Our Staff

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

  • Surya is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. He currently leads the distributed systems security group consisting of more than 30 staff and 50 PhD students. His main research focus is on the development and implementation of technologies in the area of distributed systems (including cloud, IoT and edge computing) and social networks, with a specific focus on security, privacy, and trust. He has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications to his credit. He has co-edited three books, including security, privacy, and trust in cloud systems by Springer, and co-invented three patents. He is a member of the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Service Computing, ACM Transactions on Internet Technology and Frontiers of Big Data- Security Privacy, and Trust. He is currently a theme leader of the Cybersecurity Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), a national initiative in Australia. He holds conjoint faculty position at UNSW and an honorary professor position at Macquarie University.
  • 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, Team Leader

  • 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 Marthie Grobler | Principal Research Scientist, Team Leader

  • An engaged and motivated researcher,  Marthie is passionate about making cyber security more accessible for people in the pathway of the fourth industrial revolution. Her research, management and consulting experience span multiple continents, national and state government departments, and a variety of domains linked with the digital domain. She is passionate about enhancing people’s ability to use connected technology more powerfully in an ever-connected world. Her main focus is on all things related to humans and cybersecurity, from phishing awareness to online risk resilience, cyber gamification and cyber security governance and management. Marthie has been appointed Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Science within the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID |Google Scholar |Loop |ResearchGate |Publons |DBLP
  • Tags: Human Centric Cyber Security | Cyber Governance | Cyber Psychology | Online Risk Resilience
  • Highlight: I might be working with school kids in the morning playing one of our in-house developed cyber games, and then in the afternoon join forces with executives to plan a digital intervention. There is never a dull moment when you work with people and security!

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 Usman Muhammad | Principal Research Scientist, Team Leader

  • Dr Muhammad Usman joined DATA61/CSIRO in 2022 as a Team Leader Quantum Systems and Principal Research Scientist. In this role, he is establishing and leading a team of quantum experts working on a diverse range of projects in the areas of quantum software engineering, quantum algorithms and quantum security. Previously working as part of the Center for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of Melbourne since 2014, his research made ground-breaking contributions towards the design and characterisation of silicon quantum devices and quantum processor architecture. In 2018, the focus of his work shifted towards quantum software and algorithms for benchmarking near-term quantum computers. As part of this program at the University of Melbourne, he developed applications for near-term quantum devices such as quantum machine learning, quantum data science, and quantum optimisation. Dr Usman has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers and has delivered several invited talks in international conferences. Dr Usman received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University, Indiana USA in 2010. He is a recipient of several awards including 2020 Rising Stars List in Computational Material Science from Elsevier and 2019 Best Researcher Award at the University of Melbourne. He has received prestigious research fellowships including USA Fulbright Fellowship in 2005 and German DAAD Fellowship in 2010. He is a member of the executive editorial board of the Institute of Physics journal IOP Nano Futures.
  • 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 Akib Karim | CERC Postdoctoral 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 Alan Colman | Research Scientist

  • Alan’s current focus of research is on agent-based autonomic service compositions. He has previously conducted extensive research into adaptive and context-aware distributed software systems with over 150 publications. He is particularly interested in using system-theory to structure and control software architectures. He has applied his research in the industrial and environmental monitoring industries. He is currently also an Adjunct Research Fellow at Swinburne University of Technology.
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications:  Google Scholar | Orcid
  • Tags: Adaptive Software Architectures | Multi-tenant service composition | Control-theoretic Adaptation | Context-aware computing | Feature-oriented Customisation | Blockchain based data sharing
  • Highlight:  Supervising and learning from my PhD students over the years. 

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 Autumn Wu | Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Autumn Wu is a postdoctoral fellow at Data61. She received her PhD in Computer Science from New York University, NYC, USA, in 2022, and received her BS in Computer Science from New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, China, in 2017. Her research focus is in the area of deep reinforcement learning, including improving sample efficiency for off-policy and off-line deep reinforcement learning, Markov decision Process, and applications of off-line deep reinforcement learning algorithms on large decision-making optimization problems. 
  • Address: CLAYTON, VIC 3168, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications:  Google Scholar
  • Tags: Deep Reinforcement Learning | Markov Decision Process | Data Mining | Machine Learning
  • Highlight:  Making a positive impact on real-world problems through research is very fulfilling and rewarding. That’s the motivation keep me going.

Dr Anton V. Uzunov | Visiting Scientist

  • Anton is a visiting researcher at CSIRO’s Data61, on part-time secondment from Defence Science and Technology Group (DST Group). He has worked at DST Group since 2006, in various roles and across different projects, mainly in the area of distributed systems security. Anton holds a PhD in Computer Science, an Honours degree in Pure Mathematics and a Bachelor degree in Maths and Computer Science, all from the University of Adelaide. His current research interests span the areas of autonomic/self-adaptive computing, distributed computing, software architecture and aspects of multi-agent systems, for the achievement of cyber resilience in IoT and Edge computing environments. Other research interests include architecture-level security, conceptual modelling and model-driven engineering.
  • Address: ADELAIDE, SA 5000, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID |DBLP
  • Tags: Cyber Resilience | Autonomic and Self-Adaptive Computing | Distributed Software Architectures | Software Engineering
  • Highlight: I always enjoy collaborating with like-minded researchers and engineers across academia and other R&D organisations to develop innovative scientific solutions for complex, real-world problems, while advancing the state-of-the-art in a given area (or several areas!) in some tangible way.

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, particularly hybrid quantum classical algorithms. Now in my role at CSIRO, I am working on hybrid quantum-classical algorithm to achieve higher computational power of quantum devices. Also I am working on quantum control: how to control quantum system faster and more precise.
  • 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.

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.

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.
  • Adress: 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.‘

Chandra Thapa | Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Chandra is a post-doctoral fellow within CSIRO’s Data61. His research interests are in the field of privacy-preserving computation, distributed systems security, and network information theory. His current work includes data security and the application of privacy-preserving approaches to machine learning in the health domain.
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Privacy-preserving Computation | Machine Learning | Network Information Theory | Data Security and Privacy.

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 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 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 Geoff Jarrad | Senior Data Scientist, Senior Research Engineer

  • Geoff is a senior data scientist and research engineer in CSIRO Data61’s Security Data Science team, with a long-term background in statistical machine learning, reasoning under uncertainty, and applied decision support systems. He worked on the now-completed Investigative Analytics project, active in both the development of the StellarGraph machine learning library and researching data science approaches to anti-money laundering, spammer detection and other graph-related problems. Geoff is currently working on data science projects involving identity and access management (IAM), and misinformation networks.
  • 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 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 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

Dr Jason Xue | Senior Research Scientist

  • 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

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 Kristen Moore | Senior Researcher Scientist

  • 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

Mel Smith | Project Coordinator

  • Mel is a (contractor) Project Manager for Distributed Systems Security. Mel’s career started off in information management with the Norther Territory government. During this experience she learnt everything she could about information management and governance through formal training, on the job experience and brilliant mentorship. This evolved into a passion for Project Management. Mel has worked primarily in the management of private and government information management and system implementation, compliance and security projects. Mel’s most recent project was to implement a student administration system for schools within the Catholic Education Canberra/Goulburn diocese, leading large Agile team.
  • Address: CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
  • Highlight: I am a passionate Project Manager and I find it rewarding to solve problems and deliver value to my client. As a leader in projects I am driven by the people I work with and both role modelling and being part of a supportive and collaborative team with an inclusive and enthusiastic culture.

Mr Mohammed Bahutair | Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Mohammed is a postdoctoral fellow at 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 Mohan Baruwal Chhetri | Senior Research Scientist

  • 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 | Research Scientist

  • Ejaz’s current research interests include continuous authentication, data-driven security, malware analysis, applied machine learning, and network security. He received a PhD degree in wireless communication from the Kyung Hee University of South Korea in 2014. From June 2014 to May 2015, he was postdoctoral researcher with Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH). Between 2015 and 2018, he spent time as a research professor in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) South Korea. He was with SKKU Security Lab (seclab), College of Software, Sungkyunkwan University, as a research professor.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2122, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: Google Scholar |ORCID
  • Tags: Data-driven Security | Continuous Authentication | System Behavioural Modelling | 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 Olivier de Vel | Visiting Scientist

  • Olivier de Vel obtained MSc(I Hons) from Waikato University (New Zealand) and a PhD in Electronic Engineering from the Institut National Polytechnique of Grenoble (INPG, France). He was previously Principal Scientist (Cyber) in the Cyber and Electronic Warfare Division, Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group, Department of Defence, Australia. Dr de Vel has worked at several national and international universities, in government research agencies (e.g., CNRS, ORSTOM, DSIR), and in industry R&D laboratories (BHP Billiton mining, GECO oil & gas industry). Dr de Vel joined DST Group in 1999 to set up and provide the scientific R&D leadership in cyber forensics. In 2005, he was appointed Research Leader in Cyber Assurance and Operations to lead the DST Group broad spectrum cyber-security program in the C3I Division. He was appointed Principal Scientist (Cyber) in 2015. Dr de Vel has developed collaborative research programs with government research entities as well as universities. His expertise is in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning for cyber-security and he has published over 100 papers in computer science, digital forensics and machine learning.
  • Address: ADELAIDE, SA 5000, AUSTRALIA

Dr Pathum Chamikara Mahawaga Arachchige | Research Scientist

  • M.A.P. Chamikara is a 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 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.

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.

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 Saad Sajid Hashmi | Visiting Research Fellow

  • Saad received his PhD degree in Computer Science from Macquarie University (Australia, 2020), MSc degree in Computer and Software from Hanyang University (Rep. of Korea, 2015), and BSc degree in Computer Software Engineering from GIK Institute (Pakistan, 2011). He is currently working as a Research Fellow at the School of Computing and IT, University of Wollongong. His current research interests include solving measurement-driven analytical problems in the domain of cyber resilience and human-centric privacy.
  • Address: MARSFIELD, NSW 2022, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID | Google Scholar
  • Tags: human centric privacy, web and mobile privacy | cyber resilience | machine learning | self-adaptation

Dr Selasi Kwashie | Research Scientist

  • Selasi’s research interests and expertise lie primarily at the intersection of database theory and systems, data mining and machine learning. His work seeks to develop sound theoretic foundations that enable the design of effective and efficient solutions to tackle real-world problems. He was a research fellow at the University of South Australia and collaborated with Data to Decisions CRC on their Integrated Law Enforcement project. Some of his notable works include: (1) the development of novel classes of integrity constraints for both relational and graph data, (2) the design of techniques for automatic knowledge discovery in data, and (3) the development of a precise entity linking and resolution system for identifying multiple, differing, and possibly contradicting representations of unique real-world entities in relational and text data. Currently, at CSIRO’s Data61, his work studies and proffers new ideas and techniques for addressing diverse cyber security problems using data science and machine learning principles.
  • Address: ADELAIDE, SA 5000, AUSTRALIA
  • Publications: ORCID |DBLP |Google Scholar
  • Tags: Database Theory | Data Mining | Machine Learning | Data Quality | Database Management
  • Highlight:The thrill of the ‘Eureka’ moment, the joy of discovery, and the fulfilment of impactful solutions are the major driving forces that propel my research work and render all the toil, frustrations, and challenges that often come with research bearable. However, on the day-to-day basis, a cup of good coffee does the trick! And, I find the following quote by Peter Drucker inspiring: ‘Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly or it vanishes’.

Mr Seung Jang | Senior Research Engineer

  • Seung is a 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 Shahroz Tariq | CERC Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Shahroz Tariq is a postdoctoral research fellow at 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 Sharif Abuadbba | Research Scientist

  • Sharif has joined Data61 Distributed System Security group early 2019 as a Research Scientist and Cybersecurity CRC fellow. Sharif has a PhD in computer security from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia 2017. He also has several years of experience working as a senior software and research engineer with Californian based technology companies. He has contributions to a few US IP filled Patents in cybersecurity. He received a Masters degree in cybersecurity from RMIT University, Australia in 2013. Based on the results/achievements during his Master/PhD study, he received several awards: Significant achievement by Golden Key organisation in 2012, Boeing postgraduate scholarship by Boeing in 2013, Recognition of contribution by RMIT university in 2013, Best master student by RMIT University in 2014, nomination for the student of the year in the state of Victoria 2014, Publication Award 2015-2016 consecutively, RMIT prestigious VC award of Research Excellence in Technology 2018, and Eureka innovation award 2018 for co-founding EyeCura startup in cybersecurity. He has mentored 30+ research interns and joiner engineers. He also has several publications in high-quality venues. Dr Abuadbba has recently helped in defining Data61 Cyber Security CRC projects, such as Deception as a Service and Smart Shield which got +$3M dollar funds. He is currently supervising 2 PhD students and 2 honours. His specialist and interests include AI & cybersecurity, IoT-Cloud Security, Distributed system security and watermarking.
  • 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 Shuo Wang | JV Postdoctoral Fellow

  • Shuo’s earlier research work and PhD was in the School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne (2015-2018). His research interests are in the areas of: Adversarial Machine Learning (AML), attacks and defences of deep neural networks, secure deep learning and artificial intelligence on medical/healthcare data, and computer security, privacy, and applied cryptography, including security and privacy issues in systems, software, networking, and databases.
  • Publications: Google Scholar
  • Tags: Adversarial Machine Learning | Computer System Security and Privacy

Dr Tingmin (Tina) Wu

  • 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 | CERC Postdoctoral Fellow

  • 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 Wei Kang | Research Scientist

  • Wei is a Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61. Prior to that, he worked as a Research Fellow and Research Degree Supervisor in the School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences, 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 conducting risk analysis through event detection/topic discovery using social media data to assist with proactive prevention of hazard and security issues. He has supervised two PhD students, five Masters students and three Honours students. His research interests include data mining and machine learning, predictive analytics, social media analytics, summarisation and visualisation. 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 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.