Researchers
Professor Catherine Best is the Chair in Psycholinguistic Research and Leader of the Institute's Speech Production Laboratory. Her research focuses on how adults’ and infants’ experience with their native language shapes their perception and production of the phonological elements of spoken words, including consonants, vowels, lexical tones and prosodic patterns.
Professor Paul Breen's research focuses on bioelectronics and neuroscience and his interests involve investigating the potential of subsensory electrical noise as a treatment for the loss of sensory function.
Professor Dean is a renowned Australian composer, improviser and performer whose research seeks to understand how music is perceived and how meaning (notably affect) is generated. He applies new cognitive and computational knowledge to develop novel methods for creating music.
Professor Paul Hurley is a Professor of Data Science at ICNS. His research interests are mathematical signal processing, data science, algorithms, information theory medical imaging and radio astronomy interferometry.
Peter Keller is Professor of Cognitive Science and leader of the Music Cognition and Action research program at MARCS. His research aims at understanding the behavioural and brain bases of human interaction in musical contexts, specifically, the sensory-motor and cognitive processes that enable ensemble musicians to coordinate with one another.
Professor Jeesun Kim is a researcher in our Multisensory Communication research program. Her research concerns information processing in face-to-face communication and involves measuring/analysing properties of auditory speech and facial movements (visual speech) of talkers in various communication conditions, and how such conditions impact on speech production and perception.
Professor Robert Mailhammer is a Lecturer in Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts; and a member of our Speech and Language research program. His research interests are broad with concentrations on historical linguistics, language documentation, phonetics & phonology, and morphology.
Professor Alana Maurushat is Professor of Cybersecurity and Behaviour at Western Sydney University where she holds a joint position in the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences and in the School of Social Sciences, and is Key Researcher with the CRC Smart Satellites
Professor Catherine Renshaw researches in the field of international human rights law, with a particular focus on the intersection between rights and the medical sciences in the field of ageing. She is a founding member of the Network for Law and Human Rights.
Professor Simeon Simoff is Dean of the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences and the leader of our Human-Machine Interaction research program. His research interests include artificial intelligence, data mining/analytics and knowledge discovery, human computer interactions, virtual worlds and immersive environments, visual computing and visual data mining and analytics.
Professor Sarah Zhang joined in School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics at Western Sydney University (WSU) as an Associate Professor since Janurary 2019. She is now the Discipline Leader (Civil & Environmental) and the Research Theme Champion (Environment and Sustainability) of WSU.
Anton Bogdanovych is a Lecturer within the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences; and a researcher in our Human-Machine Interaction research program. He is involved in a number of research projects related to virtual reality, artificial intelligence, robotics and motion.
John Cass is Associate Professor in Psychological Science in the School of Psychology and a member of our Multisensory Processing research program.
Dr Gaetano Gargiulo is a Research Lecturer and his research interests include biomedical instrumentation and biomedical data analysis with a particular focus on Brain/Human computer interface and cardiac inverse modelling.
Associate Professor Andrew Milne works at the interface of music, cognitive science and computing – and their implications for creativity, education and wellbeing.
Dr Quang Vinh Nguyen is is Associate Professor in the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences; and a researcher in our Human-Machine Interaction program.
Dr Oliver Obst is Associate Professor in Data Science and the Director of Research, Quality, and Innovation for the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences. Oliver's research interests include machine learning, neural networks and information theoretic approaches. He is an a member of the board of trustees of the RoboCup federation (an organisation to foster research and education in AI), and served as a PC member of scientific conferences such as NIPS, IJCAI, and AIStats.
Associate Professor Tomas Trescak is one of our school-based researchers based with the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences. He is a Lecturer in Intelligent Systems and is closely connected with our Human-Machine Interaction program.
Gabrielle is a Associate Professor in Psychological Science in the School of Psychology. She is currently conducting research examining associative learning and classical conditioning processes in human participants and the role that associative learning and memory play in the acquisition of likes and dislikes.
Tamara Watson is Associate Professor in Psychological Science in the School of Psychology; and member of our Multisensory Processing research program. Her research interests include identifying the basis for perceptual stability and perceptual omission during saccadic eye movements, steady state visual evoked potential measures of audio-visual integration and altered visual perception in schizophrenia.
Dr Saeed Afshar is a Senior Lecturer with the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems. His research seeks to investigate computational architectures and algorithms from the fields of neuroscience, machine learning, signal processing, and circuit design to develop novel vision and memory systems with superior performance in dynamic noisy environments when compared with the state of the art conventional computing approaches.
Dr Anil is a postdoctoral researcher at the Human Physiology Lab, where her passion for interdisciplinary research drives her engagement in a diverse range of studies encompassing human physiology and biomedical advancements in the fields of concussion (TBI), peripheral neuropathy, vestibular impairments, and hearing loss.
Yeshwanth Bethi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Machine Learning and Neuromorphic Engineering.
Dr Ruth Brookman is a researcher and clinical psychology registrar, and an academic member of the MARCS Institute's Lifespan Labs. Her clinical experience and research interests cover the lifespan. She is particularly interested in supporting well-being and social interactions between people with dementia and their caregivers.
Dr Laurence Bruggeman is a postdoc in our Speech and Language research program. Her research interests include Speech comprehension, Bilingualism, Hearing loss and Eye-tracking.
Dr Yossi Buskila is a research lecturer in Neurophysiology. His research focuses on the role of spike propagation delays in the way neuronal networks process informative signals.
Dr Simon Chambers is a cultural sociologist whose work involves understanding the dynamics of how culture is produced and engaged with by audiences.
Dr Sergio Chevtchenko is a researcher with the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems.
Dr Shi Min April Ching is a postdoctoral research fellow with research interests in multisensory integration and non-conscious processing.
Dr Frances Doyle is a clinical psychologist and researcher. Frances has published peer-reviewedacademic articles on child, adolescent, and family psychology, and presented at national and international conferences.
Gloria holds a PhD from The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development at Western Sydney University, a Master of Science and a BA in Interpreting and Translation. Gloria's research experience involves child development, language, cognition, and word-learning mechanisms in monolingual and multilingual populations.
Anna Fiveash is an ARC DECRA fellow. In her DECRA project, Anna uses the communicative domains of music and speech to better understand how the brain makes predictions for upcoming information, both in terms of content and timing.
Dr Sandra Garrido studies how arts-based interventions can affect our mood, emotions and wellbeing. Her research has provided the evidence for effective programs and tools that use music to improve mood and quality of life for young people with depression and older people with dementia.
Antonia investigates infants' and children's abilities to perceive native and non-native speech sounds and is particularly interested in how phonological categories are formed in the first year of life. To get a multifaceted view of the infant's abilities she uses different behavioral (e.g., looking times) and neural (electrophysiological and functional near-infrared spectroscopy) techniques.
Dr. Tijl Grootswagers is an ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow in Cognitive Neuroscience at the MARCS Institute and Western Sydney University. He is a computational cognitive neuroscientist who combines machine learning, neuroimaging, and behavioural data, to understand how the brain perceives and processes information, particularly in the areas of visual perception and decision-making. He is known for his contributions to understanding the neural basis of visual perception, linking neuroimaging results to behaviour, and developing advanced neuroimaging methods.
Dr Jose Hanham is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and a school-based member of MARCS Music Cognition and Action group. His research program focus is Educational Psychology, Learning and Cognitive Sciences.
Dr Steffen won a three-year ARC DECRA to further research imagination, music, and how they interact.His current research is situated at the intersection between Memory, Music, Imagination, Information Sampling, and Neuroscience.
Dr Imogen Jones is a postdoctoral researcher at Western Sydney University. Her current research involves finding new space-based applications for neuromorphic vision sensors. This includes on-orbit observations of lightning and satellites and terrestrial observations of atmospheric and astronomical phenomena.
Dr Weicong Li is a Research Officer in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. Weicong has a background in physics and engineering, and contributes technical expertise to research in the analysis of speech and language corpora (children, adults and the elderly).
Dr Ruby Lipson-Smith is an environmental psychology and healthcare researcher with a particular interest in sub-acute healthcare environments, especially rehabilitation and residential aged care. Her research challenges how healthcare buildings and programs are designed and used, their purpose, and the impact they have on users' experience, behaviour, health, and cognition.
Dr Liquan Liu is a Lecturer in Psychological Science within the School of Psychology. He is connected to our Speech and Language program and his research interests focus on the multi-dimensional effects of multilingualism on infant and child development.
Dr Gough Lui is a biomedical and electronics engineer whose research identifies unmet clinical needs in the healthcare system and addresses them in the most effective way using existing technology.
Dr Alexandre Marcireau joined ICNS in 2019 as a postdoctoral research fellow in Neuromorphic Engineering. His research focuses on bio-inspired computer vision, event vision sensors, event-based processing, and software development.
Dr Karen Mattock is the Director of Academic Program (Years 1 - 3) within the School of Psychology. Her research interests are in infant and child language development, particularly in the areas of speech perception, babbling, bilingualism and infant-directed speech, as well as word learning in infants, children and adults.
Dr Ali Mehrabi is a postdoctoral research fellow in Neuromorphic Hardware with the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems. His position and research interests include Digital signal processing, Image processing, FPGA hardware design and Neuromorphic systems.
Dr Travis Monk is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Neuromorphic Systems. His current goal is to develop low-power, online algorithms that can detect certain features of interest from the world from event-based cameras.
Dr Jed Montayre is a senior lecturer in the School of Nursing & Midwifery. Jed has a strong clinical background in gerontology and medical-surgical nursing. He is an experienced nurse academic, who has worked in the Philippines and New Zealand. Jed’s teaching areas include gerontology and aged care nursing. Jed’s research focuses on age-friendly communities, ageing and health, cardiovascular health of migrant populations, nursing policy and workforce issues.
Dr Omar Mubin is a lecturer in the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences and a researcher in our Human-Machine Interaction research program. His research interests comprise Human Computer Interaction, exploring the role of robots in education, empirical research in Human Computer Interaction and user-centred design.
Dr Laurence Park is a Lecturer in computational mathematics statistics in the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences; and researcher in our Human-Machine Interaction research program. His research interests include large-scale multi-label learning, and computing document models from user interaction and analysis of Social Network graphs.
Samalika serves as a Research Engineer in Neuromorphic Computing at the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS).
Dr Genevieve Quek has extensive experience in continuous behavioural methods, and trained extensively in leading European cognitive neuroscience labs to build deep expertise in advanced electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). She joined MARCS as a Research Fellow in 2021.
Dr Nic Ralph completed his PhD at the ICNS with a thesis on Exploring Space Situational Awareness using Neuromorphic Event-Based Cameras. His research focus is computer vision, machine learning, astronomy, space science and mechatronic design.
Dr Bharath is a Lecturer and Academic Program Advisor for the Master of Neuromorphic Engineering at ICNS. His research interests are to develop low-latency neuromorphic systems with solid grounding in vision and perception theory. Alongside research, he assists the Center with the development and coordination of its world first Master’s program in Neuromorphic Engineering.
Ms Kate Richards is a senior lecturer within the School of Humanities and Communication Arts; and a researcher in our Music, Cognition and Action research program. Kate is involved in a number of research projects related to affect, affordance, and designing for audience experience, and data visualisation and sonification.
Dr Mark Richards is an associate research fellow in Language Technologies for Education. Mark's research centres on language revitalisation and language learning. He is interested in the role of technology in scaffolding and supporting language learning. He is currently undertaking a review of recent research into the use of technology in the context of language learning to identify features of different technologies that research suggests provide benefits for learning. He is also consulting as widely as possible with Aboriginal communities and other language learners to inform the development of learning tools to support sustainable language revitalisation.
Dr Hannah Sarvasy is an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher in our Speech and Language program. Her research interests are clause chaining, switch-reference, linguistic fieldwork, Papuan languages, Atlantic languages, Bantu languages, linguistic typology, child language acquisition, field-based experimentation.
Jasmine Seymour is a Dharug woman belonging to the Burubirangal people. She 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.
Dr Alison Short is Lecturer in Creative Music Therapy in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts; and member of our Music Cognition and Action research program. She harnesses her 23 years of experience as a qualified and practising music therapist and 10 years of experience as a full-time health services researcher to address issues related to music, music therapy and the auditory environment.
Dr Joyce Siette is currently leading a program of research combining psychology, social psychiatry and public health to identify the social risks, causes and consequences of risk factors on dementia. Her research vision is to maximise the real-world value of research on reducing dementia risk, and to move us towards optimally effective digital interventions to support healthy lifestyles and quality of life in older adults.
Dr Sophie Smit investigates how the brain processes information from the world around us, focusing on the integration of visual and tactile information, which is crucial for aspects like self-perception and social understanding.
Dr Chris Stanton is a postdoctoral research fellow in our Human-Machine Interaction research program. His research focuses on both Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and Human-Machine Interaction (HMI), in particular how a robot's behaviour and appearance can influence people's behaviour, attitudes, and decision-making processes.
Dr Kylie Steel is a Senior Lecturer in Motor Learning (Skill Acquisition) and Motor Control in the School of Health Sciences.
Dr John R. Taylor is a Research Fellow in Human Machine Interaction (HMI). Dr Taylor's work focusses on developing cognitively optimised recommender systems (RS) for enhancing human interaction with intelligent autonomous systems. Dr Taylor's research focusses on enhanced UX design, namely how computer-based systems display or present information, make suggestions or recommendations, and how a user interacts with the system over time, to enhance engagement, situation awareness and trust. Previous work includes affect-based audio RS, and more recently RS for the command and control of autonomous robot swarms.
Dr Nicholas Tothill is a Senior Lecturer and Director of WSU Penrith Observatory. He joined WSU in 2011 as a Lecturer in the Computational Astrophysics, Imaging and Simulation group, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2015. He became Director of WSU Penrith Observatory in 2018.
Dr Mark Wang is a postdoctoral fellow. His research focuses on neuromorphic engineering, mixed-signal/analog VLSI design, ASIC/SoC/FPGA design, computational neuroscience, deep network, machine leaning, cognition systems and signal processing.
Dr Ying Xu's research interests include Neuromorphic Engineering, Neuromorphic Auditory Systems and Applications, Mixed-signal VLSI Design, ASIC/SoC/FPGA Design and Machine Learning.
