Research and HDR Supervision

Research Interests

My research program is organised around the central idea of building complex and distributed software systems. The fundamental concept in the area is automating software interactions – so called process automation technologies. An effective analogy of this concept is how McDonald’s automated the process of producing burgers; breaking the process into individual, repeatable tasks, creating a functional task module, then logically linking the modules to assemble a burger. This technology is a core enabler of the “highly-linked” modern software systems that connect everyone and everything on the Internet today.  Under this theme, I have worked on effective communication mechanisms between software systems, distributed software platform designs, and applying the techniques to ‘non-traditional’ domains such as automating document processing.

Currently, I am focused on elevating the privacy and consumer right issues that are generated by the automation technologies including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchains. Nowadays, the term `automation’ is innately linked with data and having access to private information. The current discussions on privacy and trustworthiness of the companies and government as the custodians of our data are still at its infancy. As data is becoming a commodity today, providing technological solutions that protect privacy and raise the trustworthiness of data custodians have become important and exciting research topics. In particular, I have two programs on providing technological solutions: (i) Blockchain technology brings a new paradigm on how society can function when there is no trust. This new paradigm can shift our thinking around how trust is built and managed around data custodians, (ii) software engineering techniques for AI to improve transparency. The current black-box and ad-hoc nature of the AI solutions can benefit from well-established systematic engineering frameworks learned from Software Engineering principles. 

My current projects involve the following topic areas:

Privacy preserving, decentralised data analytics and management

Blockchain-based systems for enhanced privacy and trust management

Software engineering views on machine learning development

Federated machine learning

Research Supervision

Current students

• Rahma Bintey Mufiz, “Prescription Monitoring System with Blockchain”, PhD, started T1/2019 (Joint supervision with Prof. Salil Kanhere)
• Yashothara Shanmugarasa, “Data analytics and Blockchains”, PhD (Scientia PhD program), started T1, 2020 (Joint supervision with Dr. Liming Zhu and Prof. Salil Kanhere)
• Zifei Gong, “Transfer Learning for Deep Learning”, Masters by Research, started T2, 2020 (Joint supervision with Dr. Chen Wang)
• Sin Kit Lo, “Federated Machine Learning”, started T1/2020 (Joint supervision with Dr. Qinghua Lu)
• Su Yen Chia, “Privacy Preserving Software Architectures”, started T3/2019 (Joint supervision with Dr. Sherry Xu)
• Usama Salama, ”IoT Digital Forensics and Security”, PhD, started S2/2016 (Joint supervision with Dr. Lina Yao)

Completed

• Rajitha Madhushan Ranasinghe Yasaweerasinghelage, “Performance monitoring and dynamic experimentation framework for enterprise applications”, PhD, completed T1/2020 (Joint supervision with Dr. Mark Staples, Ingo Weber)
• Suhrid Satyal, “AB Testing of Business Process Improvements”, PhD, completed T2/2019 (Joint supervision with Dr. Ingo Weber)
• Shawn Lu Xiao, ”Supporting Collaboration Processes using Crowdsourcing Platforms”, Masters by Research, completed in S1/2017
• Jing Xu, ”Models and Techniques for Searching and Querying Personal Processes”, PhD, completed in S2/2016
• Nima Mohammadzadeh Moghadambarkadeh, ”A Common Business Process Instance Model”, Masters by Research, completed in S2/2016
• Roya Rozita Rastan, ”Table Data Extraction from Documents: Systems and Techniques”, PhD, completed in S2/2016 (with Dr. John Shepherd)
• Chun Yong Moon, ”Column-based Data Extraction from Call for Papers”, Masters by Research, completed 2014 (with Dr. John Shepherd)
• Sung Wook Kim, ”Form-based Process Management”, Masters by Research, completed 2013
• Dac Dat Hoang, ”Towards Spreadsheet-based Web Service Composition”, PhD, completed 2012
• Emam Hossain, ”A Framework for Effective Application of Agile Project Management in Global Software Development”, PhD, NICTA joint/co-supervision started S1, 2007, completed 2011.
• Yin Hua Li, ”A Framework on Privacy Enforcement for Business Processes”, PhD, co-supervision, completed 2009.

Research Grants/Contracts

• H Paik, Data Oriented Architectures forImproved Data Management and Analytics in Blockchains, Collaborative Research Project Data61/CSIRO, 2019/2020 ($80,000)
• H Paik, USYD Business School, Parsing ASX Data 2018/2019 ($45,000)
• H Paik, C Han, MS Song, M Comuzzi, Australia-Korea Foundation, Australia-Korea Project Management Workshop for Early Career STEM Researchers 2018 ($28,000)
• H Paik, F Rabhi, CSIRO/Data61 Collaborative Research Project, Designing and Delivering Data Analytics Processes  2016/2018 ($37,300)
• X Lin, F Rabhi, H Paik, I Weber, CSIRO/Data61 Collaborative Research Project, Designing and Delivering Data Analytics Processes  2015/2016 ($74,500)
• H Paik, Smart Services CRC – Table Extraction from PDF documents, Summer Vacation scholarship 2014 ($7,500)
• H Paik, Smart Services CRC – Enabling Market Impact Analysis with Large News Dataset 2012-2013 (Scholarships and Top-ups, $47,000).
• H Paik, “POLAR network and ad-hoc processes”, ETRI, Korea, 2010 and 2011 ($50,000 total)
• B. Benatallah, P. Compton and H. Paik, ”Service Channel Investigation in Service Delivery Framework”, Smart Services CRC, Cooperative Research Centres Program, 2009-2010 ($126,400)
• B. Benatallah, P. Compton and H. Paik, ”Service Delivery Framework”, Smart Services CRC, Cooperative Research Centres Program, 2008-2009 ($126,400)
• S. Lim, H. Paik, H. Larkin and G. Jo, ”Context-aware Computing for Personalised Location-Based Services”, UNSW Engineering-ADFA International Research Collaboration Scheme, University of New South Wales, 2008-2009 ($28,340)
• J. Davis and a team of academic staff members from USyd, UNSW, UQ and UMelb, ”Curriculum Renewal in Postgraduate Information Technology Education: a Response to Growing Service Sector Dominance”, Australian Learning and Teaching Council Priority Grant, 2008-2009 ($218,500)
• H. Paik, ”A New Platform for Personal Process Management”, Faculty Early Career Researcher Program, University of New South Wales, 2008 ($25,200)
• H. Paik, ”Privacy Preserving e-CatalogNet Management”, Faculty Early Career Researcher Program, University of New South Wales, 2006 ($15,000)
• R. Brown and H. Paik, ”Visualisation of Business Process Management”, Faculty Collaborative Research Grant, Queensland University of Technology, 2005 ($15,000)