Research Students
Patrick Adam
Child Socio-emotional Development
Patrick Adam is a PhD and Clinical Psychology candidate at the MARCS Institute. His research focuses on children's social and emotional development, including how these skills are defined, measured, and linked to mental health outcomes.
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Mina Aghaei
Person-Centred Assistive Technologies for People living with Dementia
Mina Aghaei is a PhD researcher exploring how technology can better support people living with dementia in everyday life. Her research focuses on person-centred assistive technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), with an emphasis on understanding people’s needs, experiences and preferences to help develop technologies that are easy to use and acceptable and person-centred.
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Lori-Ann Boxsell
Speech Pathology
Lori-Ann Boxsell is a PhD Candidate at the MARCS Institute and inaugural recipient of the Anne Cutler PhD Research Scholarship in Language Sciences, established in memory of the late Distinguished Professor Anne Cutler (1945–2022). Lori-Ann’s doctoral project explores the reach of speech pathology services across diverse metropolitan, regional, and rural areas in New South Wales, and examines how social media shapes parents’ decisions to seek services for children who are late to talk.
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Benjamin Brandwood
Biomedical Sensor Technology
Benjamin Brandwood is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute and a Technical Officer at Western Sydney University. His research develops non-invasive technologies to measure blood pressure, monitor heart function, and detect sleep apnoea using advanced biomedical sensors. His work aims to improve early diagnosis and continuous health monitoring through innovative cardiac and respiratory sensing technologies.
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Florian Burger
Object Recognition
Florian Burger is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute. His research explores how humans and artificial intelligence recognise and categorise objects. Using brain imaging, behavioural experiments, and computational models, he investigates how visual information is represented in the brain and how insights from neuroscience can help develop more human-like AI systems.
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Samuel Dakey
Reablement in Aged Care
Samuel Dakey is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute researching wellness and reablement programs in aged care. His work focuses on improving support for older adults, particularly people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Samuel explores how aged care services can better promote independence, wellbeing, and healthy ageing through culturally responsive and person-centred approaches.
Celine Frangieh
Peripheral Neuropathy
Celine Frangieh is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute researching new technologies to improve sensation in people living with peripheral neuropathy. Her work focuses on developing the "Feeling Aid", a wearable device designed to enhance nerve signals and support foot health. Celine combines expertise in neuroscience, psychology, and rehabilitation to create practical solutions for people with chronic neurological conditions.
Jody Gall
Human - AI Teaming
Jody Gall is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute, researching how people judge the morality of AI teammates' decisions. His work looks at real-world scenarios — from military operations to search and rescue — to understand what makes an AI's choices feel morally acceptable to humans. He aims to help build machines that behave ethically.
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Lekshmy Hema Nair
Music Cognition
Lekshmy Hema Nair is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute researching musical improvisation and creativity. Combining expertise in music, signal processing, and network analysis, she investigates how musicians collaborate, influence one another, and create new music in real time. Her work explores the social and cultural networks that shape contemporary Australian music.
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Milena Adriana Hernández Gallego
Bilingual Language Development
Milena Hernández Gallego is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute researching bilingual language development in Spanish-English children. Her work explores how children maintain and develop Spanish while growing up in English-speaking environments. She studies the factors that support multilingualism, heritage language learning, and children's language development in culturally diverse communities.
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Naqib Ibnul
Acoustic Signal Processing
Naqib Ibnul is an MPhil Candidate at the Internatioanal Centre for Neuromorphic Systems. His research is making sense of the environment and trying to predict what will happen next from sound in the surroundings.
Sharmin Islam Saba
Speech Perception
Sharmin Islam Saba is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute researching how bilingual children and adults perceive speech sounds from different languages. Her work investigates language learning and speech perception in multilingual communities. She is particularly interested in understanding how bilingual experiences influence language development and communication across the lifespan.
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Dalia Israel
Cognitive Neuroscience
Dalia Israel is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute. Her research explores how people perceive and respond to AI-generated content, with a particular interest in deepfakes, visual perception, and the behavioural and neural processes involved in distinguishing real from AI-generated information.
Ritwik Jain
Neuromorphic Computing
Ritwik Jain is a PhD candidate at the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS) whose research focuses on brain-inspired artificial intelligence. He develops energy-efficient neuromorphic computing frameworks that use event-based neural networks and low-precision computing to make AI systems faster, smarter, and less power hungry.
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Smriti Khadka
Autism and Speech Processing
Smriti Khadka is a PhD candidate at the MARCS Institute researching speech processing and listening skills in bilingual autistic children. Her work aims to better understand how children process speech in real-world environments and how this shapes communication, learning, and participation in everyday life.
Mahdiyeh Khanbagi
Infant Cognitive Neuroscience
Mahdiyeh Khanbagi is a PhD candidate at the MARCS BabyLab investigating how infants learn to recognise and categorise objects. Using EEG, machine learning, and cognitive neuroscience methods, she studies how the developing brain builds stable object representations during the first year of life.
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Emmanuel Kissi
Biomedical Signal Processing
Emmanuel Kissi is a PhD candidate developing algorithms that improve the performance of wearable morphic sensors used to monitor cardiac and respiratory activity. His research focuses on extracting meaningful health information from sensor data to support non-invasive, continuous monitoring in healthcare settings.
Quynh Nhu Le
Neuromorphic Artificial Intelligence
Qyunh Nhu Le's is a PhD candidate at the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS). Her research focus is on Event-Based Predictive World Modeling through Structured Memory and Joint-Embedding Learning.
Shivaram Mani
Stochastic and Statistical Analysis
Shivaram Mani is a PhD candidate at the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS). He is a quantitative researcher who uses mathematics, statistics and computer modelling to understand how complex systems notice change. His work crosses neuroscience, engineering and data science, usually with the goal of making difficult ideas behave themselves long enough to become useful.
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Ria Mishra
Visual Cognition
Ria Mishra is a PhD candidate at the CogNeuro lab. Her research investigates how humans recognise and categorise atypical objects, combining behavioural experiments with computational and EEG techniques to understand how context shapes object perception.
Lily Montague
Brain Health
Lily's project explores how brain-healthy behaviours can be supported from early childhood to promote lifelong brain health. As part of the Brain Health Heroes project, she is developing and evaluating a preschool-based brain health education program designed to build brain health literacy and foster healthy behaviours from an early age.
Mubah Mustafa
Artificial intelligence and Fetal Monitoring
Mubah Mustafa is a PhD researcher working on woman-centred co-design for fetal monitoring. Her research combines women's experiences, clinical expertise, and AI to create decision-support systems that help clinicians interpret fetal heart rate data while supporting informed decision-making and women's autonomy during childbirth.
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Salman Nadeem
Signal Processing and AI for Emergency Triage
Salman Nadeem is a PhD Candidate in Biomedical Engineering. His research area covers the intersection of computer science, electrical engineering and healthcare.
Nikhil Navas
AI for Reading Assessment
Nikhil Navas is a PhD Candidate working on developing machine learning models for automated reading assessment and intervention.
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Richard Powrie
Acoustic Environmental Monitoring
Richard Powrie is a PhD candidate at the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems(ICNS) researching autonomous acoustic monitoring technologies for environmental applications. His work combines robotics, sensing, and AI to develop low-power systems that can detect and classify sounds in remote environments, supporting biodiversity monitoring and conservation efforts.
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Belman Jahir Rodriguez Nino
Acoustic AI and UAV Detection
Belman Jahir Rodriguez Nino is a PhD candidate and research assistant at the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS). His research uses artificial intelligence, acoustics, and sensor fusion to detect, identify, and track drones in outdoor environments. He develops advanced audio processing systems for defence, security, environmental monitoring, and autonomous sensing applications.
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Timothy Roth
Music Cognition
Timothy Roth is a PhD student in music cognition at the MARCS Institute. He is interested in investigating how people perceive musical rhythm and harmony across cultures.
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Napat Sahapat
Evolutionary Computation
Napat Sahapat's research aims to discover novel learning mechanisms for spiking neural networks by using evolution as a tool for discovery. He is interested in exploring how evolutionary optimisation (algorithms relying on natural selection) can be used to search for better learning rules to control synaptic and structural plasticity in a spiking neural network.
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Nusrat Jahan Samiya
Cognitive Neuroscience
Nusrat Samiya’s research investigates neural and temporal dynamics of face perception, with sensitive insight from super-recognisers. She is interested in individual differences in face perception, including face recognition, recalling where a face was encountered, and detection of AI-generated faces. Through her research, she intends to deepen understanding of face perception dynamics and how it varies across different individuals.
Jasmine Seymour
Language Education
Jasmine Seymour is a Dharug woman belonging to the Burubirangal people. Jasmine is a descendant of Yarramundi through the Lock, Morley, Douglas, and Seymour families. Jasmine is a Dharug language teacher, Dharug language activist, an award-winning children's book author-illustrator, a primary school teacher and a language researcher. Jasmine supports Australian language education for all and works towards advocating for and promoting multilingual Indigenous Australia.
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Eman Shatnawi
Aged Care / Gerontology
Eman Shatnawi is a PhD candidate and research assistant at Western Sydney University. Her research focuses on person-centred care, staff wellbeing, and dementia-related care in residential aged care. She uses qualitative and quantitative methods and is interested in translating research into practical improvements for older adults, staff, and culturally diverse communities.
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Alireza Shirani
Digital Health User Experience (UX)
Alireza Shirani is a PhD candidate researching how user-centred design can improve clinical data surveillance systems. His work focuses on creating intuitive healthcare interfaces that help clinicians access, interpret, and respond to patient information more effectively, supporting safer and more efficient healthcare delivery.
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Thura Pyae Sone
Maritime Acoustic Intelligence
Thura Pyae Sone is a PhD candidate developing bio-inspired acoustic processing systems for maritime environments. His research focuses on detecting unusual or important sounds automatically in complex underwater and marine soundscapes, helping improve monitoring, security, and environmental surveillance.
Abishek Soti
Underwater Acoustic AI
Abishek Soti is an MPhil candidate researching neuromorphic approaches to underwater acoustic monitoring. His work uses brain-inspired computing and machine learning to detect unusual events in underwater environments, supporting applications in marine science, environmental monitoring, and autonomous sensing systems.
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Samuel Tensingh
Neuromorphic Hardware
Samuel Tensingh is a PhD candidate at the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS) developing next-generation computer chips inspired by the human brain. His research focuses on neuromorphic hardware for spiking neural networks, aiming to create highly efficient AI systems that consume less power while performing complex tasks.
Zack Wilcox
Space-Based Neuromorphic Vision
Zachary Wilcox is a PhD candidate at the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS) researching event-based vision sensors for space applications. His work develops brain-inspired sensing technology to improve space situational awareness and monitor atmospheric phenomena, helping create faster and more efficient observation systems for future space missions.
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