June 30th, 2025

Prof. Elizabeth Chang

Professor of Cyber Security and Head of Discipline
University of Sunshine Coast, Australia

Sky Safe with GAI and Post-Quantum Computing

Abstract

Professor Chang's talk in this presentation has two distinct parts. To start, she will introduce the landscape of cybersecurity development, attacks, threats, and vulnerabilities, as well as state-of-the-art cyber protection, cyber defence, and cyber incident prevention. This is followed by a discussion of the impact of Generative AI (GAI) and quantum-safe cryptographic computing, highlighting the major issues and challenges in research, education, and training.
In conclusion, she will present a vision for Sky Safe solutions, aiming to achieve cyber resilience that supports business and economic stability, enhances human capabilities, and promotes environmental sustainability.

Short Bio

Professor Elizabeth Chang is a Fellow of the IEEE (USA) and an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Cyber Physical Systems.
She has a PhD, MSc and BSc in Computer Science and Software Engineering.
Professor Chang was in industry for 8 years, including as CEO/CTO in a multi-national logistics company with HQ in Hong Kong, and a senior software engineer in Philips Public Communications in Australia. She has over 24 years of experience as a full Professor, having held five different roles across five universities. Her first academic appointment was as a Professor of Software Engineering, followed by positions as Professor of Information Systems, Professor of Defence Logistics (for 8 years), and Professor of Computer Science (past 3 years). She currently serves as Professor of Cyber Security.
Her academic achievement includes supervising the completion of 57 PhD theses.
She has obtained 30+ Competitive Research Grants, including 13 ARC grantsworth over $20 million. She has co-authored 8 books, 600+ international journals and refereed conference papers with an H-Index of 60 (Google Scholar), an i-10 index of 316 and has over 19,000 citations.
In the 2012 edition of MIS Quarterly vol. 36(4) Special Issue on Business Research, she was listed fifth in the world for researchers in Business Intelligence. She was the Foundation Director for several Research Centres of Excellence and one Institute of Excellence, including the Centre of Logistics Informatics, the Centre of Extended Enterprises, the Digital
Ecosystems and the Business Intelligence Institute.
Her research includes Cyber Security, Trusted Computing, Privacy and Risks, focusing on cyber information engineering and human space computing. She applies the fundamental research to industrial applications, including Defence, business, health and sustainability. She won #1 place in the Defence Innovation Competition with a $300,000 cash prize in Dec 2019. She has been listed as 1 of Australia's 100 top computer scientists in the last 10 years.

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July 1st, 2025

Prof. Dr Jagannath Aryal

Department of Infrastructure Engineering
University of Melbourne, Australia

Disaster preparedness and risk proling in the digital era from Earth observation lens

Abstract

Natural hazards which turn into disasters result in severe losses of lives, infrastructure, and property. Disasters such as earthquakes, landslides and their impacts on transportation safety, infrastructure resilience, and displacement of people to new places are challenges. To address such challenges, earth observation data and intelligent methods can provide potential solutions in developing decision support systems.

This talk will present the state-of-the art in earth observation for disaster resilience using intelligent methods. In the earth observation space, digitalisation has revolutionised the way we map, monitor and develop the decision support systems. Global case study examples covering earthquake induced landslides from the Himalayan region will cover the digital capabilities. The digital capabilities will embrace object recognition, interpretation, and their accurate and precise capture to integrate into the digital models.
The developed digital models from representative case studies can be leveraged in other jurisdictions in profiling the risks to protect lives, infrastructure and creating disaster preparedness in the era of digital age and digital economy.

Short Bio

Associate Professor Dr Jagannath Aryal is an academic faculty at the University of Melbourne, Australia within the Department of Infrastructure Engineering.

Dr Aryal leads the Melbourne India Postgraduate Academy (MIPA) as the Director. He leads a research group on Earth Observation and AI at the University of Melbourne.

His research focuses on optimal utilisation of Earth Observation, geo-information, and geo-statistics to develop new methods in Geomatics for urban systems taking sustainability and resilience into account.
He currently serves as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (TGRS) journal.
Dr Jagannath Aryal received his PhD degree in Optimisation and Systems Modelling from New Zeeland.
For details please visit: https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/865150-jagannath-aryal .

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July 2nd, 2025

Prof. Khan Muhammad

Department of Global Convergence
Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea

Intelligent Image Enhancement for Real Worls Applications in Adverse Atmospheric Conditions

Abstract

The adverse impacts of atmospheric conditions such as haze, fog, and low-light environments pose significant challenges for real-world applications reliant on computer vision, including autonomous driving, surveillance, and remotesensing.

This keynote explores cutting-edge advancements in intelligent image enhancement, drawing insights from two pivotal studies. The first introduces HazeSpace2M, a comprehensive dataset and novel classification-guided dehazing framework that improves image clarity across diverse atmospheric conditions, addressing the gap between synthetic and real-world dehazing performance. The second focuses on LoLI-Street, a benchmark for low-light image enhancement tailored to urban environments, extending beyond enhancement to enable robust object detection and scene understanding. Taken together, these contributions demonstrate how integrating domain-specific datasets, advanced algorithms, and performance benchmarks can significantly elevate the reliability of computer vision systems under challenging weather and lighting conditions. Attendees will gain valuable insights into the methodologies, datasets, and practical applications driving innovation in this field, with implications for research and industry alike.

Short Bio

Khan Muhammad (S'16 M'18, SM'22) received his Ph.D. in digital content from Sejong University, Republic of Korea, in February 2019. He served as a non-tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Software at Sejong University from March 2019 to February 2022. From February 2022 to August 2024, he was a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Applied AI, School of Convergence, College of Computing and Informatics, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, where he is currently an associate professor and director of the Visual Analytics for Knowledge (VIS2KNOW) Laboratory.

His research interests include intelligent video surveillance, medical image analysis, information security, and multimedia data analysis. Dr. Muhammad holds ten patents and has authored over 250 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. His contributions have received 23K+ citations to date, with an H-index of 83. He serves on the editorial boards of more than 14 journals and was recognized as a highly cited researcher in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 by Web of Science (Clarivate).