Testing the efficacy of translating qualitative data to a quantitative system dynamics model to facilitate the implementation of co-designed interventions towards improved mental health outcomes

In response to the critical challenges faced by Victoria’s mental health system, this research employs a systems-based approach to co-design mental health solutions using both qualitative and quantitative system dynamics methodologies. A collaborative research initiative between Deakin University, Barwon Health and the SAX Institute, the project aims to develop a system dynamics model of care transitions within Barwon Health’s Swanston Centre Acute mental health unit. This model will be used to test the efficacy of intervention scenarios and will be used as a proof-of-concept for future grant applications. This integrative approach is innovative in the Australian public health and mental health contexts, aiming to bridge stakeholder insights with data-driven analysis the research aims to develop comprehensive solutions for improved mental health outcomes in the Barwon-Southwest Region.

The team: This team is led by Dr Tari Forrester-Bowling (pictured above with her assistance dog Peanut), a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Health and Social Development and GLOBE (Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition). It has five further Deakin CIs and three external members at the Sax Institute. At Deakin, Dr Ha Le is a Health Economist, and Senior Research fellow, specialising in Health Economics based in the school of Health and Social Development.

Dr James McClure is a Research Fellow specialising in Stakeholder support at CHIME (Change to Improve Mental Health Translational Research Partnership) at the Institute for Health Transformation (IHT). Senior Lecturer in Social Work (School of Health), Dr James Lukas is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work. Alfred Deakin Professor Anne Peeters is the Director of the IHT.

Stephanie Bennetts is a Research Assistant and PhD Candidate at CHIME, and Andrew Brown is a Research Fellow in the GLOBE, also in the School of Health and Social Development. The team will be working Dr Danielle Currie, Principal Simulation Modeller at the Sax Institute, as well as Barwon Health.

An Interdisciplinary Examination of Factors Influencing the Impact of Secondary Exposure to Trauma on Australian Teachers

The aims of the project are to examine the prevalence of Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS), Burnout (BO) and Compassion Satisfaction (CS) in Australian teachers, and to explore work and individual related factors that may increase vulnerability or protect teachers from the impact of secondary exposure to trauma. A sample of at least 500 currently registered and practicing teachers across Australia via professional associations, social media (paid and unpaid advertising) and snowballing. The study design will involve mixed methods, including a cross sectional correlational online survey and 20 to 30 exploratory interviews drawn from volunteers from the survey group.

The team: This project was initially led by Dr Rebecca Diehm,  who has moved on from Deakin, and passed the CI reigns to Dr John Molineux. She remains on the team as an external member based at Barwon Health. Dr John Molineux has 30 years of experience as a human resource manager, and as an academic for the last 13 years engaging in teaching, supervision of PhD and DBA students, and is currently the Director of the Master of Human Resource Management Course

Dr Rebecca Diehm has over 14 years of experience working as a Clinical Psychologist (AHPRA, MAPS), and is a Board Approved Psychology Supervisor. She has over 12 years of experience working as an academic, establishing collaborations dealing with trauma, and the impact of secondary exposure to trauma.

Dr Ben Arnold is a Research Fellow in the Educator Health and Wellbeing team at Deakin University. Ben’s research focuses on conceptualising, operationalising, and measuring educator health, safety and wellbeing for research and policy purposes.

Dr Georgiana Cameron has had over 15 years experience working as an educational and developmental psychologist and supervisor within schools, universities and community services. She is particularly interested in supporting and studying teacher wellbeing.

Fighting Housing Affordability Crisis with A Data Based Approach

The Australian housing market has been a topic of extensive discussion and concern for decades. The market has witnessed soaring property and rental prices in major cities, making housing affordability a critical issue for many Australians. To reflect both social and physical/environmental challenges the Australian housing market faces, our project aims to construct Housing Sustainability Indices (HSI) for Australian major cities; and provide affordability, environmental considerations, and regulatory measures.  Our project focuses on providing a holistic measure of housing affordability, and we will harness Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), particularly the Neural Dynamical Model, as the cutting-edge technique to build a robust, spatially granular, and dynamic housing affordability index.

The team: Dr Ruipeng Liu of the Department of Finance at Deakin’s Business School leads this project. His research focuses on financial market modelling, risk measurements and management, and volatility forecasting. He works on asset pricing, financial market anomalies, and behavioural aspects of finance and climate finance. He applies tools from stochastic physics such as multifractal processes, to study stylized facts of financial markets such as volatility clustering and long memory.

Dr. Wei Luo (School of Information Technology)’s research focuses on improving the reliability of machine learning models to benefit the broader community. He aims to create machine learning models faithful to the application domain and robust in the prediction and thus tackles the research challenges in model uncertainty and generalisation via geometric and topological methods, particularly through the lens of dynamical systems.

Associate Prof. Qiang Li   works in the Department of Finance, Deakin Business School. His research focuses on real estate finance and economics, urban economics, and urban policy and planning. His current research interests include ethnic diversity and urban housing markets, the economics of skyscrapers, immigration and housing markets, and housing cycles. He applies economic analysis to both theoretical and practical issues in the housing market and in cities.

VR-Kids: Understanding Risk Management in Children's Play and Active Travel using Virtual Reality

The development of skills in childhood for managing risky situations and avoiding injuries is poorly understood. Understanding how children assess and handle risks can inform active transport guidance, injury prevention interventions, and schools regarding the provision of equipment/policies around play. There are ethical challenges with research that puts children in real-life situations that could result in injury. The Norwegian collaborators on this project developed a Virtual Risk Management (VRM) system to overcome this challenge using virtual reality. This study aims to develop a collaboration between Faculties to pilot test the VRM system in 30-40 Australian children aged 10-12 years.

The team:  This project is led by Dr Emiliano Mazzoli of the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN) in the School of Health and Social Development.  He is an expert in children’s physical activity and executive functioning (relevant to decision making) and has expertise in motor competence assessment. Also at IPAN, Professor Lisa Barnett is the leading researcher in the world in motor skills and Associate Professor Jenny Veitch is an expert in children’s physical activity relevant to parks and recreation. Alethea Jerebine is in the final stages of her PhD (supervised by Professor Barnett) and has produced the first international policy analysis on risk and play in schools and the first Australian data on parental attitudes to risky active play.

Based in the School of Information Technology, Associate Professor Thuong Hoang works on interaction techniques and devices, human factors, and educational technologies, and Dr Deepti Aggarwal has expertise in technologies like virtual reality (VR) and wearables to tackle real-world issues. They will lead the analysis of the VR and eye tracking data along with Professor Stefan Greuter, Director of Deakin’s Motion Lab, who has experience in designing VR experiences and natural user interactions within virtual worlds. Theresa Heering, based in the School of Health and Social Development, is in the final stages of her dual PhD and will lead sensor data processing using MATLAB.

Designing for health: developing a predictive artificial intelligence tool to examine packaging designs of healthy and unhealthy foods at scale

Food packages are not currently designed in ways that make it easy for consumers to identify and select healthier foods. To promote healthier packaged food choices, it is important to consider the design of food packages as a whole, including all the marketing and nutrition elements (images, logos and text), and how these elements are arranged (the design hierarchy).  Through the application of artificial intelligence, combined with insights from nutrition science, visual communication design, marketing and food policy, this project aims to develop an urgently needed, rigorous, low resource tool for identifying how food healthy and unhealthy packages are designed, in real-world retail environments.

The team: Dr Georgie Russell (School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition) leads this team. Georgie has expertise in behavioural nutrition including understanding how and why individuals select and consume foods. Associate Professor Meghan Kelly (School of Communication and Creative Arts)  has expertise in visual communication design and participatory design practices in both commercial and academic settings. Dr Paul Harrison (Deakin Business School, Department of Marketing) has expertise in examining the effect of marketing and advertising on consumer behaviour and implications for consumers, policy and business.

Associate Professor Abbas Khosravi (Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation) has expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning and their application for healthcare. Dr Priscila Machado (School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition) is a public health nutrition scientist with expertise in nutrition policy, ultra-processed foods and assessing and monitoring food consumption patterns.

The 2023 SSN Grantees

The Deakin Science and Society congratulates our new grantees. For 2023 six outstanding Interdisciplinary Incubator projects have been funded, as profiled below. Pictured here is the 2023 induction meeting where grantees shared their work with each other, and the SSN convenors.

Our grantees hail from diverse faculties and Institutes across Deakin, including

• The Institute of Frontier Materials (IFM) 
• The Faculty of Health 
• The Faculty of Arts and Education 
• National Indigenous Knowledges Education Research Innovation (NIKERI) Institute
• The Deakin Business School 
• The Faculty of Science, Engineering the Built Environment (SEBE)
• The CADET Virtual Reality lab

And from across Australia (RMIT, UNSW, Bowel Cancer Australia, the IMPACT Institute, Textile Recyclers Australia) and the globe (the UK and Mexico).

Empathy and Debiasing Through Generative AI: Navigating Cognitive Biases, Fake News, and Sociotechnical Agency in the Digital Media Landscape

In an era steeped in digital data and information, societies are inundated with a myriad of narratives, some of which propagate biased perspectives, fake news, and toxic ideologies, perpetuating filter bubbles and echo chambers (Pariser, 2011; Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). The ubiquitous nature of social media and digital news platforms not only shapes collective cognition and public opinion but also intensifies the diffusion of cognitive biases (Sunstein, 2017; Bruns, 2019; Zollmann, et al., 2021). The surge in hyper-industrialisation and Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) further complicates the dynamics of this informational environment (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014). The agency exerted by AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), and digital media platforms in shaping and modulating these dynamics is pivotal yet inadequately understood (Caliskan, Bryson & Narayanan, 2017). This project seeks to bridge the gap between technologically driven information dissemination and cognitive de-biasing, shedding light on the potential and pitfalls of employing LLMs in navigating the complex digital media environment. It aims to provide empirical insights that could inform ethical guidelines, regulatory policies, and developmental frameworks for leveraging AI in mitigating cognitive biases, fostering empathy, and ensuring veracity in digital information landscapes. Furthermore, it endeavours to illuminate the interplay between AI agency, human cognition, and digital media platforms, thereby contributing to discourse on ethical AI use, sociotechnical systems, and information integrity in the digital age.

Associate Professor of Communication Toija Cinque of the School of Creative Arts has teamed up with Allan Jones, the General Manager for Software Engineering at Deakin’s Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute (A2I2). 

Towards the wellbeing in space: measuring and monitoring the emotions of users immersed in meaningful virtual reality experiences

This interdisciplinary research initiative investigates how to design meaningful heritage-based extended reality (XR) experiences to support wellbeing of astronauts on long-duration space missions in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), to the Moon and Mars and those in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments on Earth. As a part of the immersive system, an AI-based platform will be designed and developed to measure, monitor, and regulate affective stress of the users. The team consists of researchers from STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and HASS (humanities and social sciences) disciplines with Indigenous and non-Indigenous backgrounds.

Associate Professor Nakisa Bahahreh is joined by Kaja Antlej, Tyson Yunkaporta, Gabrielle Fletcher, John David, Ben Horan, Pubudu Pathirana, Annahita Nezami, Kaori Becceril and Julia Low.

Development of a novel cell-based screening tool to reduce the impact of bowel cancer across the community

Bowel cancer kills – but not if we detect it early. The current screening test detects blood in faeces and is far from perfect. Not everyone with early-stage cancers has bleeding, and blood is not always due to cancer. We will collaborate with health professionals to consult with the community to co-design the concept of cell-based bowel cancer screening to identify the feasibility and sociocultural factors that will facilitate the movement from the current method for bowel screening in Australia, to cell-based screening method. We aim to ultimately save lives through earlier detection, reduce unnecessary, invasive tests and surgical removal of early-stage bowel cancers.

Dr Yen Ting Wong is joined by Jeffrey Craig, Liam Ryan, Karen Dwyer, Vicki White, Alison Hutchinson, Trish Livingston is and the IMPACT Institute and Bowel Cancer Australia.

Cold-start Contract Cheating Identification from Side Information Using Latent Linear Writing Style Representation

Contract cheating is the practice of students paying a third-party to complete assignments, a phenomenon that is growing in breadth and severity in higher education. Indeed, it has been reported that 15% of University students are engaged in contract cheating, a number which suggests that it represents a significant threat to the integrity and reputation of the Australian higher education. To address this challenge, we propose to analyse historical assignment data and develop novel NLP techniques to further advance the domain of AI-empowered contract cheating, in particular, to deal with the cold-start problem in which students have no historical data.

Dr Mohamed Reda Bouadjenek is joined by Phillip Dawson, Sunil Aryal and Imran Razzak.

Decolonising secondary science curricula in Australia

With the addition of Indigenous Science into the VCE sciences, teachers need help upskilling to navigate this new learning and teaching space. We will deliver training to support teachers in their journey to understand that there is more than one approach to science, and that science isn’t culture free, a key step in the decolonisation of VCE science. Teachers will be given high-quality lessons plans and access to a discussion forum for future help during planning/delivery. Our investigation will assess the teacher experience and whether the resulting learning activities teachers they develop demonstrate a respectful engagement with First Nations contexts.

Dr Angela Ziebell is joined by Al Fricker, Jessemy Gleeson, Seamus Delaney and Jorja McKinnon.

Designing Collaborative Computing Apps for Crowd-powered Smart Cities

This project explores how to design human-centred software that enables collections of smart devices and humans to collaborate and share their computing resources. The proliferation of Internet-connected smart devices provides an exciting opportunity to be used as a distributed resource for computational tasks required in areas such as tactile internet, autonomous vehicles, digital health, and environmental monitoring. Although existing research focuses on technical challenges such as performance, energy-efficiency and security, the success of this paradigm depends on continued user participation. This project addresses this gap by investigating human and social factors essential for the adoption of ‘crowd computing’.

Dr Niroshinie Fernando is joined by Lubna Alam, Seng Loke and Chetan Arora,

Perpetual Pigments-sustainable colour exhibition of indigenous art from textile wastes

Approximately 100 million tonnes of textiles end up in landfill around the world, of which about 800,000 tonnes are in Australia. The colour present in these textiles harm land and water. In addition, producing colours for textiles and other applications require chemical and energy intensive processes. In this project we will produce coloured fibre particles from end of life textiles by segregating textiles based on colour and milling in to fine particles. These particles will be used as pigments for creating arts and more specifically Australian indigenous arts. The project will combine fibre science, particle technology, design and arts.

Associate Professor Rangam Rajkhowa is joined by Russell Kennedy, Surya Subianto and Ben Kaminsky.

5°: The Adaptation Trap

Chief Investigator: Dr Martin Potter, Senior Lecturer, Deakin Motion Lab Fellow, Screen and Design. COLLABORATORS: Dr Misha Myers, Senior Lecturer, Screen and Design; Brett Bryan, Alfred Deakin Professor of Global Change, Environment and Society, Dr Rebecca Patrick, Senior Lecturer in the School of Health and Social Development; Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation; Stefan Greuter, Professor of Screen and Design; Richard Frankland, Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Ben Pederick, Researcher, School of Communication and Creative Arts all at Deakin University. David Spratt, Research Director, Breakthrough: National Centre for Climate Restoration Joseph Purdam, Co-Founder & Experiential Director, PHORIA – immersive technologies Emma Morris, Senior Producer and Strategist, Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Eleanor Loudon, Chief Executive Officer, Engineers without Borders.

5°: The Adaptation Trap will create a prototype participatory community game, where scenarios based on incremental temperature increases from 2° to 5°C will be ‘played’ in real and virtual environments. The game will be the centrepiece for a transmedia project, extended across diverse media platforms and forums. It will assess risks and test responses, generate knowledge, develop community preparedness and strategic partnerships, and public awareness.

The project will create a prototype ready for implementation, designed to be iterative and scalable. This project asks if participatory transmedia, games and performance can serve to rehearse and prepare for climate adaptation and help close the theory and practice gap (TPG) between scientific knowledge and policy making. This project is aligned with The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group report ‘Missing in Action‘ calling for urgent action, specifically a National Climate and Security Risk Assessment, and National Prevention and Resilience Framework.

All in this together? – COVID public health measures, diverse communities and practices of care

Chief Investigator: Dr Kiran Pienaar, Senior Lecturer in Sociology. COLLABORATORS: Professor Catherine Bennett, Deakin University, Professor and Chair of Epidemiology; Dr Jaya Keaney Research Fellow in Feminist Science Studies at Deakin University/ Monash University; Professor Dean Murphy, research fellow in Public Health at the Kirby Institute, UNSW.

 COVID-19 has laid bare existing inequalities, highlighting the pressing need for inclusive health responses. As the pandemic unfolds, government leaders frequently remind us that we are ‘all in this together’. Yet despite this emphasis on solidarity, experiences of the pandemic have exposed fault lines of socio-cultural differences, with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities among the most severely impacted. Although Australia’s public health measures typically address the public in universal terms, their implicit understandings of care, ‘essential’ work, and family do not adequately represent the diverse everyday practices of CALD communities. Moreover, Australia’s harshest restrictions have targeted areas with a high proportion of CALD residents, including South-West Sydney and Melbourne’s public housing complexes. The disproportionate impact of COVID measures on such communities threatens the effectiveness of Australia’s epidemic governance, prompting pressing questions for health equity as we look to a future of living with COVID-19.

Combining the interdisciplinary insights of sociology, epidemiology and feminist science studies, this project will explore the racial and cultural politics of Australia’s COVID-19 response. It will focus on the lived experiences of COVID-19 public health measures among CALD communities in public housing, and the findings will inform the development of more equitable health interventions.

Moving the Next Generation: Secure Data Management

Chief Investigator:  Dr Ahmad Abu Alqumsan, Research Fellow in Medical Robotics and Human Robot Trust. COLLABORATORS: Dr Darius Nahavandi and Associate Professor Shady Mohamed of the Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation (IISRI), Dr Natalie Lander of the School of Education, and Associate Professor Lisa Barnett in the school of Healthy and Social Development, all at Deakin University.

Motor competence (MC) plays a crucial role in development for an active lifestyle. MC is an individual’s ability to execute gross motor and is positively associated with healthy weight status and higher levels of physical fitness. low level of MC in children is still a global health concern. Investing in better MC assessment should be a global research priority. Usage of varied MC assessment tools impedes direct comparisons, and existing MC assessment is challenging due to time, cost, and needed training. Objective assessment will reduce time and cost and provide accurate and immediate feedback. An MC assessment tool has been recently developed by an interdisciplinary research team at Deakin University. Children were able to be assessed in seven common movement skills using two wrist and two ankle sensors. The tool development is still in ongoing research and at this stage of prototyping, further research is needed to create a secure data management system for students’ performance and a log-in system for teachers. These systems will ensure limited access to the tool and maintain records of students’ assessments.

Towards Effective Legal Scrutiny of Public Health Interventions

Chief Investigator:  Dr Rebekah McWhirter, Senior lecturer in Health Ethics Law and Business Professionalism. COLLABORATORS: Professor Catherine Bennett, Professor and Chair of Epidemiology and Associate Professor in Law and History, Gabrielle Wolf, both of Deakin University. 

Courts in Australia and internationally struggle to engage with empirical evidence and risk when examining public health interventions, instead defaulting to deference to medical opinion. Further, they inevitably provide point-in-time decisions, severely limiting the ability to account for changing risk-benefit ratios as evidence about the efficacy and impact of a particular intervention or disease emerges over time. As a result, the law currently provides little protection from overly-restrictive policies, or policies that do not meet the standards for good public health practice. Legal epidemiology, a discipline emerging out of the United States that seeks to bring rigor to the evaluation of legal interventions that affect public health, brings a transdisciplinary approach to public health law and offers a potential framework for dealing with this problem. This project will investigate the extent of this problem in Australian public health law, using doctrinal, sociolegal and qualitative research methods to identify potential mechanisms for improving the integration of epidemiology and law, in order to bridge the gap between disciplines in a way that assists courts in evaluating the impacts of specific public health laws.

Understanding the determinants of health: an Indigenous systems science approach

Chief Investigator: Dr Jennifer Browne, Research Fellow, Faculty of Health. COLLABORATORS: Troy Walker and Dr Karen Hill of the Institute for Health Transformation; Professor and Chair of Race Relations Yin Paradies (Deakin University); Dr Tyson Yunkaporta of the National Indigenous Knowledges Education Research Innovation Institute (NIKERI) at Deakin University, Professor Doug Creighton of Deakin University’s Institute for Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation (IISRI) and Simone Sherriff of the Sax Institute (University of Sydney).

The gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is one of Australia’s most significant challenges. Indigenous scholars have critiqued biomedical and social determinist approaches to health, arguing they do not fully represent the multitude of factors contributing to health inequity. Concurrently, commercial determinants of health research demonstrates how the profit-focused practices of commercial interests impact health outcomes internationally. However, the commercial determinants of health are scarce in current Indigenous health research and policy.

This project aims to:

• Develop a methodological approach, grounded in Indigenous Knowledge, for conceptualising and examining the interactions between the overlapping factors influencing Indigenous health and wellbeing.
• Apply this Indigenous systems thinking approach to identify the ways where commercial activities are influencing Indigenous health and wellbeing.

This interdisciplinary project will combine innovative systems thinking approaches from Western and Indigenous knowledge systems to produce more holistic understandings of the determinants of Indigenous health. Data will be drawn from existing literature on the determinants of Indigenous health and small group yarning workshops with Indigenous health staff/community members. We will use Deakin’s purpose-built Systems Thinking in Community Knowledge Exchange software to develop a visual representation of the interconnected sociocultural and commercial factors influencing Indigenous Health.

Australian nuclear heritage: The theory and practice of records, knowledges, and memory (RK&M) in uranium extraction, as well as its contamination, remediation and waste management

Chief Investigator: Dr N.A.J.  Taylor, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Contemporary History. COLLABORATORS: Engineering Professor Chu Xia Lin, Alfred Deakin Professor of Contemporary History David Lowe and Associate Professor of Literary Studies Emily Potter at Deakin University, in collaboration with Associate Professor of Engineering Gavin Mudd at RMIT University and Honorary Professor of Environment and Society Paul Frederick Brown at The University of NSW-Sydney.

This project asks how and why records, knowledges and memory (RK&M) preservation of environmentally remediated uranium mining and contaminated sites are managed over immediate, intermediate, and possibly even far-future (e.g. 10,000 or more years) timeframes. It does so by engaging STEM-based collaborators from Environmental Engineering with both knowledge and practical experience of the legal and regulatory landscape for archiving records, knowledges and memory (RK&M) relating to uranium extraction, as well as its contamination, remediation and waste management in the Australian and international contexts.

The Beauty in Disease: a collaborative project of Medicine and Art

Chief Investigator: Luke C Barclay, Lecturer in Medical Imaging and Clinical Practice, Faculty of Health. COLLABORATORS: Professor of Screen and Design, Sean Redmond, Dr Lienors Torre, Senior Lecturer in Screen and Design and Dr Shaun Bangay, Senior lecturer in the School of Information Technology, all at Deakin University.

Traditional 2D/3D medical image(s) of the disease processes of cancer, are often mysterious and an uncoupled concept to a patient. Traditionally used as a diagnostic, prognostic, and treatment tools by traditional medicine, they frequently remain mysterious and abstract to the individuals to which they portray. The images mean nothing. Patients feel disconnected. They wonder what the tissue growing inside them that concurrently and robs them of physical health, strength and possibly life, looks like.

What remains a dichotomy is that the most horrendous oncology diagnosis can produce to the viewer, the most interesting structures. By transforming these images into artistic forms that depict the hidden beauty in their forms there will be a destigmatisation of them, making them ‘visible’ and ‘nameable’. These new visualisations offer alternative insights, communicate the nature of disease, and enable creative and innovative diagnostics unconstrained by immediate needs in healthcare. Viewers will be able to interact and respond to visualisations in many forms, incorporating aspects of virtual and augmented reality. Dynamic elements will show the development and response of the disease and communicate aspects of its invisible workings across a range of scales.

Moving the Next Generation: Testing a motor skill assessment sensor wear App with teachers in schools

Dr Natalie Lander (lead CI, pictured), A/Proff Eduarda Sousa- Sá, A/Prof Lisa Barnett, A/Prof Shady Mohamed, Dr Darius Nahavandi, Dr Steven Lewis, Prof Mike Duncan

Motor competence (MC) is positively associated with higher levels of social and cognitive development, self-perception, physical activity and physical fitness. The childhood years provide a critical window of opportunity to develop MC, as such, it is a priority of national and international Health and Physical Education curriculums. In spite of its importance, low levels of MC in children remains a global health concern. Existing MC assessment is challenging due to time, cost, resources and training needs, resulting in minimal application and limited remediation. A MC assessment using Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) has been developed by HASS scientists Dr Lander and A/Prof Barnett in collaboration with STEM scientists A/Prof Mohamed and Dr Nahavandi. This prototype uses four IMUs with a Windows surface tablet. Motion data is streamed in real time to the tablet highlighting specific areas in need of improvement. The proposed SSN funding will be used to i) refine the prototype for use by teachers, and ii) to test implementation effectiveness of the App when used by teachers in schools.

Ageing in rural and regional Victoria during COVID-19: A pilot study of representations and perceptions of older people in the Geelong region

Dr Cynthia Forlini (lead CI, pictured), Dr Christopher Mayes, A/Prof Kristy Hess, Dr Lisa Mitchell, Ms Courtney Hempton, Prof Alison Hutchison

This study examines perceptions and representations of older people in rural and regional Australia during COVID-19, which may include instances of ageism, stigma, and stereotype. First, we will analyse how older people are represented in local media outlets during COVID-19. Then, will conduct a pilot survey and interviews with stakeholders in the community (i.e. older people, general public, healthcare professionals, journalists) to examine the impact the representations of older people in the media are having on the policies (e.g. selective lockdowns) and professional practices (e.g. healthcare and journalism) that support and/or influence health and wellbeing.

Immortalising organs: A feminist study of emerging placental technologies

Dr Jaya Keaney (lead CI, pictured), Dr Jacqueline Dalzeill, Dr Marnie Winter, A/Prof Neera Bhatia, A/Prof Dominique Martin

Although pivotal to maternal and foetal health, the placenta is still not well understood, constraining scientific research on critical conditions like preeclampsia and foetal growth restriction. This is due in part to a lack of appropriate research models: animal placentas are inaccurate mimics, and human placenta donated from births and terminations has a limited research life. However, new biotechnologies are changing this. Emerging in recent years, placental organoids and placenta-on-chip models allow for placental cells to be cultured and grown indefinitely, or “immortalised”. This project explores new placental technologies from a feminist perspective, considering crucial questions of consent, ownership, commodification and antenatal care that emerge as these technologies reshape placenta research practices.

Revealing the risks: Exploring the social implications of technology that allows individuals to use intuitive smart-wear to potentially recognise invisible viral threats

Dr Negin Amini (lead CI, pictured), Dr Monique Mann, Ms Courtney Hempton, Dr Tanya King, Prof Jennifer Loy

In a ‘COVID normal’ future, with viral threats potentially loose in the environment, engineers could develop wearable garments to allow individuals to detect significantly high temperatures in others, and to signal their own temperature. Yet the form of these technologies and the social and ethical implications need to be considered in order to ensure that potential defences do not unreasonably undermine individual rights and the defence of the potentially vulnerable in society. The development of such technologies requires an interdisciplinary approach to ensure design and potential implementation is informed by practicalities of the technology and user interaction, in addition to social and ethical considerations.

An app for that: COVID-19 contact tracing, public health and public goods

Dr Monique Mann (lead CI, pictured), Dr Luke Heemsbergen, Professor Catherine Bennett, Associate Professor Paul Cooper, Associate Professor Martin Hensher

This project explores digital health technologies to better understand their role and contributions to public health and other public goods in the context of COVID-19 in Australia. Effective and efficient contact tracing systems are required as we enter into a new “COVID normal”. Yet, there are a range of open empirical questions regarding efficacy of contact tracing applications, and their contribution to public health in this large-scale social experiment. There is an even bigger question about whether we really need an app for that and if an app for that is the right solution to the problems posed by COVID-19.

The Future of Australian Public Health Care: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Interdisciplinary Project Incubator

Dr Carolyn Holbrook (lead CI, pictured), Prof David Lowe, Prof Catherine Bennett, Dr Paul Crosland, Prof Matthew Ricketson, Dr Richie Barker

A collaboration between School of Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Health and Social Development, and the School of Communication and Creative Arts

Medicare is one of the pillars of Australian civic society—it is emblematic of the Australian tradition of state intervention to promote the health and well-being of its citizens. The future viability of the public health system is among the most pressing problems facing our nation. We are familiar with concerns about the ageing population, and the increased pressure on under- resourced public hospitals. Recently, we have heard much about the rising cost and unsustainability of a private health care system that is subsidised by the state to the tune of $6 billion annually, yet continues to be abandoned at an alarming rate by unsatisfied customers. This project aims to provide insights into future directions for Australian public health policy by enhancing understanding of links between service access and efficacy and the status of Medicare as a cultural entity. It will: 1) use surveys to examine the impact of attitudes to Medicare on healthcare setting behaviour, 2) study the economic arguments underpinning the role of Medicare in Australia, 3) examine the policy history of health funding, 4) conduct a cultural history of Medicare, 5) study representations and perceptions of Medicare as a brand, and 6) study health policy reportage in Australian media from 1980 to present.

Gender and Australian Patent Application Outcomes

Interdisciplinary Project Incubator

Dr Vicki Huang (lead CI, pictured), Dr Sue Finch

A collaboration between Business & Law and Statistics

For the past two decades, successive Australian governments have sought to increase the participation of women in STEM-related fields. One reason for this is the advancement of social equality; another reason is the popular theory that STEM-based- innovation is and will be a primary driver of future economic growth. Rigorous intellectual property law (particularly patent law), supports this strategy by facilitating the commercialisation of innovative ideas. A patent provides the inventor(s) with an opportunity to monetise their work, and (in exchange) the technology disclosed can be used by the public to further scientific progress. One measure of female participation in STEM, is participation as an inventor in the patents system. There is some evidence that Australian patent applications with female inventors have increased over the last 30 years. However, while applications have increased, it is unclear whether women are as successful as men in having their patent application proceed to grant. This project seeks to discover whether women receive less favourable outcomes than men when applying for an Australian patent. It aims to attach a probable gender (female, male or unclear) to Australian patent applications filed between 2000 and 2014. This project will examine whether gender is related to a range of outcomes including rates of rejection, claim revision, citation rates and field of technology.

Rethinking Tourette Syndrome: bridging the neurological/qualitative literature

Interdisciplinary Project Incubator

A/Prof Tim Silk (Lead CI, pictured), Dr Daniel Corp, Jordan Morrison-Ham; Prof Jack Reynolds, Dr Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt, and A/Prof Daryl Efron

A collaboration between the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, School of Humanities and Social Science, and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Tourette Syndrome (TS) is a common neurodevelopmental condition thought to affect around 1% of children worldwide, and persisting into adulthood in many cases. As a tic disorder, TS is characterized by multiple motor and one or more vocal tics at some time during the illness, the waxing and waning of tics over a period of more than 1 year, and onset before the age of 18 years. Tics are extremely diverse, ranging from simple motor and vocal tics (e.g. blinking, sniffing) to complex movements and utterances that can appear purposeful. To date most TS research has been patho-physiologically focused on underlying brain mechanisms with little attention directed to the lived experience of patients. This means that treatment of TS has been largely biologically focused, and the characteristic experiences and mode of selfhood at stake have not yet been addressed. To put it another way, philosophy has not yet been heavily involved, despite burgeoning work in phenomenological psychiatry concerning anomalous self-experience, which has given significant attention to the kinds of experiences of selfhood and other-relations in schizophrenia and depression. We propose to build a team across Deakin and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute to set up an interdisciplinary group to better bridge these fields of TS scholarship and enable the first-personal and third-personal dimensions to mutually enrich one another. In addition, we have a proposal for how to effect this change which we want to pilot, juxtaposing both cognitive neuroscience and qualitative phenomenological interviews.

Tomorrow’s Country: creating better pathways for cultural fire research

Interdisciplinary Project Incubator

Dr Timothy Neale (lead CI, pictured), Professor Euan Ritchie, Dr Will Smith, and Dr Tim Doherty

A collaboration between the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment, the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation, and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning

Over the past decade, there has been increased interest and attention paid to the long history of Aboriginal peoples’ fire management practices across Australia and how this knowledge may help address biodiversity and fire management challenges. In Victoria, this renewed interest has been paralleled by an increasing level of recognition and partnership between Traditional Owners and state government agencies engaged in land management. Despite enthusiasm surrounding these initiatives, their establishment and expansion is hindered by insufficient scientific evidence surrounding their benefits to Country and community. While evidence on these topics exists for northern Australia, many deem this to be of uncertain relevance – ecologically and socially speaking – to the Victorian and southeast Australian context. Our project will help ameliorate this lack of supporting research, which is necessary for the realisation of Traditional Owners’ fire management aspirations.

Predictive Policing in Australia: the Technical, Legal, and Social Challenges

Interdisciplinary Project Incubator

Dr Diarmaid Harkin (lead CI, pictured), Prof Debi Ashenden, Dr Leonard Hoon, Prof Marilyn McMahon, Dr Thao Phan, Dr Tyson Yunkaporta, Dr Ian Warren, Dr Monique Mann

A collaboration between the Alfred Deakin Institute, the Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute, School of Business and Law, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute for Koori Education, and the Centre for Cyber Security

There is a global trend of police departments using algorithms and software-driven decision- making to target individuals or geographic places for law enforcement efforts. Known as ‘predictive policing’, there have been experiments with this technology in the United States, England, Germany, Switzerland, and China. This research project investigates the impact of software-driven decision-making within Australian policing. It offers an important policy perspective that brings together technical expertise from AI and cybersecurity, with law, criminology, and social scientists in Indigenous and technology studies. Public authorities within Australia are adopting algorithmic support and the field of law enforcement is a high-stakes domain where experimentation with this technology is questionable. It is of pressing importance that software which informs police decision-making is suitably scrutinised and critiqued.

Incentivising Crowd-powered Computing for Smart Cities

Interdisciplinary Establishment Grant

Dr Niroshinie Fernando (lead CI, pictured), Prof Send W. Loke, A/Prof Lubna Alam

A collaboration between the School of IT and the Faculty of Business and Law

This research will investigate how smart cities can use crowdsourcing to provision a collective cloud of computational resources. Smart cities require support for high-velocity and real-time services involving sensor data, such as autonomous vehicles, environmental monitoring and connected wearables, needing geographically distributed computing resources that are fault- tolerant, trustworthy and highly available. One approach to enable the above is to crowdsource computing resources by enabling users to share their own computing devices. Our project seeks to explore how smaller scale problems can use the collective computational power at local (city) level, and exploit on-the-fly resource encounters. Specifically, this research will explore: 1) what are the characteristics of problems that can benefit from citizen-powered, on-the- fly, decentralised computing? 2) why users will participate and how can users be incentivised to participate? and 3) how can such incentive schemes be technically implemented?

Shifting the Flow: Development of a virtual reality journey through an Australian wetland

Interdisciplinary Establishment Grant

Dr Melissa Wartman (lead CI, pictured)

A collaboration between the Centre for Integrated Ecology, Deakin Cadet VR Lab, Deakin Motion Lab, Marshmallow Laser Feast, Streamline Media, VRTOV

I have recently joined the Blue Carbon Lab to lead the Coastal Victorian Restoration Program that is restoring degraded saltmarsh wetlands along the Victorian coast. These amazing ecosystems do so much for humans, yet remain severely underappreciated and valued. Keeping them healthy is critical to maintain clean water, sequester carbon, and to support wildlife and fish populations.​ ​Unfortunately, the rate of loss of wetlands (driven mostly by human activities) is estimated to be among the highest of any ecosystem on the planet.​ Harnessed with the scientific knowledge about saltmarsh wetlands and other “Blue Carbon” ecosystems, I wish to explore how to bridge the gap of translating complex scientific information to the general public in a way that evokes interest and emotion. I will host an interdisciplinary 1-day workshop to bring together artists, scientists (STEM and HASS) and educators to discuss and develop ideas for using virtual reality to translate and educate Blue Carbon science concepts to the general public. The aim of this activity is to have an open table discussion about key concepts in Blue Carbon science that can easily be translated into an interactive artistic experience, while still providing an educational message. I will also participate in a 1-week training program in February 2020 to learn basic skills in Virtual Reality production. ​I will learn about the basic VR technologies including headset technology, LiDAR (remote sensing technology), tethered virtual reality, and body tracking.

Developing a knowledge-based system for identifying and mapping student learning in mathematics using rich student assessment data

Interdisciplinary Establishment Grant

Dr Lihua Xu (lead CI, pictured), Dr Wei Luo, A/Prof Jianxin Li

A collaboration between the School of Education and the School of Information Technology

This interdisciplinary collaboration aims to explore and develop novel approaches to analyse rich student assessment data in mathematics, to provide crucial evidence for innovations in teaching and learning in schools. It draws on the great potential of the latest technology breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence, particularly in the machine learning approaches suitable for learning analytics, to identify and map student learning in mathematics using a wide range of student assessment data that has not been dealt with extensively in learning analytics, including audio/visual records of student classroom interactions, student artefacts, and other student assessment data types collected regularly by their classroom teachers. Two major activities are proposed: 1) interdisciplinary workshops to exchange ideas and methods in each discipline and to discuss scoping and study designs of potential research projects; and 2) a literature review focusing on learning analytics and assessment data in the context of school mathematics.

Using Open Data for Interdisciplinary Research: Workshop and Speed-Meeting

Interdisciplinary Establishment Grant

Dr Vicki Huang (lead CI, pictured)

A collaboration between the Faculty of Business and Law, IP Australia, and CSIRO Data 61

The use of open data and large-scale data analytics is rare in law and other HASS fields. This is likely due to a lack of awareness of data availability and a lack of skills to explore that data. For example, in relation to the former, there is little awareness amongst (at least) law academics of the Government’s various initiatives to make data open and accessible specifically for academic research. In relation to skills with data, there is a lack of awareness by HASS researchers of the work done by STEM academics; their more advanced use of large data sets and affinity for working in teams. For example, in law, there is a cultural preference for sole-authored works. This grant will be used to run a workshop on Government open data initiaties for academics, followed by a ‘speed-meeting’ session between HASS and STEM researchers. The broad research topic addressed will be: “How can analysis of big data enhance interdisciplinary research?”

Artificial Intelligence in Science and Fiction

Interdisciplinary Establishment Grant  

Dr Helen Young (lead CI, pictured), Dr Leonard Hoon, Dr Evie Kendal, Dr Thao Phan, Professor Sean Redmond

A collaboration between the School of Communication and Creative Arts, School of Medicine, Alfred Deakin Institute, and the Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute

How can culture shape the data-driven future of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it impacts on the human world? AI, by definition, can make decisions autonomously from any direct human control. Everyday people can already be affected by AI decisions in areas as varied as education, finance, the law and medicine as well as in digital spaces such as social media and chatbots. Recent scholarship in AI ethics argues that socio-cultural values must be embedded in AI reasoning from the design stage and identifies a need for new methodologies to “elicit the values held by all stakeholders, and make them explicit.” Public consultations, such as those recently conducted by the CSIRO and Standards Australia, seek input from experts, industry, and government bodies but have typically failed to generate high levels of input from the general public. Popular culture, particularly science fiction, offers a largely untapped living archive of information about social attitudes and beliefs about AI. This project aims to explore how that archive might be used to promote value-driven design (VDD) in AI, by piloting a new methodology that incorporates an ethics-in-literature approach to VDD.

The social value of engineering and design heritage in post-industrial cities and its digital interpretation in a museum context

Interdisciplinary Project Incubator

Dr Kaja Antlej (co-investigator, pictured)

A collaboration with Deakin School of Engineering (Faculty of Science and the Built Environment), School of Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Communication and Creative Arts, Coventry University and Aarhus University.

“This interdisciplinary project is about how we can use extended reality technologies to communicate engineering and design heritage in post-industrial cities. We want to basically create a pop up museum experience, because we believe that it’s very important to go closer to the audience, and using technology to create something that is engaging, that’s meaningful. We believe it could bring new audiences to cultural institutions such as museums, libraries, or heritage centres.

If we look at Geelong, which lost of a lot of traditional manufacturing capacities, I think it’s important to bring back this civic pride as well, through communicating those achievements throughout the history, and tell the future generations that what’s now coming to Geelong – all this innovation, design, advanced manufacturing – it’s actually as a result of this tradition for so many decades.

We’re doing interviews with local leaders from education, heritage, government, tourism, and manufacturing. We’re also doing online surveys to talk to the local community. Once we’ve got these results, we will be able to analyse them and prepare participatory procreative workshops with the local communities, in which we will be able to evaluate what’s interesting for them from the interaction perspective and from the perspective of content.

We have involved engineers who are going to develop this. We have designers who will be exploring different ways of 3D interaction within this VR, AR, or mixed reality or extended reality experience, and we have researchers from a heritage perspective as well.

The grant scheme is a great initiative, because we have so many different and great researchers across one university, and this is the way how we can learn about each others’ skills and knowledge without going out of the university. And it’s a great platform as a pilot project that can lead into a bigger project to be competitive on a national or even international level.”

Two-way Science: Assembling Ichthyology, Nyungar Knowledge and History in Robert Neill's Fish collection

Interdisciplinary Project Incubator

A/Prof Tiffany Shellam (co-investigator, pictured)

A collaboration with Menang Nyungar Knowledge holders, Deakin School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Western Australian Museum, University of Western Australia, National Museum of Scotland.

“It’s an interdisciplinary project where we’ve got historians, fish scientists, curators and Menang Indigenous knowledge holders in Albany, WA.

We are unpacking together this historical fish collection that was caught by Nyungar men in the 1840s and they were preserved and stored in Edinburgh, where they are now in the National Museum of Scotland. With these specimens, manuscript notes and historical sketches of the fish, we tried to understand the Indigenous knowledge that is held within them and also the scientific knowledge that is captured from that time as well.

I think it’s really exciting to have this richness of different ways of exploring one particular historical collection.

One of the major challenges (and opportunities) is to think about how I explain myself beyond my discipline, so communicating in a much more lateral way. It’s been such a great opportunity to meet all these different people and other areas that I wouldn’t normally contact. We actually found we’ve got a lot in common; our interests are very similar though we are in different disciplines. It’s been really, really wonderful and I feel like it’s a very exciting new beginning, this moment in my career, to work in this way. It’s great.”

Embodiment of Musical Performances through Emerging Technologies

Interdisciplinary Project Incubator

Co-investigators Dr Thuong Hoang, Dr Greg Bowtell and Dr Jordan Vincent (pictured)

A collaboration with Deakin Motion.Lab, School of Communication and Creative Arts (Faculty of Arts and Education), Deakin School of IT (Faculty of Science and the Built Environment) and Australian National Academy of Music

“Our project is basically looking at musical performances and trying to capture and convey the aliveness and physicalities of it.

We’re using a range of different technologies, including motion capture, heartbeat, heart rate sensor, eye tracking, thermal cameras hopefully. Essentially, we’re trying to get a holistic view of live musical performance through data capture.

We’re trying to get some sort of read on the emotional response of the actual performance. Then, the idea is to create a visualisation that represents the entirety of the performance as far as you can take it… as far as we can take it with the technology we have.

The Australian National Academy of Music was an industry partner that we had on a project we were already working on, so what the SSN scheme has allowed us to do is to formalise the work that we’ve been doing, and of course, a little bit of funding is always fantastic.”

Disrupting Imagined Futures: Backcasting Health and Body Implications of 3D printing in Australia and Abroad

Interdisciplinary Establishment Grant

Dr Luke Heemsbergen (Chief Investigator, pictured)

A collaboration with Anatomics (Melbourne), Shapeways (New York) and ARC Training Centre in Additive Biomanufacturing.  

“My project is concerned with the use of 3D printing in medical practice, and we’re trying to think about how the decentralised sharing of designs and manufacture will affect clinical care. So what I’ve done is I’ve invited in some really interesting people from literal brain surgeons to medical ethicists. It’s this really interesting mix of ethicists and practitioners to manufacturers, people who make 3D printing systems.

It’s a back casting project which means we start with a specified future and then consider what paths we need to take in terms of policy and technology and social developments to get to that future. This is a methodology that has been used in policy circles for a while, around things like climate change.

There’s all kinds of legal and social issues as well as ethical issues that come up, and so we’re just going to work through those and the project is there to pull these out and then figure out what kind of collaborations we can move on to once those futures are kind of charted.

I actually just get to choose awesome people who are doing amazing work in ways that are disparately amazing, yet they’re connected in some way and I just get to tie them all together, so that’s been so far a lot of fun and I’ll see what comes from it.”

Teaching professionalism: What can colleagues in HASS and STEM disciplines learn from each other, and what are the opportunities for interdisciplinary research?

Interdisciplinary Establishment Grant

Jane Duffy (co-investigator, pictured)

In partnership with Deakin School of Medicine (Faculty of Health).

“The project is about teaching of professionalism and my colleague Evie Kendal and I were very aware that lots of programs teach professionalism at Deakin, but we weren’t aware of any collaboration or discussion between academics with expertise in this area.

At this stage we’ve got participation from quite a few of the schools in the Faculty of Health, so Medicine – my school, Psychology, Nursing, Midwifery and Dietetics. Then as far as disciplines outside of health, we’ve found some key people in Law, IT and Education. What we’ve managed to do is get people who were very generous in giving up their time to come to a workshop, who have real experience and expertise in the area and seem very keen to do some collaboration.

It’s provided the impetus to get the key players in the one room and I now have at least an informal network at Deakin of people who have more experience than I do in teaching professionalism.”

Virtual Reality Applications for the Treatment of Amblyopia

Interdisciplinary Project Incubator

Dr Rose Woodcock (co-investigator, pictured)

A collaboration with Deakin School of Medicine (Faculty of Health) and School of Communication and Creative Arts (Faculty of Arts and Education).

“We’re a multidisciplinary team: Game design, animation, vision sciences, optometry, and VR technology. Principally, it was the VR and game design coming together with the vision science team, because that technology was really important as a platform in which to do this research and testing towards a treatment for amblyopia. If you’re going to have a VR, you’re going to have things moving, you need animators, so there’ll also be 3D animators eventually. You also need to understand human binocular vision.

Our project is led by Geoff Sampson from the School of Medicine. The whole research team now has a good understanding of what amblyopia is, why it’s got to be treated in certain ways rather than others, and so on. So, it’s a kind of a sharing of knowledge, a sharing of language.

It’s given us insight into how to go about putting a team together, writing an application; what do you then have to do to really get that application absolutely watertight, the language that you use, making sure that it’s really clear and not full of jargon.”