI security. His publications span various prestigious conferences and journals, such as IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Asiacrypt, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing and ACM e-Energy. He won the Best Paper Award at ACM e-Energy ’21. Prior to his PhD study, he had several years of experience working in industry as a senior software engineer.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Privacy-Preserving Technologies | Cryptographic Protocols | Zero-Knowledge Proofs | Distributed System Security, Blockchain Security | AI Security

Dr Nan Wu | Postdoctoral Research Fellow

  • Nan Wu is a post-doctoral research fellow within CSIRO’s Data61. She received the B.S. degree (Hons.) in electronic and communication systems from The Australian National University, Australia, in 2015, the B.S. degree (Hons.) in electronic and communication systems from the Beijing Institute of Technology, China, in 2016, the M.Res. degree in computer science from Macquarie University, Australia, in 2019. She did her Ph.D. degree with Macquarie University and CSIRO’s Data61, Australia. Her research interests include privacy-preserving machine learning, game theory, security and privacy, data sharing, data mining, and record linkage.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6851-409X / ‪Nan WU – ‪Google Scholar
  • Tags: Privacy-preserving machine learning | Data sharing | Data mining | Record linkage

Dr Nazatul Sultan | Research Scientist

  • Nazatul is a Research Scientist at CSIRO Data61 and a member of the Distributed System Security (DSS) group. Prior to CSIRO, Nazatul was working as a Senior Consultant with one of the Big 4 consulting firms in the Security Architecture Team, where he helped several industry partners, including government, banking, and education sectors in building cyber resilience critical infrastructures. Nazatul worked as a postdoctoral researcher for 3 years combined at the University of Newcastle & CSIRO Data61 in Australia and Telecom SudParis in France. He also worked in India on different Indian Government sponsored R&D cybersecurity projects. Nazatul has published his papers in top venues like ESORICS, SRDS, IEEE TCC, IEEE TSC, etc. Nazatul has also been serving as an expert reviewer for journals and conferences like TDSC, TSC, TCC, ARES, TrustCom, INFOCOMM, etc. Nazatul completed his Ph.D. in Information Security from the Indian Institute of Information Technology Guwahati, India.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Privacy-Enhancing Technologies | Applied Cryptography | Encrypted Database | | Post-Quantum Cryptography | Network-Cloud-IoT Security

Dr. Samuel Karumba | Research Associate at CSIRO’s Data61

  • Samuel is a researcher in the field of Distributed Systems Security, with a focus on blockchain application in energy systems and smart grids. His work has contributed significantly to advancing the scalability, security, privacy, and interoperability of decentralized energy systems. Samuel’s journey in computer science began with a B.Sc. from Moi University in Kenya, followed by an M.Sc. from Strathmore University in Kenya, and culminated in a Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales in Australia. His PhD research at the University of New South Wales marked a pivotal period where he led the ground-breaking research on blockchain’s role in decentralized energy management, enhancing the security and efficiency of smart grids. This work not only underscored the importance of cybersecurity in sustainable energy systems but also positioned Samuel as a thought leader in this niche area.
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Cybersecurity | Blockchain | Energy Systems | Smart Grids | Consumer Energy Resources
  • Highlight: ‘My passion thrives at the intersection of cybersecurity and distributed systems, where I’ve contributed to leading-edge projects with IBM, UNSW, and CSIRO. At IBM, I crafted a blockchain identity management module for the Food Trust, underscoring cybersecurity’s vital role in supply chain integrity. At UNSW, my work on blockchain for decentralized energy resource management marked a significant advancement toward secure, efficient energy systems. Now with CSIRO’s Data61, I focus on integrating advanced security in consumer energy resources and the broader grid. This journey embodies not just technological innovation but my commitment to addressing global challenges, driving us toward a secure, sustainable future through ground-breaking solutions.‘

Mr Seung Jang | Principle Software Engineer

  • Seung is a Principal Software Engineer at CSIRO’s Data61 and has been with the organisation since 2018. In 2002, he started his professional career as a research engineer in the Automatic Sorting and Processing Research team, ETRI. He developed an OCR (optical character recognition) engine successfully for automated mail sorting systems. From mid-2011, Seung worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Lexxe Pty Ltd in Sydney, Australia. His responsibilities included developing a sentiment search engine using sentiment analysis technologies, which he did successfully. His current research interests include cyber security, natural language processing and machine learning.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Cyber Security | Machine Learning | Software Engineering
  • Highlight: I’m very interested in problem solving. Especially if the problem is related to my expertise, I’m very happy to work on it.

Dr Shangqi Lai | Research Scientist

  • Lai is a research scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. Before joining CSIRO, he was a research fellow at Monash University. He received his PhD degree from Monash University in 2020, the MS degree from The University of Hong Kong in 2015, and the BE degree from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2014. His work has been published in top venues in cyber-security and network, such as ACM CCS, NDSS, ACM AsiaCCS, IEEE ICDCS, IEEE TDSC.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Secure Networked Systems | Privacy-Preserving Data Analytics
  • Highlight: I have broad interests in data security and privacy of cloud-based applications. My research mainly focuses on designing practical systems to address the security and privacy issues in the above scenarios.

Dr Shigang Liu | Research Scientist

  • Shigang received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Deakin University, Australia. He is currently a research scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. His research interests include cybersecurity, covering network security, software security, data analytics, and AI. He has led a Ph.D. research group focusing on applying deep learning to detect software vulnerabilities. This research topic won the first place at the World Change Maker Prize in the Swinburne Research Conference in 2019. He is also interested in applying large language models to real-world security problems as well as adversarial machine learning.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Cybersecurity | Data Science | Networking | AI |  Fuzzy Information Processing
  • Highlight: I am delighted to work at Data61, where the exciting and significantly motivational collaboration with the best academics and students, coupled with a wide range of services and resources, creates an environment that fuels my passion for exploration, providing a genuine sense of fulfillment and joy in contributing to cutting-edge discoveries with a meaningful impact on the world. I’m looking for highly motivated international and domestic students who intend to pursue a Ph.D. degree to join our team in Cybersecurity.

Dr Shuiqiao Yang | Research Scientist

  • Shuiqiao holds a Ph.D. degree from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. His areas of scholarly interest span across machine learning, deep learning, and the security aspects of AI. Prior to his current engagement, Dr. Yang has held research associate positions at esteemed institutions like the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Machine learning | Deep Learning | AI security | Representation learning | Text mining | Graph mining

Dr Sid Chau | Principal Research Scientist

  • Sid Chau is a principal research scientist with Data61, CSIRO. He has been a faculty member with the Australian National University. He leads research projects in cybersecurity for energy systems, verifiable computing, blockchain and IoT. Previously, he was a visiting professor at MIT, an associate professor at Masdar Institute of Khalifa University, and a senior research fellow at A*STAR in Singapore.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA

Dr The Ahn Ta | Postdoctoral Research Fellow

  • The Anh is a postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO’s Data61. He received his PhD degree in mathematics from Paris-Saclay University, Orsay, France. His research interests include cryptographic privacy-preserving technologies, decentralized systems, robust machine learning and optimization algorithms.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1y0vv1wAAAAJ
  • Tags: privacy-preserving technologies | robust machine learning | combinatorial optimisation

Mr Xiangyu Hui | Research Technician

  • Xiangyu is a research technician at Data61, CSIRO. He obtained a Master of Computer Science (Advanced) degree from the Australian National University, Australia, with a GPA of 6.889/7. His research interests mainly include applied cryptography, computer systems, blockchain, and related fields.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XWfNdKAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra
  • Tags: Cryptographic Protocols | Zero-Knowledge Proofs | Blockchain

Staff Team Human Centric Security

M.A.P. Chamikara | Senior Research Scientist

    • M.A.P. Chamikara is a senior research scientist in cyber security at CSIRO’s Data61. Before joining as a research scientist, Chamikara worked as a postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO’s Data61. He received his Ph.D. from RMIT University, Australia. For his Ph.D. research work, he received the RMIT Prize for Research Excellence – Higher Degree by Research (Technology) and the Research Achievement Award for outstanding research performance at the School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University. During his Ph.D. at RMIT University, he also engaged with CSIRO’s Data61 as a Ph.D. researcher. Before joining CSIRO’s Data61, Chamikara worked as a lecturer at the Department of Statistics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He received his M.Phil. in Computer Science and B.Sc. Special (Hons.) in Computer Science from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. His current research interests include data privacy, distributed privacy-preserving machine learning, explainable AI, natural language processing, and human-centric cyber security.
    • Address: Clayton, VIC 3168, Australia
    • Publications: ORCID |Google Scholar |ResearchGate |ResearchID
    • Tags: Data Privacy | Data Science | Cyber Security
    • Highlight: I am delighted to be a part of Data61. It is full of enthusiastic scientists who make Data61 one of the best research institutes in the world.

Dr Chehara Pathmabandu | Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Chehara is a post-doctoral research fellow within CSIRO’s Data61, working on human-centric cybersecurity and gamification in collaboration with Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC). Chehara holds a PhD in Software Systems and Cybersecurity from Monash University and a first-class Honours degree in Information Technology from the University of Moratuwa. She is passionate about looking at context-driven real-world data privacy and security challenges in software engineering. Her recent work includes developing an informed consent management framework for IoT-oriented Smart Buildings to provide fine-grained visibility into privacy infringements while enhancing stakeholders’ decision-making. This work has been recognised as one of the finalists of the Facebook Research Award 2021. Her research interests span the areas of privacy preservation in IoT environments, Privacy Enhancing technologies, Human-centric software engineering, Statistical analysis, Artificial Intelligence(i.e. Data mining, Machine Learning, NLP) and Audio processing techniques.
  • Address: Clayton, VIC 3168, Australia
  • Publications: ORCID | Google Scholar
  • Tags: Human and societal aspects of security and privacy | Internet of Things(IoT) | Privacy paradox | Informed decision-making | Privacy policies and user awareness
  • Highlight: ‘ ‘I always enjoyed researching the ways to influence people’s judgment, choices or behaviours in promptly addressing privacy and security issues as users act and respond differently to unprecedented threats based on their diverse needs, past knowledge and preferences. Therefore, it is essential to incorporate unique and varied aspects of human-centric needs and abilities into software engineering and cybersecurity.‘

Dr Diksha Goel | Research Scientist

  • Diksha is a Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. Diksha received her PhD in Computer Science from The University of Adelaide, Australia, with a thesis on “Enhancing Network Resilience through Machine Learning-powered Graph Combinatorial Optimization: Applications in Cyber Defense and Information Diffusion”. Before this, she received her Master of Technology degree, specializing in Cyber Security, from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Kurukshetra, India. She obtained her Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science from the University Institute of Engineering & Technology, Kurukshetra, India. Diksha is passionate about advancing Artificial Intelligence in the domain of Cyber Security. Her research interests include Cyber Security, Machine Learning, Game Theory, Mining Large-Scale Networks and Graph Theory.
  • Address: Clayton, VIC 3168, Australia
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Cyber Security | Machine Learning | Data Mining | Game Theory | Graph Theory

Dr Fatemeh Jalalvand | Postdoctoral Research Fellow

    • Fatemeh is a postdoctoral research fellow at Data61, working on human-centric cybersecurity, human machine collaboration for cybersecurity. Previously she worked as a research associate at Capability Systems Centre, School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra. She also did her PhD at UNSW Canberra. Fatemeh is interested in the application of Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Decision Analytics, Decision Optimisation, Decision-Making Support Systems, Multi-Criteria/Multi-Objective Decision Making, Incorporating Plural Human Views into Decision Making Analytics, Decision Making under Risk/Uncertainty, Systems Engineering, Systems Science, Systems Thinking and Modelling, Optimisation, Simulation, Simulation-Optimisation and Metaheuristics on the area of Human Machine Collaboration for Cybersecurity.
    • Address: AUSTRALIA
    • Publications: ORCID, Google Scholar
    • Tags: Human machine collaboration for cybersecurity, Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Decision-making support systems, Decision optimisation, Multi-criteria/multi-objective decision making, Decision making under risk/uncertainty, Incorporating plural human views into decision making analytics, Systems engineering, Systems thinking and modelling, Optimisation, Simulation, Metaheuristics
    • Highlight: ‘ As a Data61 member, I am so excited to apply my knowledge and expertise to facilitate systemic human and machine collaboration for cybersecurity decision making.

Dr Lauren Ferro | Research Scientist

  • Lauren works at CSIRO’s Data61 as a Research Scientist in human-centric security. Her research interests are in human-centered design, which includes human factors, decision-making, behavioural design, HCI, and interaction design (including game design). She holds two PhDs, the first of which she earned at RMIT University in Melbourne and focused on user profile and modelling in order to better understand how to develop personalised game experiences. Her second PhD was conducted at Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy, and focused on user-centered threat modelling and human aspects in cybersecurity (specifically phishing). She was given the title “Dottorato Europeo” for this PhD. Her cybersecurity research interests include human-centered design, user behaviour, profiling, and modelling, human factors, decision-making, and interactive experiences.
  • Address: Clayton, VIC 3168, Australia
  • Publications: Orcid | Google Scholar | Scopus | Research Gate
  • Tags: Human Centric Security | Human Factors | Decision Making | Interaction Design | HCI | Threat Modelling | User Behaviour
  • Highlight: ‘Lauren is fascinated by the human mind and behaviour, and she is continuously seeking for new methods to better understand it and apply it to user interaction in order to increase users knowledge and awareness of good cybersecurity practices.‘

Dr Ronal Singh | Research Scientist

  • Ronal is a Research Scientist with the Human Centric Security team in CSIRO’s Data61 and a member of the CINTEL FSP. Ronal’s primary interest lies in artificial intelligence, particularly multi-modal human-agent interactions, AI-assisted decision-making, explainable AI, intention recognition, and multiagent communication planning. Previously, he was a Research Fellow in Human-Agent Collaboration and an Associate Lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. Ronal completed his PhD in 2018 from the University of Melbourne and his BSc and MSc degrees in Computer Science from the University of the South Pacific in the Fiji Islands.
  • Address: Clayton, VIC 3168, Australia
  • Publications: ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3352-0486 and Scholar: https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=1ZxGOw4AAAAJ&hl=en
  • Tags: AI-Assisted Decision-making | Explainable AI | Human-Agent Interaction | Intention Recognition | Machine Learning
  • Highlight: ‘I am driven by my passion for working in multidisciplinary teams and projects and translating academic research into practical solutions to real-world problems.‘

Dr Shahroz Tariq | Research Scientist

      • Shahroz Tariq is a Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. He received his B.S. in Computer Science with high distinction from the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (FAST-NUCES), Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2014, and his M.S. in Computer Science with high distinction from the Sangmyung University, Cheonan, South Korea in 2017. He was a Ph.D. research assistant at Stony Brook University and SUNY Korea from 2017 to 2019. He received his Ph.D. from Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea, in 2022, working on continual learning, deepfake, and anomaly detection.
      • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
      • Publications:  Google Scholar;  Orcid 
      • Tags: Machine Learning | AI Security | Lifelog learning | Deepfakes | Collaborative Intelligence | Adversarial Time-series | Anomaly Detection | Domain Adaptation
      • Highlight: ‘My research interests are: Continual and Lifelong Learning, privacy & security for ML, and fairness in machine learning-based systems. I also like to explore human-centered AI and the social impact of machine learning-based methods concerning privacy, security, and fairness. Previously, I worked on the applications of machine learning in various fields for domain adaptation & generalization, such as: intrusion detection and Anomaly detection in time-series data from vehicles and satellites; deepfake and synthetic media detection for privacy & security applications.

Dr Tingmin (Tina) Wu) | Research Scientist

  • Tina is a research scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. Prior to that, she was a research fellow at Monash University, jointly with CSIRO’s Data61. Her research focuses on human-centric cyber security, currently with a specific focus on phishing. Her research is to study how humans interact with security tools and apply AI to optimise security to reduce the involvement of security experts. She is also interested in cognitive modelling for human security behaviours and user education design.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar | ORCID| ResearchGate
  • Tags: Humans | Usable security and privacy | AI

Dr Tooba Aamir | Research Scientist

  • Tooba is CERC Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO’s Data61. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from RMIT University; a master’s in software systems engineering from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a BS in Computer Engineering from the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Pakistan. Her research interests include NLP and data analysis, cyber trust and security, and crowdsourcing/crowd-sensing. So far, her work has been published in the research areas of spatial-temporal and textual data analysis, focusing on social media data and metadata analysis and social/cyber trust. Her current research focuses on human-centric cyber security.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar | Orcid | dblp | ResearchGate
  • Tags: Human-centric cyber security | Social trust | Social-sensor | Social-sensor services
  • Highlight: ‘Research around cyber data analysis and trust in cyberspace provide unique and innovative solutions for secure information gathering and sharing. My doctoral project focused on utilising social-media data, especially metadata, to analyse real-world events. The novelty lies in providing an alternative that, in many cases, can help to reconstruct scenes using the metadata only and bypass expensive traditional image processing techniques. Since then, my research has progressed and evolved into areas of trust assessment in social cyberspace. I focus on utilising human-centric contextual attributes of social data to reconstruct scenes and assess their trustworthiness and authenticity. The outcomes of this project were published in 6 CORE A conferences and 1 CORE A* Journal, and I have received a School Research Achievement Award from RMIT University. At Data61, I am looking forward to broadening my research sphere and working towards innovative and effective human-centric cyber security solutions.’

Dr Yue Huang | Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Dr. Huang is a postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO’s Data61. She earned her PhD degree from the University of British Columbia. Her research interests encompass various areas of usable security and privacy, including mobile and IoT security, security and privacy in online social networks, and web security. Her work resides at the intersection of data security, information privacy, and human-computer interaction.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Usable security and privacy | Information privacy | IoT security and privacy | Mobile security and privacy

Staff Team Quantum Systems

Akib Karim | CERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow

    • Akib is a postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO’s Data61. He has a PhD in Quantum Chemistry from RMIT University and BSc with Honours in Physics from University of Sydney. He has research interests in Quantum Information Theory, Quantum Algorithms, and Quantum Chemistry.
    • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
    • Publications:  Google Scholar | Orcid
    • Tags: Quantum Information Theory | Quantum Algorithms, Quantum Error Correction | Quantum Computing | Quantum Chemistry

Dr Amena Khatun | Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Amena joined as a CERC fellow at CSIRO’s Data61 in 2022. She received her PhD from Signal Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Vision Technologies (SAIVT) research group within the School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics (EER) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia in 2021. Previously, she was working at QUT as a Research Fellow at the School of EER. Dr Amena actively researches in the fields of computer vision and machine learning. Her work has found applications in various domains including person re-identification, object detection and classification, face verification and identification, image segmentation, domain adaptation, security and surveillance etc. She received Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship (RTP), QUT Higher Degree Research Tuition Fee Sponsorship and QUT Excellence Top-Up in 2017. Dr Amena received QUT’s HDR High Achiever Award in August 2021 for excellent performance in her research. She has several high-quality journal and conference publications in highly ranked venues such as Pattern Recognition and IEEE Transactions.
  • Address: Dutton Park, QLD 4102, Australia
  • Publications: ORCID | Google Scholar
  • Tags: Computer Vision | Machine Learning | Deep Learning | Generative Adversarial Network | Quantum Machine Learning | Quantum Software | Quantum Algorithms
  • Highlight:  I am a machine learning researcher with over 7 years of experience. My research interests include deep learning, machine learning, and quantum machine learning that finding applications in various domains.

Dr Bahar Goldozian | Research Scientist

  • Bahar holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Lund University, where she specialized in electron transport in nano structures. Her work was centred around open quantum systems that are out of equilibrium. These systems included quantum coherent electronic conductors that were influenced by temperature and/or voltage changes, along with other platforms that hold potential for emerging quantum technologies. She utilized principles from quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and electrodynamics to understand devices where quantum phenomena play a significant role. As an expert in quantum mechanics, she deeply understands this complex field and has contributed to developing innovative software tools to solve quantum mechanics problems. Currently, Bahar is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of quantum computing, where they are working to advance our understanding of this cutting-edge technology and its potential applications.
  • Address: AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ‪Bahareh Goldozian – ‪Google Scholar
  • Tags: Quantum Information | Quantum Computation | Quantum Technology | Open Quantum Systems | Quantum Control | Quantum Foundation
  • Highlight:  ‘Driven by a deep passion for tackling complex research questions and making a meaningful impact through my work, I am dedicated to conducting research that not only pushes the boundaries of knowledge but also has the potential to benefit society and improve people’s lives.‘

Dr Behnam Tonekaboni | Research Scientist

  • I am a theoretical quantum physicist. I did my PhD at University of Queensland within ARC centre for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS). During my PhD, I designed quantum devices such as an autonomous quantum heat engine and protocols for high precision measurement exploiting quantum coherence in cold atoms. Following my PhD, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Griffith University and the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T) on protocols for optimum control and noise suppression in quantum devices. During my time at CQC2T, I became interested in quantum algorithms. Now in my role at CSIRO, I am working on quantum algorithm on optimisation and higher dimensional topological data analysis. My goal in my research is to achieve higher computational power of quantum devices. In addition, I am working on optimal quantum control on real devices. That includes, pulse design to control quantum devices as well as mitigating noises that affect the device.
  • Address: AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Orcid
  • Tags: Quantum Information | Quantum Computation | Quantum Technology | Open Quantum Systems | Quantum Control | Quantum Foundation
  • Highlight:  Calculation and computation seem to be purely mathematical ideas. Nature’s ability to calculate and compute for us has always amazed me. And I believe nature has greater computing capacity than we have found so far. The computing power we, quantum physicists, strive for is the ability to exploit nature’s quantumness for computation. As a quantum physicist, I am excited to be working on two aspects of the challenge in this direction: 1. Developing algorithms to transform common problems into a language that quantum computers can understand. 2. Working on techniques to manipulate and control qubits more quickly and precisely.

Dr Eromanga Adermann | Postdoctoral Research Fellow

  • I am a researcher in quantum computing, algorithms and applications at CSIRO’s Data61 with a diverse background of skills and interests. I completed my PhD in astrophysics & cosmology in 2019 where I identified new ways of probing the nature of dark energy through observations made by next-generation telescopes, then spent 3-4 years in industry as a data scientist and consultant, where I was involved in building machine learning models to solve industry-relevant problems. I am now applying my skills and knowledge in physics, research and machine learning to problems in quantum computing, with the goal of advancing our capabilities in the field and increasing our potential to deliver positive impacts to society through the use of quantum computers.
  • Address: AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Orcid | Research Gate
  • Tags: Quantum Physics | Quantum Computing | Astrophysics | Cosmology | Data Science | Machine Learning

Dr Hajime Suzuki | Principal Research Scientist

  • Hajime is a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. Hajime is with CSIRO since 1999 conducting research at the Radiophysics Laboratory in Marsfield.  He has led various projects delivering outcomes for Rockwell Collins, Boeing, DST Group, Telstra, Free TV, Department of Communications, and Australian SMEs. His current research interests include quantum security, signal intelligence, and perfect security in wireless communication.  Hajime received B.E. and M.E. from the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan in 1993 and 1995, and PhD from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia in 1999.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID | Google Scholar
  • Tags: Quantum Security | Signal Intelligence
  • Highlight: I love leading and delivering projects aiming towards challenging but clear goals together with talented members with specialised expertise.    

Dr Jiafan Wang | Postdoctoral Research Fellow

  • Jiafan Wang is a postdoctoral research fellow at Data61. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Information Engineering, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in 2022. He has published several papers in the area of applied cryptography and served as a reviewer for reputable conferences and journals. His current research interest includes encrypted data management and post-quantum cryptography.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications:Google Scholar | DBLP
  • Tags: Applied Cryptography | Encrypted Data Management | Post-quantum Cryptography

Prof Josef Pieprzyk | Senior Principal Research Scientist

  • Josef is a member of the editorial boards for International Journal of Information Security (Springer), Journal of Mathematical Cryptology (De Gruyter), Open Access Journal of Cryptography (MDPI), International Journal of Applied Cryptography (Inderscience Publishers), Fundamenta Informaticae (IOS Press), International Journal of Security and Networks (Inderscience Publishers) and International Journal of Information and Computer Security (Inderscience Publishers). He published five books, edited 10 books (conference proceedings), six book chapters, and more than 300 papers in refereed journals and refereed international conferences. Josef supervised seven postdocs, 35 PhD students, 28 MSc Hons and 11 Hons students. His recent research grants include: ARC Discovery, Privacy preserving Data Processing on the Cloud, DP180102199, Chief Investigator, AU$413K, 2018-2020; NCN Opus, ComCrypt – Efficient and Secure Algorithms for Joint Compression and Encryption, Chief Investigator, PLN730K, 2019-2022.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID |Google Scholar
  • Tags: Cryptology and Information Security | Secure Multiparty Computations | Cryptographic Protocols | Copyright Protection | E-commerce | Web Security | Cybercrime Prevention

Dr Raymond (Kuo) Zhao | Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Raymond K. Zhao received the BEng degree in computer science and technology from Zhejiang University, China, in 2015, the master’s degree in network and security from Monash University, Australia, in 2017, and the PhD degree from the Faculty of Information Technology (FIT), Monash University, Australia, in 2022. He was a research fellow in the Department of Software Systems and Cybersecurity, FIT, Monash University, Australia, in 2022. Since November 2022, he has been a postdoctoral fellow with CSIRO’s Data61. His main research interests include efficient and secure implementation techniques for post-quantum cryptographic applications and protocols.
  • Address: Marsfield, NSW, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: DBLP | Github
  • Tags: Post-quantum cryptography | Lattice-based cryptography | Implementation
  • Highlight: I always enjoy doing research that can improve the practice of the field and deliver visible real-world impact. My current research aims at improving the performance of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) on the implementation side, which will hopefully help the adaption of PQC and aid the transitioning into a quantum-safe world.

Dr Sam A. Wilkinson | Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Sam is a postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO’s Data61, based in the Clayton campus. As part of CSIRO’s Quantum Systems team, Sam is helping to develop Australia’s first quantum programming language, which will allow users to program quantum computers and implement algorthms beyond what is classically possible. Sam also maintains an interest in quantum machine learning and hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for applications in near-term quantum computers. Sam received a Bachelor’s of applied physics with honours from RMIT University in 2015, followed by a PhD in physics at RMIT University in 2019. At RMIT, Sam studied superconducting circuits, in particular looking at how to model the transport and linear response of Josephson junction arrays. After completing his studies, Sam worked as a postdoc under Professor Michael Hartmann at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany, where he studied quantum neurons and quantum machine learning as part of the Horizon 2020 project “Quromorphic”. In 2023 Sam returned to his home city of Melbourne to join CSIRO’s Quantum Systems team.
  • Address: Clayton, VIC, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Quantum machine learning | NISQ computing |  hybrid quantum/classical algorithms

Dr Zeheng Wang | Postdoctoral Fellow

    • Zeheng is CERC Fellow appointed through the Impossible Without You campaign. He received his PhD degree in Si quantum computing devices from UNSW. He also has experience in III-V semiconductor devices, semiconductor physics and modelling, and TCAD simulations. In these areas, he has published more than 30 scientific papers in prestigious journals, such as Nature and IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, and flagship conferences, such as IEEE ISPSD and IEEE ICSICT. He was associate editor of Frontiers in Electronics and is an active reviewer for many leading journals published by, e. g., Elsevier, IOP, and Wiley. His open-source online service for semiconductor fabrication has been visited by more than 300 researchers all over the world. He holds two patents in the regime of semiconductor devices. Currently, his research interests include applied physics, quantum artificial intelligence, and micro/nano manufacturing/fabrication.
    • Address: AUSTRALIA
    • Publications: Google Scholar
    • Tags: Quantum Sensing | Quantum Machine Learning | Semiconductor Devices | Micro/nano Fabrication | TCAD Simulation
    • Highlight: To really impact the world by digesting science from traditions, I’m also interested in traditional herbal medicine and have more than 8 years of practice experience in China, and as a personal off-work interest, I’m now trying to use machine learning to explore herbal medicine’s potential in curing COVID-19 and long COVID syndromes.