 |
||
 |
 |
      |
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
|
||
The Institute for Technology Research and Innovation
Deakin University is creating a new Research Institute focussing on research strengths in materials and fibres, biosciences and intelligent systems.
The new Institute will conduct discovery, applied and commercial research. It will value research creativity, foster innovation and promote strategic partnerships with industry and government.
The Institute is part of a significant redevelopment of the Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds, which is also home to Deakin’s new Medical School and the Geelong Technology Precinct.
The Institute will be strongly linked to the proposed Deakin India Research Institute that is under development in Bangalore in India.
We are seeking outstanding research
leaders to be part of this step-change in research
We are seeking to employ up to six Professors or Associate Professors,
for initial terms of up to
five years, from the following areas:
• Biosciences • Biomaterials
• Nanotechology
• Fibre or Polymer Science
• Intelligent Systems
• Protein and / or Medicinal Chemistry
Successful applicants will be supported by excellent research infrastructure and laboratories and by fellow researchers who are committed to making a difference regionally, nationally and internationally.
Deakin University has strong connections with CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory, CSIRO’s Division of Textile and Fibre Technology and Barwon Health in Geelong. There is scope for joint programs in research with these agencies and also for joint appointments.
Start-up funding will be available and Deakin is interested in recruiting teams or creating new teams that support the development of these research programs.
Deakin has a vision for Geelong and the region as the centre of new knowledge industries. The Barwon South West of Victoria is a vibrant economic growth region and Deakin University seeks to be a catalyst for these exciting developments.
For more information visit:
www.deakin.edu.au/research/itri or telephone Professor David
Stokes, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)
+61 3 5227 1147 Applications close: 15 Feb 2008
Facing up to the computer age
Logging on to inappropriate websites by under-age computer users may be about to become a little more difficult than merely pressing the “I CONFIRM” button.
Using
mathematical algorithms, Deakin researchers Professor Kate Smith-Miles
and PhD student Xin Geng are working on an automatic age estimation project
that will help determine whether the face of the person at the keyboard
conforms with the age they say they are.
“That’s just one practical and obvious way in which the work we’re doing could be used,” Professor Smith-Miles said of the work which has already gained extensive global recognition.
A paper co-authored by Professor Smith-Miles and Xin Geng with Professor Zhou Zhi-Hua from China’s Nanjing University has been published as the feature article in the December edition of the prestigious American-based journal – IEEE Transaction on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.
The Deakin researchers also identified four other practical applications for their work in the paper:
1. Age-specific human-computer interaction: People at different ages have different requirements and preferences for interaction with computers, including linguistics, aesthetics and consumption habits. If computers could estimate the person’s age, they could automatically choose the vocabulary, interface and services suitable to the user.
2. Multi-cue identification/verification: Although age is not a reliable biometric feature for identification and verification, automatic age estimation can work together with other widely used biometric trains like fingerprints and iris recognition to improve security.
3. Law enforcement: Age is always an important attribute when describing a person involved in law enforcement procedures. Sometimes the age of a person in a photo is not known. The technique of automatic age estimation could help police determine the age of a suspect more accurately and efficiently.
4. Understanding the aging process in other areas: The research on automatic age estimation algorithms could provide valuable help to researchers in psychology, medicine and other fields about the aging procedure or the perception of aging variation.
“While recognition of most facial variations, such as identity, expression and gender, has been extensively studied, automatic age estimation has rarely been explored,” said Professor Smith-Miles, the head of Deakin’s School of Engineering and IT.
“In contrast to other facial variations, aging variation presents several unique characteristics which make age estimation a challenging task. In this paper we proposed an automatic age estimation method named AGES (AGing pattErn Subspace).
“The basic idea is to model the aging pattern, which is defined as the sequence of a particular individual's face images sorted in time order, by constructing a representative subspace.
“The proper aging pattern for a previously unseen face image is determined by the projection in the subspace that can reconstruct the face image with minimum reconstruction error, while the position of the face image in that aging pattern will then indicate its age.
“In our extensive experiments of over 2000 faces, our method outperformed the existing published approaches, and even outperformed human perception of age estimates when the humans were given only the same tightly cropped face images to view as those fed into our algorithm.
Research Services Division:
Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds
Pigdons Road, Geelong, Victoria 3217 Australia
Telephone: +61 3 5227 2673 Facsimile:
+61 3 5227 2175
Email: dvc-research@deakin.edu.au
www.deakin.edu.au/research
Deakin Research Updates - back copies
Back issues of Deakin Research Updates are available at: www.deakin.edu.au/research
Quickstep forward for Deakin researchers
Deakin University’s talented young research leader Dr Bronwyn Fox is part of a team of international experts on composites awarded a million dollar grant.
The researchers aim to develop new composite resins that are optimised for manufacture using the Quickstep Process.
This will be achieved by gaining a better understanding the changes that occur during rapid processing of polymer composites.
The research team will include:
• Dr Richard Day, founder and Director of the Northwest Composites Centre (NWCC) in Manchester;
• Dr Arthur Wilkinson from the NWCC;
• Dr Fox, a senior lecturer at the Centre for Material & Fibre Innovation at Deakin University and a member of Quickstep’s Technology Advisory Board;
• Dr Kim Alderson, an expert in the field of auxetic materials from the University of Bolton.
Dr Day will lead the team, which has elected to focus on the Quickstep fluid-controlled heat transfer (FHT) processing technology - an area which is currently attracting industrial interest as an alternative to autoclave processing.
Dr Fox has spent much of the past two years travelling between Deakin University Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds and Manchester, developing opportunities to use the university’s expertise in Quickstep overseas.
“This a wonderful international project which fulfils University key goal to raise the international profile of Deakin through strategic international partnerships and alliances,” Dr Fox said.
“It means that our research at Deakin is having an international impact and that the composite team at Deakin is becoming known overseas for the quality of its work.”
Online environmental research network launched
Deakin University’s commitment to working with regional communities was on show in November when the WGC Sustainability Research Network was launched at the Warrnambool campus.
The network, created in conjunction with South West Sustainability Partnership and including the Wimmera, Glenelg-Hopkins and Corangamite Catchment Management Authorities, is a portal to announce events, contact environmental scientists, find partners to collaborate on projects and increase the investment in sustainability research in the region.
Deakin University’s Sandra McClelland, who is chair of the WGC Sustainability Research Network, says the network increases opportunities for organisations and people in south west Victoria to share their local knowledge about the environment and natural resource management and cooperate to increase research investment in the Region.
The research network will deal with the broad issue of sustainability, research themes that will include but not be limited to: Climate, Socioeconomic, Water, Biodiversity, Land and Landscapes and Estuarine, Coastal & Marine.