Research Bites is your research news digest which aims to capture the diverse research happening in our faculty, collated from various media outlets. In this edition…
Dr Tanmoy Debnath | Senior Lecturer in Engineering | SoCME, recently presented at the BioDMS (Biomedical Data Management Systems) Workshop, held as part of VLDB 2026, in Boston, USA, on 4 September 2026
The Data Management Crisis Behind AI-Based Brain MRI Diagnosis: Heterogeneity, Governance, and Reproducibility
Tanmoy Debnath, Miroslaw Narbutt, Katarzyna Anna Kazimierczak
The workshop was organised by researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and brought together an international group of researchers working in biomedical data management and data systems.
You can read more about it here.
Professor Tim Anderson had the privilege of collaborating with some fantastic researchers from the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Laboratory looking at solar energy for Nepal. Check out this latest work in the Royal Society Publishing Open Science.
Congratulations to Dr Nicola Thomas | Lecturers in Economics and Finance | School of Business who recently received notification overnight that her first solo paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal for Economic Educators. The paper combines social media clips and the online game Clash Royale to illustrate economic concepts to foundational students. A lot of her teaching is online and visual media is an incredibly important tool in overcoming learning barriers.
Well done Nicola!
Prof Larissa Bamberry | Assoc Dean Research says a lack of coordination between governments, industry and businesses is contributing to regional workforce challenges. A new Jobs and Skills Australia report has highlighted the additional pressures regional areas face in recruiting workers. Larissa highlights that skill shortages and skill gaps are three separate issues that require tailored responses. You can hear her interview on ABC Radio here.
Charles Sturt University researchers have developed artificial intelligence (AI) technology that could assist Australia’s 80,000 farming enterprises which face challenges in monitoring and managing their assets in real time.
An AI-powered drone, called SkyEye, performs crop and livestock inspections which are analysed by AI to detect crop stress, weeds, pests and irrigation risks.
The idea was developed by Prof Lihong Zheng, Professor in Computing. Read more here.
Dr Nicole Sugden | Senior Lecturer | School of Psychology, has a lot to celebrate with her co-reasearchers and co-authors this month. Two articles have been published around the important conversations on people with disabilities.
The sky is falling! Examining disaster preparedness in supported independent living: Support worker’s perspectives, published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. This was a collaboration between researchers in the School of Psychology at Charles Sturt University, and Lojic Lojic Institute – Sydney
Experiences of consuming and supplying accessible tourism for people with disabilities: A scoping review and agenda for future research, published in Tourism Management Perspectives. Co-Authors Assoc Prof Clifford Lewis, Dr Felicity Small, and Mackenzie Wood.
It was a privilege for Assoc Prof Clifford Lewis to share his work at ACON‘s NSW Regional Rainbow Forum.
He spoke about hope. Our research found that hope contributes significantly to the psychological wellbeing of rural and regional LGBTQ+ people.
Building hope means two things:
1. Showing people what is possible, so they can believe it is possible
2. Giving them real pathways to get there
He left more convinced that more than ever: we need a stigma-informed approach to rural LGBTQ+ inclusion.
This considers not just the environment and the prejudice within it – BUT also how LGBTQ+ people sees themselves and the stigma they may have internalised.
Read more on his blog.
Dr Leo Lin | AGSPS shares his latest peer-reviewed article in the Q1 journal Criminal Justice Policy Review (Sage Journals). You can access the article here.
This research explores how civil defense frameworks adapt to modern security demands through volunteer policing, highlighting the critical balance between government strategy and civil society participation.
A core purpose of Leo’s research is to translate these international frameworks into the Australian context. By examining global models, we can equip domestic public safety agencies with evidence-based strategies to maximise volunteer capacity, enhance national resilience, and strengthen police-community partnerships nationwide.
Dr Leo Lin | AGSPS had the distinct privilege of delivering the (virtual) inaugural address at the North American Conference on Computational Intelligence, Data Science and Cloud Computing (NACDC 2026), held at The University of British Columbia, Canada.
Speaking from the viewpoint of policing and security studies, Leo’s objective was to bridge the gap between technical development and security governance. As the capabilities of machine learning expand, so do our vulnerability surfaces. We are seeing malicious actors exploit these systems to carry out sophisticated cybersecurity breaches, AI-driven financial fraud, and large-scale scams. The rapid normalisation of deepfakes and voice cloning demonstrates that we need artificial intelligence deployed for robust intrusion detection just as urgently as we need it for commercial progress. His core message to the conference was: the technologies being developed in data science are neutral; their applications are not.
Dr Milind Tiwari | AGSPS is pleased to share his new co-authored article, “Foreseeing Metacrime in Metaverse 2.0: The Impact of GenAI and Spatial GenAI,” published in Oxford Intersections: Borders by Oxford University Press (OUP).
The article examines how GenAI-powered immersive environments may reduce barriers to criminality and create new challenges for policing, accountability and cross-border regulation.
Last week, Dr Jamie Ferrill had the pleasure of running another Borders in Globalization (University of Victoria) Summer Institute on Border Security Management in Brussels.
Dr Ferrill and colleagues are very grateful to the student participants who joined in person at the European Commission and those who came in online from all over the world. The team always appreciate these Institutes as an opportunity to learn from the vast experience of everyone participating across the many sectors in this space. The engagement this year was next level, and a good reminder that this field runs on the accumulated effort of people working in very different institutional settings. Trust and cooperation emerged as a recurring theme across the week, underpinning much of what makes border security work at the global level.
New Research| AI for Smarter Livestock Management
Professor Rafiqul Islam and colleagues share their latest research which demonstrates that the quality of predictive features can be more important than treating every problem as a time-series task.
This research highlights how artificial intelligence can transform irregular, real-world agricultural data into reliable decision support, enabling more informed feed allocation, pasture utilisation, livestock marketing, and early anomaly detection in commercial grazing systems.
It is exciting to see AI creating practical impact in precision livestock farming and digital agriculture.
The School of Business congratulates Assoc Prof Nicholas Pawsey, Assoc Prof Tahmid Nayeem, and Fahad Asmi together with co-author Lee Baumgartner, on their recent publication in Sustainability: “How Media Trust Mediates the Adoption of Fish Screens by Irrigators in Australia: The Intermediate Effect of Resource Efficacy.“
Drawing on survey data from 192 irrigators across the Murray-Darling Basin, the study examines how trust in media shapes farmers’ willingness to adopt fish screens, a technology that protects native fish populations while improving irrigation efficiency. The findings show that trust in media significantly predicts adoption intention and resource (time) efficacy, with resource efficacy partially mediating this relationship, highlighting that having sufficient time to test and install new technology is just as important as trusting the information source.
The research offers practical guidance for policymakers, extension services and media organisations seeking to accelerate the uptake of sustainable irrigation practices in regional Australia.
