Science Excellence Awards

The Data Airlock platform was identified by Nature Biotechnology as a platform with scientific value and innovation. This project was one of the largest externally funded projects and has attracted attention from a range of government agencies.

Ejaz Ahmed (under the guidance of DSS GL) initiated a collaboration between Distributed Systems Security (DSS) group and Sungkyunkwan university (SKKU) of South Korea, which resulted in visit from Professor Hyoungshick Kim along with10 of his students to collaborate on research projects in Data61 priority areas of cyber security and AI. The collaboration resulted in several research publication in top-ranked conferences for cyber-security including: – USENIX Security 2020 (core category A*) – SRDS 2020 (core category A) – ACM ASIACCS 2020 (core category B). This is a good example of research impact through international collaboration and student engagement. This case is further strengthened by the award of a key paper as a result of the collaboration.

Seyit brought his expertise in cybersecurity to the Cyber Security for Medical Device (CSfMD) project funded by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). His contribution helped the CSIRO project team to gain the trust of TGA on a sensitive project and to create opportunities for future collaborations between CSIRO and TGA.

Smart Shield is a research project which explores the use of AI/ML in detecting previously unseen phishing emails to protect the government, businesses and public from zero-day attacks. Smart Shield team partnered with the customer (WA DGov Office) to identify and formulate this research problem. The customer strongly endorsed this project to the Cybersecurity CRC, which fully funded it with approx. $1M. DPC WA stated that they use this documentation to persuade sister agencies of the project’s value and professionalism. The Smart Shield team has managed this project very well, with clear evidence of customer satisfaction. New project proposals are being formulated and there are clear possibilities for future funding and extension of the project.

Surya has developed a deep relationship with the Cyber Security CRC and several other partners. Demonstrated strong leadership in supporting his team and building strong external collaborations.

The team in the SMIT Boeing project has clearly shown commitment to the customer and achieved commitment from the customer to the project as well. This is an ongoing project with continuous output that benefits the entire IoT community, for a very extensive period of time. The project will continue into its fifth year in 2020, which is a significant achievement of the team.

Seung demonstrated great engineering solutions across a number of domains such as IoT, NLP and ML; was part of successful collaborations such as US Army & Boeing.

Raj was the engineering lead for the Data Airlock team and was instrumental in the delivery of the first version consisting of primary air-gapped communication protocol and 3-tier web interfaces. During a Federal Government inter-departmental Deputy Secretary working group meeting attended by SCS program director, Raj was explicitly named as going beyond expectations to ensure successful delivery of the project.

Team members: Surya Nepal, Seyit Camtepe, Sushmita Ruj, Sharif Abuadbba, Siqi (Slivia) Ma, Marthie Grobler, Mehwish Nasim and other Data61 and external partners

There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate impact. Muhammed developed a quantum-safe privacy-preserving blockchain protocol called MatRiCT which has been patented by D61 where Muhammed was the sole inventor. The case is very well documented and Muhammed’s h-index is impressive for his level.

Great achievement in getting publication to USENIX Security Symposium (Core A*, a top venue in cybersecurity); great collaborative efforts too with South Korea.

The Boeing Secure Modular Internet of Things (SMIT) project delivered a rapid prototyping platform for testing IoT security solutions as open source. Users can easily build a secure IoT communication network over RaspBerry Pi and open lab 802.14.5 radio. Dongxi is also working hard to standardise his cryptographic solutions before the public introduction of quantum computing makes public key encryption invalid.

Sushmita demonstrated great expertise and ability in science. She showed great potential in providing further contributions to her new projects and program.

Marthie has been very active both from the scientific point of view (with strong and successful involvement in a number of projects), and the point of view of science citizenship (with the organisation of several events) and international collaborations that could benefit CSIRO

Regine demonstrated supporting roles in connecting dots across organisations. Provided great support to the South Australia team.

Angela Feng (finance), Samantha Wong (contract), Jo Jarjoura (talent), Michael Stothers (student) and Tom Durick (BD) demonstrated great support for the Cyber Security CRC, enabling impact of the project.

Regine and Dharma demonstrated great website development skills, showing willingness to do work outside of usual duties as well as trying new things (e.g. Python) that greatly support our work.