Lumen Winter 2018 - Flipbook - Page 7
Machine learning gives computers the ability
to learn without having to be specifically
programmed, allowing for everything from
driverless cars to speech recognition and
more effective web searching. It includes the
still rather futuristic sounding concept of
artificial intelligence, but is broader in scope
– and is a reality right now.
According to alumnus, Professor van den
Hengel, the announcement of the new,
multi-million dollar Australian Institute for
Machine Learning (AIML) was a “perfect
result” – for the University and for this
exciting but still emerging area of technology.
“We’ve been widely recognised for our
expertise for quite a while and it is a natural
extension of that to set up a dedicated and
very focused research centre,” Professor
Anton van den Hengel said. “We know
there are a number of key areas, such as
visual questioning answering, where
we are the best in the world.”
“Machine learning has already changed how
we shop, Facebook has changed how we
communicate and Google has changed how
we search for information – and they are just
the easy things. It’s starting to have a big
impact in agriculture and in mining and is
about to change transportation,” Professor
van den Hengel said.
“Machine learning will have a
transformational impact on just about
anything you can think of. The core
technology gets applied all over the place
and that’s the opportunity. It’s exciting.
People are calling it the fourth
industrial revolution.”
At last year’s announcement, the University’s
then Interim Vice-Chancellor, Professor
Mike Brooks said the AIML would help
provide solutions to improve productivity,
efficiency and service delivery for South
Australians and attract globally dominant
companies to the state.
“Through the institute, South Australia
has the opportunity to lead the nation in
the development and implementation of
a strategy to create a vibrant ecosystem of
high-tech businesses and highly productive
workers,” he said.
The South Australian Government
shares that sentiment. It has made a $7.1
million investment in the AIML, including
$1.5 million prioritised for defence
capability research.
Professor Anton van den Hengel is the Director
of the Australian Institute for Machine Learning
(AIML), former Director of the Australian Centre
for Visual Technologies, a Chief Investigator
of the ARC Centre Excellence on Robotic Vision
and a Professor of Computer Science at the
University of Adelaide.
Professor van den Hengel leads a group of
over 60 researchers working in computer vision
and machine learning, and has had more than
250 publications, nine commercialised patents
and more than $50 million in research funding.
He has received a number of awards, including
the Pearcey Award for Innovation and the
CVPR Best Paper Award.
The new institute will be one of the first
tenants in the innovation precinct being
established on the old Royal Adelaide
Hospital site, occupying what was previously
the Women’s Health Centre building on the
corner of North Terrace and Frome Road.
Machine learning overlaps or
complements fields such as computational
statistics, mathematical optimisation, data
mining and data analysis. The University
has had strengths in these areas for many
years bringing them together in 2007 with
the creation of the Australian Centre
for Visual Technologies.
In a decade, the centre grew from six people
to more than 60, developing some important
commercial relationships, not the least of
which were in the defence sector.
“That was largely a computer vision group.
Our transition to the AIML has seen us
expand into other types of data and take
on bigger projects and bigger challenges,”
Professor van den Hengel said.
“Our skill sets are quite focused; we do
machine learning technology. To use a motor
vehicle analogy, we are experts at spanners
and hydraulic jacks and we can apply them
to all sorts of areas.
“We are working with agricultural companies
to apply them to grow better crops and avoid
common problems, we are working with
defence companies on questions surrounding
meaningful cooperation with robots, and we
are working with medical companies making
devices that will allow people to operate
a powerful medical device on their own
without medical training.
“Our main driver is that we want to do
fantastic research. Some of that is theoretical
research, but we also want to do high-impact
research where much of that impact will be
in other fields.”
And that means a number of collaborations
are happening across the University, or
with other research institutions such as
the SA Health and Medical Research
Institute (SAHMRI).
About half of the AIML team is research
students and its Director hopes to expand
those numbers. He also sees the potential
to develop a specific machine learning
curriculum at undergraduate level to
encourage undergraduates to pursue
postgraduate work in the field.
It is very much the way of the future.
Alumni Magazine ~ Winter 2018
5
