Our People at School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences

Professor Simeon Simoff, Dean

Simeon Simoff

Simeon Simoff is the Dean of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences (CDMS) and Professor of Information Technology at Western Sydney University, where he has accumulated over a decade of experience in leadership roles. He also holds the role of Lead Dean,  Information and Communications Technology for the University. Prior to joining the University in July 2008, he was Professor of Information Technology, and Founder and Co-Director of the international e-Markets Research Lab in the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Technology Sydney.

Simeon’s walk of life spans across a range of fields, including computer science, creative intelligence, design computing and cognition, data science, applied mathematics and artificial intelligence (AI). He holds BSc/MSc Hons degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and PhD in Computer Science. He has had senior appointments at the École Polytechnique de l'Université de Nantes (France), the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Research of the Spanish Research Council (IIIA-CSIC), Aalborg University (Denmark), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen (Italy), University of Trento (Italy) and Middle East Technical University (Turkey).

His research has delivered practical outcomes across the fields of artificial intelligence (the ‘curious negotiator’ technology), data science (the CEDA analytics technology), human-computer systems (the form-semantics-function technology), design computing and virtual reality (the believability technology).Much of it has been supported by $8.3 millions of competitive grant funding. He has published more than 340 publications including a seminal monograph, and several edited books and has supervised over 20 PhD students. His current work is focused on interpretable machine learning, explainable AI, and the intersection of visualisation and AI. Simeon has established and led the growth of several early international conference and workshop series in data science, including the ACM SIGKDD Multimedia Data Mining workshop series and the Australasian Data Mining Conference series. He is the founding co-director of the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia (IAPA), which in 2019 was acquired as a leading data-driven association by the Australian Computer Society (ACS). He regularly serves in chair or in steering/program committee roles at leading international events in the fields. He has served on review panels for several national research funding agencies across Australia and New Zealand, Europe and Asia. He served on ERA 2012 Research Evaluation Committee on Mathematics, Information and Computing Sciences.  Since 2015 he is on the editorial board of Tailor and Francis Interdisciplinary Science Reviews - a quarterly journal that aims to explore the social, philosophical and historical interrelations of the natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, medicine and technology with the social sciences, humanities and arts.

Currently Simeon is Deputy President/President Elect of the Australian Council of Deans of Information and Communications Technology (ACDICT). He serves on the ACS Technical Advisory Board (AI and Ethics Committee) and on the International Federation for Information Processing Technical Committee on Artificial Intelligence (IFIP TC12). He is Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales and the Institute of Engineers Australia.

Professor Andrew Francis, Deputy Dean

Professor Francis joined Western Sydney in 2000 after studying at the Universities of NSW and Sydney, and a postdoctoral position at the University of Virginia.  He began his role as Deputy Dean in 2020 after serving as Director of the Centre for Research in Mathematics and Data Science (2015-2019), and a period as an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2011-2014).

Professor Francis’s research is mainly in applications of discrete and combinatorial mathematics to problems in biology.  His training is in pure mathematics (specifically algebra), and the applications he works have chiefly been to phylogenetics, epidemiology, bacterial genome structure, and statistics.  In addition to his ARC Future Fellowship, he has held four ARC Discovery Projects.  He has served on the Council of the Australian Mathematical Society (2012-14), on the ARC Research Evaluation Committee for the 2015 and 2018 Excellence in Research for Australia exercises, and is currently a member of the ARC College of Experts (2018-2020).

CDMS Leadership


Key People in our School

Dean's Unit

Dean
Prof. Simeon Simoff

(02) 9685 9179
Dean.SCDMS@westernsydney.edu.au

Deputy Dean
Prof. Andrew Francis

(02) 9685 9236
a.francis@westernsydney.edu.au

Associate Deans and Centre Directors

Associate Dean, Engagement
A/Prof. Anupama Ginige

(02) 9685 9439
j.ginige@westernsydney.edu.au

Associate Dean, Research
A/Prof. Rodrigo Neves Calheiros

(02) 9685 9135
r.calheiros@westernsydney.edu.au

Associate Dean, International
Prof. Alana Maurushat

(02) 9685 9665
a.maurushat@westernsydney.edu.au

Associate Dean, International (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau)
A/Prof. Yi Guo

(02) 9685 9374
y.guo@westernsydney.edu.au

Deputy Associate Dean, International (southeast Asia)
Dr Simi Bajaj

(02) 9685 9665
k.bajaj@westernsydney.edu.au

Associate Dean, Learning and Teaching
A/Prof. Ana Hol

(02) 9685 9615
a.hol@westernsydney.edu.au

Associate Dean, Graduate Studies
A/Prof. Dongmo Zhang

(02) 47360 009
d.zhang@westernsydney.edu.au

Director, Centre for Research in Mathematics and Data Science
Prof. Roozbeh Hazrat

(02) 9685 9054
r.hazrat@westernsydney.edu.au

Discipline Leaders

Discipline Leader - Computing
A/Prof. Bahman Javadi

(02) 9685 9181
b.javadi@westernsydney.edu.au

Discipline Leader - Mathematics and Data Science
A/Prof. Laurence Park

(02) 9685 9065
l.park@westernsydney.edu.au

Information and Communications Technology, Directors of Academic Programs (DAPs) and Academic Program Advisors (APAs)

DAP - Undergraduate
Dr. Tomas Trescak

(02) 9685 4744
t.trescak@westernsydney.edu.au

APA - Undergraduate - Campbelltown
Dr. Evan Crawford

(02) 4620 3834
e.crawford@westernsydney.edu.au

APA - Undergraduate - Parramatta
Dr Nicholas Sheppard

(02) 9685 9585
n.sheppard@westernsydney.edu.au

APA - Undergraduate - Penrith
Dr. Jiansheng Huang

(02) 4736 0318
j.huang@westernsydney.edu.au

DAP - Postgraduate
Assoc. Prof. Quang Vinh Nguyen

(02) 9685 9328
q.nguyen@westernsydney.edu.au

APA - Postgraduate Coursework
Dr Jianhua (Jamie) Yang

(02) 9685 9233
j.yang@westernsydney.edu.au

APA - Postgraduate Master of Research, MICT (research), MAI (research)
Dr Weisheng Si

(02) 9685 9283
w.si@westernsydney.edu.au

Computer Science, Directors of Academic Programs (DAPs) and Academic Program Advisors (APAs)

DAP
Assoc. Prof. Yun Bai

(02) 4736 2335
y.bai@westernsydney.edu.au

APA - Parramatta
Dr Aruna Jamdagni

(02) 9685 9403
a.jamdagni@westernsydney.edu.au

APA - Penrith
Dr. Jiansheng Huang

(02) 4736 0318
j.huang@westernsydney.edu.au

STEM Entrepreneurship, Directors of Academic Programs (DAPs) and Academic Program Advisors (APAs)

DAP
Assoc. Prof. Anton Bogdanovych

(02) 9685 9180
a.bogdanovych@westernsydney.edu.au

Data Science, Directors of Academic Programs (DAPs) and Academic Program Advisors (APAs)

DAP
Assoc. Prof. Laurence Park

(02) 9685 9065
l.park@westernsydney.edu.au

APA
Dr Rosalind Wang

(02) 9685 9232
rosalind.wang@westernsydney.edu.au

Information Systems, Directors of Academic Programs (DAPs) and Academic Program Advisors (APAs)

DAP
Dr. Simi Bajaj

(02) 9685 9382
k.bajaj@westernsydney.edu.au

APA
Dr Nicholas Sheppard

(02) 9685 9585
n.sheppard@westernsydney.edu.au

Artificial Intelligence, Directors of Academic Programs (DAPs) and Academic Program Advisors (APAs)

DAP
Prof. Yan Zhang

(02) 4736 0746
yan.zhang@westernsydney.edu.au

APA - Master of Research, MICT (research), MAI (research)
Dr Weisheng Si

(02) 9685 9283
w.si@westernsydney.edu.au

Mathematics and Statistics, Directors of Academic Programs (DAPs) and Academic Program Advisors (APAs)

DAP
Assoc. Prof. Volker Gebhardt

(02) 4736 2688
v.gebhardt@westernsydney.edu.au

DAP - for Interdisciplinary Teaching
Dr Stephen Weissenhofer

(02) 4620 3404
s.weissenhofer@westernsydney.edu.au

APA - Mathematical Sciences and Interdisciplinary Teaching
Mr Neil Hopkins

(02) 9685 9166
n.hopkins@westernsydney.edu.au

Further contact details for School of Computing, Data and Mathematical Sciences can be found in the University Staff Profiles.

WSU Contact Email: studentcentral@westernsydney.edu.au
Domestic Contact Number:         1300 668 370 (Monday–Friday, 9am-5pm)
International Contact Number:   +61 2 9852 5656 (Monday–Friday, 9am-5pm)