High-def video link enhances UK collaboration

The Faculty of Information Technology recently hosted an eWorkshop via video conference between Monash University and Warwick University in the UK, allowing both universities to have a virtual presence in the other's country – something that was unthinkable not so long ago.

The eWorkshop allowed researchers from both universities to present their research on probabilistic graphical models for reasoning under uncertainty.

Professor David Abramson, Science Director of the Monash e-Research Centre, said that the conference was an example of how high-definition video technology could support global research collaborations.

“In this workshop, we leveraged both Monash and Warwick's independent and different expertise in Bayesian networks, and discussed how it could be applied to a wide variety of problems in research and industry,” Professor Abramson said.

“The virtual point-of-presence between Warwick and Monash facilitates unique interactions, adding value to the significant engagement between the organisations. It provides Monash with a virtual presence in the UK, and Warwick with one in Australia. Ten years ago that would have been unthinkable."

Researchers at both institutions have independently applied Dynamic Bayesian networks to the problem of modelling and identifying unusual behaviour. Bayesian networks have rapidly become one of the leading technologies for applying artificial intelligence to real world problems.

Presentations were made by the University’s Associate Professor Ann Nicholson - Introduction to Dynamic Bayesian networks and Dr Kevin Korb - Anomaly detection in vessel tracking; and Warwick’s Professor Jim Smith – Eliciting and estimating the developing threat of a criminal population using a DBN.

The workshop also demonstrated the new technology being developed by the Monash Warwick Video Portal Project and its potential for facilitating such collaborations in the future.

Attendess came from the two host universities, as well as the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and the University of Melbourne.

Monash has also developed tele-seminar links with the University of California, San Diego, the University of Illinois and the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa).