Associate Professor Tomas Trescak

Overview

A self-confessed geek, Associate Professor Trescak uses technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to help humans navigate complex cognitive tasks.

He spends his time immersed in a range of different realities – virtual, augmented and everyday - to find solutions that can contribute to a wide range of non-technical fields.

My passion lies in bringing this technology to other fields such as the social sciences and health sciences to hopefully bring some benefits.

The topics of Associate Professor Trescak’s research concern explainable artificial intelligence, mixed realities, machine learning, interactive virtual, intelligent virtual agents, crowd simulations and computational creativity techniques, such as shape grammars.

For example, he is studying how to combine artificial intelligence and virtual reality to develop systems for brain rehabilitation in health care.

At the MARCS Institute, his projects involve the use of vision or behavioural psychology to study how to improve the next generation of augmented reality devices for applications such as smart contact lenses or glasses.

Impact

During his research, Associate Professor Trescak has developed several techniques and methods that have been developed into open-source tools that are being used worldwide. A major contribution has been to create interactive 3D virtual worlds and apply them for different purposes.

His work will contribute to the body of knowledge around artificial intelligence and how it can be used to make our lives easier.

Finally, we have got to the point where we understand the benefits of artificial intelligence as well as its limits and threats. My role is to bring this technology to develop solutions that can be commercialised.

He has used virtual and augmented reality to create historical simulations for teaching. For example, he worked with Aboriginal communities in Darug Country to simulate Aboriginal life in Parramatta in the year 1770, which was presented with great success during Yarramundi lecture in December, 2014.

He is also working on the use of data-informed using data science artificial intelligence to motivate students by understanding their skills development and matching this to their expectations of the jobs market.

Career

Associate Professor Trescak holds a PhD in Computer Science, specialising in artificial intelligence from the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain (IIIA) of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC). He has worked at the University of Western Sydney since May 2016.

His research interests include:

• 3D virtual worlds
• Agent-Based Simulation
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computational Design
• Cybercultures
• Digital Humanities
• Educational Technology
• Edutainment
• Graphic Design
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Intelligent Agents
• Multi-agent systems
• Science Education
• Sociocybernetics
• Software Engineering
• Teaching Methods
• Virtual Institutions

1. Gold medal for the Australia's best ICT higher education educator of the year, awarded by Australian Computer Society, during Global Disruptor Awards 2015

2. Leader of the team winning the Best young innovator award, during the Unearthed challenge, the data science competition organised by leaders of Australia's natural resource management

3. Winner of the global Meteor Hackathon team challenge in category of applications with 100 lines of code or less

4. Best paper and best poster award for his work on co-creating Virtual Reality simulation of life of Australia's First People.

Collaboration

Associate Professor Trescak collaborates with a wide range of other disciplines, including neuroscientists.

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