Senior Research Fellow
Dr Aya Hussein
- PhD in Computer Science from UNSW- Canberra in 2020
- MSc in Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, 2015
- BSc in Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, 2011
UNSW Canberra
School of Systems & Computing
I am a research fellow (level B) at the School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia. My current research focuses on combining human and machine intelligence by studying interaction schemes that allow humans to teach machines and to effectively team up with them in the field. I received my PhD in Computer Science from UNSW- Canberra in 2020. During my PhD, I investigated different aspects that facilitates the realisation of high-performance teams that combine human and machine intelligence. In particular, I focused on both Human Factors and Swarm Robotics, where I studied performance, trust, and transparency in Human-Swarm Teaming. I got my Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Engineering from Cairo University in 2011 and 2015. My Master research was about Arabic text diacritisation where I used Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enable the automatic restoration of the diacritics which is an essential pre-processing task for many Arabic NLP applications.
E-mail
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
- Chief investigator, UNSW Research Infrastructure Scheme - 68,000 AUD granted to the "Heterogeneous Robot Swarms" project, 2023
- Lead Chief Investigator, UNSW internal fund of 7500 AUD granted to the Distributed Intelligence research group which I lead and have co-founded, 2022
- Chief investigator, UNSW internal fund of 3000 AUD has been granted to the Deep Learning research group which I have co-founded, 2022
- Sole Chief Investigator, RG213520 grant from Department of Defence and the Office of National Intelligence in Continual Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous shepherding ($20,000), 2021
Scholarships & Awards:
- DAIRNet Women in AI scholarship to attend the Australian Defence Science, Technology and Research (ADSTAR) summit 2022
- UNSW Arc Postgraduate Council Research Student Award for my contribution to both research and school life, 2020
- Registration Grant for IEEE WCCI 2020
- Winner of the IEEE CIS Webinar Competition on "Emerging Topics and Applications of Computational Intelligence", 2019
- Student Travel Grant of the HFES Human Performance Modelling Technical Group 2019
- Scholarship for attending "Research to Impact" program, Canberra Innovation Network 2019
- Scholarship for attending Data61 & DST Cyber Summer School, Melbourne 2018
- UNSW Tuition Fees Scholarship 2017-2020
Review Activities:
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IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
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IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems
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IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
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Autonomous Robots
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Computers in Human Behavior
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Mathematics and Computers in Simulation
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Environmental Modelling & Software
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Others; my full list of verified reviews can be found on my Publons profile.
- Associate editor at IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence
- Lead organizer of the IEEE IJCNN special session on “Learning in swarm and multi-robot systems”, 2023. CFP can be found here: IEEE IJCNN 2023 | Special Sessions
- Sole speaker in a Tutorial session on "Human Teachable Reinforcement Learning" at ICONIP 2022
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Co-organisation of IEEE IROS workshop on "Cognitive and Social Aspects of Human Multi-Robot Interaction", 2021
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Development of UGV teleoperation system for the voluntary extra-curricular club activity Exercise Enigma, UNSW Canberra, 2021
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Manager of the AI lab at UNSW Canberra, 2021 - present
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Member of the team developing a gesture-based multi-robot control system for the voluntary extra-curricular club activities, UNSW Canberra, 2021
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Student representative in the Research Leadership Group (RLG) & School Board, School of Engineering and IT, UNSW-Canberra, 2020
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Volunteer in IEEE SSCI, Canberra, Australia, 2020
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Volunteer in Canberra Artificial Intelligence Summer School (CAISS2020), Virtual event, 2020
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Invited presentation at the 3rd IEEE Systems Modelling Conference, Canberra, Australia, 2019
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Session co-chair in the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual meeting, Seattle, USA, 2019
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Volunteer in IEEE CIS YoWIENet Student Workshop- UNSW-Canberra, Australia, 2018
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Volunteer in IEEE International Computer Engineering Conference (ICENCO), Cairo, Egypt, 2012-2016
Professional Memberships:
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IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS)
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IEEE Woman in Engineering (WIE)
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Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES)
My Research Supervision
Current PhD students:
- Adam Hepworth: Context Awareness in Swarm Systems [Joint supervisor with Hussein Abbass principal supervisor]
- Daniel Baxter: Ontologically Guided Transparency in Human-Swarm Systems [Joint supervisor with Hussein Abbass principal supervisor]
Completed honours & 4th year Engineering students:
- Bridget Free: Agent Reflection in Reinforcement Learning
- Rana Usama Riaz: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Air Combat
- Bradley Newlands: Feasibility of 3D mapping using low-cost Planar LIDAR and AI adjusted Measurement. (2021)
- Christopher Cox: Development of a Bushfire Early Warning System and Environmental Monitor. (2021)
- David King: Evolutionary Neural Network Controller Algorithm for Autonomous Intercept Countermeasures System. (2021)
- Rana Hasan: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Robot Navigation in Unknown Environments. (2021)
Completed CDF project students:
- Chris Wise: Developing Collective Resilience to Malicious Influence in Collective Perception Problem (Semester 1, 2022)
- Muhammad Talha: Autonomous Navigation of UAV in Wilderness Search-and-Rescue operations using Deep Reinforcement Learning (Semester 1, 2022)
- Rana Usama Riaz: Reinforcement Learning-based Shepherding (Semester 1, 2021)
- Rana Usama Riaz: Autonomous Navigation of Humanoid Robot Using Deep Reinforcement Learning-based Visual SLAM (Semester 2, 2021)
My Teaching
- Special Topics in Reinforcement Learning [ZEIT 4117], role: course convening & teaching, S1 2022
- Special topics in AI [ZEIT 3312], role: assessment evaluation, S2 2021
- Simulation [ZEIT 3404], role: assessment evaluation, Summer 2020
- Joint Military Education and Training (JMET), role: assessment evaluation, S2 2019 - S1 2021