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School of Computer & Information Science

Doctor of Information Technology

'...think conceptually about current issues and technologies in IT professional practice and propose creative new ways to innovate...'

Here is your opportunity to study this research-focussed degree; Doctor of Information Technology at the School of Computer and Information Science. Follow these simple steps:

  1. Select your Project/Area of Interest
  2. Seek Project Approval
  3. Lodge a Formal Application

For further information, download a copy of our Doctor of Information Technology Program Brochure - (PDF Document).

1. Select Your Project

Students will be aligned to a research project within one of the School's Advanced Computing Research Centre (ACRC) laboratories. The list of laboratories and their Directors are as follows:

 

Data and Web Engineering Lab


Problems in Data Integration Project

Data from multiple sources is often integrated to answer demanding queries, to give customers better support and to support data mining and analysis.

For example, data from multiple car dealers (data sources) can be integrated for a search website (global) where car buyers (clients) search for their desired cars. In this application, each car dealer may have a distinct data format (source schema) for its data.

The website requires a more general format (global schema) to coordinate data from multiple sources and show this schema to its clients.

The clients, based on the global schema, put their queries to the website to search for cars and the website forwards the query to each participating car dealer to collect data. The website then combines the collected data and sends the combined data to its clients.

Similar applications to this example are peer-to-peer systems with coordinator peers which manage the global schema.

There are several problems relating to data integration which are good research topics. One problem is to build connections between the source schemas and the global schema. The connections can be built at different levels:

The development of the association should be as automatic as possible, but at the same time, should allow users to specify their own opinions.

The second problem is about constraints representing the meaning of data on data sources. When the association between the source data and the global data is built, we need to know the relationship between the constraints on the source data and the constraints on the global data.

Another problem relates to data security. Assuming that each data source has a security policy, we need to know how to derive the security policy on the global data. Alternatively, if the global data has already had a security policy, we would like to know if any conflict exists between the policies on the data sources and the policy on the global data.

A further problem is to derive sub-queries from a global query based on the association between the global schema and the source schemas. After the sub queries are answered, we then need to develop algorithms to combine the results of the sub queries to form an answer for the global query.

The data integration project involves the use of database management systems, XML tools, programming development and many other database and web engineering skills.

 

Health Informatics Lab


General Practice Data Mining Project

This project will look at utilising available data at General Practice (Medical Doctor) level to improve quality, safety, and/or consistency of practice. So far, most of the data in GP information systems are stored as free text using disparate coding systems.

To meet the challenge, we need to extract information from the free text, as well as correctly mapping coding problems to a selected coding scheme (possibly SNOMED CT).

Part of this process involves looking for missing codes (e.g. inferring a problem code from indirect clues; a patient receiving insulin is a diabetic - including some measure of confidence from inferenced results) and coding drugs prescribed to the patient (e.g. using ATC classification).

Another focus involves extracting sequences of decisions made on a particular patient over a time interval (visitation data). In regards to medication data, we can infer the medication decisions made by the treating physician. As such, data is typically not explicitly available so an inference method is required.

Currently, we use a set of categorical heuristics to fit the data into pre-existent categories; this needs to be expanded to cater for uncertainty (e.g. Bayesian approach, fuzzy approach, case-based reasoning).

A further challenge will be to go beyond the constraint of pre-existent categories and to data-mine possible categories (e.g. workflow mining, path mining).

 

Information Systems Lab


Students can choose from any of the following projects:

Understanding and Supporting Creative Teams (PAS)

Much high-impact work in organisations is undertaken by teams and a considerable proportion of that work (e.g the work of Software Engineers, Strategic Planners, Command and Control groups) is either un - or, at best, semi-structured. We refer to such work as 'creative teamwork'.

The aim of this research program is to develop and demonstrate an observational method for developing, orchestrating and evaluating ICT-based support for creative teams.

Creative team activities are characterised as a network of synchronous group meetings linked by periods where members work individually. It is convenient for the purposes of partitioning the research program to classify the activities within a 2x2 matrix, as synchronous OR asynchronous; held in a formal place (potentially ICT-linked formal places) where optimal support may be made available, OR held in an informal place where potential support is limited by context.

Opportunities exist for students to join an existing team and work within any of the quadrants of this matrix. A broad and extending range of research methods are employed within this program, currently ranging from ethnographic studies through to observational laboratory experimentation, to software engineering-based R&D work.

 

Diffusion of Socially Pervasive IT Innovation (PAS)

This research program investigates the diffusion of socially-pervasive IT innovation. We focus on end-user decision making across the adoption–diffusion continuum (from Prior Use to Post–adoptive Behaviour). An earlier project involved constructing a framework for understanding how potential adopters of an innovation might make the decision to adopt, to use and to adapt usage of the innovation.

The Price of Convenience Framework focuses on the ways in which a potential adopter balances desire for the 'conveniences' of the innovation against perceptions of associated loss of privacy and impact (positive or negative) on societal security. Current projects within this program includes:

A wide range of opportunities exist for students to join an existing team and become involved in further testing and extension of the Price of Convenience Framework. This may extend coverage of decision 'factors', or clarifying the mechanisms through which actors influence and are influenced by the evolving cognitive context.

 

Sustainable Rural Mobile Commerce (PMCS)

This research program focuses on the effective and sustainable use of mobile commerce by primary producers; especially those in remote locations, both within Australia and elsewhere.

We focus on the creation of rural communities and the provision of relevant information, especially the ability to access and update relevant databases 'in the field'. This work is founded on the RuTADiM model (Rural Area Technology Acceptance and Diffusion Model) which combines the Big Three, TAM2, IS Diffusion Variance and Stages of Innovation-Decision models to identify relevant change management issues in this area.

In a current project (MobiCert), we are focusing on the development of a mobile information portal for farmers engaged in organic certification, allowing them to access organic certification related information, keep records electronically and communicate with other farmers in a mobile community.

The portal is accessible via Internet and Mobile Internet and gives organic farmers the opportunity to access information and do their record management wherever they are. Potential projects within this program includes:

 

Supporting Medication Management with Digital Documents (PMCS)

This research program focuses on the ways in which electronic documents can assist in the Medication Management (MM) process. It broadly describes a set of relationships and decisions through which primary healthcare practitioners and patients work together to produce specific drug therapy outcomes (Canadian Pharmacists Association 2004); an approach to addressing medication-related adverse events.

MM information sharing and communication is most effectively supported by ICT intervention, although little work has been published in this area. MM models in the literature describe service processes or disease-based care, but none explain the nature, or communication, of MM information.

In a current project, we are focusing on the development of a proof-of-concept document-based approach to support clinical documentation and provide an effective mechanism for information communication between healthcare providers using XForms to define World Wide Web user interfaces. Potential projects within this program include:

This was based on an information model formulated from hospital and community contexts. Briefly, the proposed project would:

 

Knowledge and Software Engineering Lab


Research Project

Students will investigate high level descriptions of programming and problem solving tasks with the goal of more effective and less maintenance effective software development for specific domains.

Research may range from the analysis of classic software engineering methods such as UML state charts (involving the identification of consistency conditions for inheritance and application integration), to knowledge representation and reasoning methods such as ontologies and model-based reasoning.

Applications of these techniques in such diverse areas as business process and web service integration, diagnosis/software debugging, product configuration and the Semantic Web can also be accommodated.

 

Reconfigurable Computing Lab


Computing for Real Time Airborne Surveillance

Uninhabited Airborne Vehicles (UAVs) are projected to become a major segment of the aviation industry over the next 20 years, primarily enabled by developments in computing, communications and sensor technologies.

An area where UAVs will likely make a major impact is in surveillance and remote data collection. Examples of applications include fireground (active bushfire) surveillance, crop and vegetation surveying, emergency data communications and maintaining the security of people and assets.

UAVs exhibit a capacity for 'real time airborne surveillance', i.e. the provision of real time information to people on the ground from a platform that is flying remote from the ground.

This project, which is jointly supported by government authorities in Australia, will investigate the computing and information technology aspects of real time airborne surveillance, especially using UAVs.

There will be opportunities for students to work on advanced high performance reconfigurable computing for image processing and data encryption, ad hoc networking, visualisation and the data fusion of multi-spectral scenes and non-visual data.

The project features computer platforms that range from embedded systems to desktops and portables (PDAs). Students with an interest in software and systems engineering might also be interested in the project.

 

Security Lab


For project information, please contact Dr Helen Ashman.

 

Strategic Information Management Lab


Research Project

Information is intricate and its management may be elusive; the quality aspects of information are often ignored. Information management is critical to contemporary organisations.

Information management has become a business philosophy, aligning policy, strategy, culture, information and technology to facilitate the ways information can benefit business. It is not just a management activity, but also a strategic one delivering a competitive advantage.

Students working on projects will be investigating data quality and information related to asset management.

 

Wearable Computing Lab


Students will be involved in research related to one of these projects:

Tinmith

The Tinmith system is designed to support research in outdoor augmented reality (AR). We have developed new, easy to use user-interface techniques to be used in 3D environments where keyboards and mice cannot be used.

Using these user interfaces, we have developed complex applications which allow users to interact with their environment and enter new information into the system about the world.

 

Hand of God

The Hand Of God project is based around a table top device that is capable of reconstructing 3D representations of objects placed onto the table. The current application of this system is to facilitate communication between groups of people working indoors and people working outdoors with AR systems.

One of the ways in which those people indoors communicate information to people outside is to use hand gestures such as pointing. To those outdoors, these gestures will appear as though a giant hand is coming out of the sky, hence the project name.

 

The Multi-Pointer X Server

The Multi-Pointer X Server is a modified X Server that supports multiple system cursors simultaneously.

Each connected device can be assigned to a distinct cursor and act independently of each other. MPX is a modification of the windowing system and thus compatible to legacy applications such as the GIMP, Firefox, or others.

2. Seek Project Approval

If you are interested in one of the projects above for the Doctor of Information Technology (DIT), we ask that you forward the details of the project and the name of the research laboratory the project is aligned to, along with your name, existing qualifications and contact details to:

Kate Rees or Linde Farrow

Program Support Officers
School of Computer and Information Science
University of South Australia
Mawson Lakes Campus

We will then get back to you with project approval. Once project approval is granted, you'll need to Lodge a Formal Application to the University of South Australia (see Step 3 below).

For any further academic enquiries, please contact:

Associate Professor David Kearney

DIT Program Director
School of Computer and Information Science
University of South Australia
Mawson Lakes Campus

3. Lodge Formal Application

As soon as project approval has been granted by the School of Computer and Information Science, we ask that you visit the following website to formally lodge your application with the University of South Australia:

How To Apply For A Research Degree Program

For further enquiries about your application, please contact the School of Computer and Information Science directly on +61 8302 5002.

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