Dr Emmanuel Boateng
- PhD, University of Newcastle (2021)
- MSc Construction Management (Distinction), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (2017)
- BSc (Hons) Construction Technology and Management, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (2015)
I am a Lecturer in Project Management at UNSW Canberra, in the School of Engineering and Technology, with more than a decade of teaching and research experience across five institutions, four in Australia and one in Ghana. My research applies machine learning, deep learning, and conversational AI to questions about people, projects, and the systems they work in, with published work spanning construction, public health, energy and environmental science, and higher education. My closest interest sits with mental health and psychosocial risk in project-based work, and with how AI tools can be designed to genuinely serve the people who use them, not just the systems they sit inside.
PsycheGuard, a conversational AI application I lead, supports the mental health of construction workers and received both the Social Impact Award and the People's Choice Award at the 2024 UNSW Digital Makers Competition. I have also led work on intelligent learning assistants and feedforward agents for higher education assessment, and on deep learning models for predicting green building project performance, supported by grants from UNSW, the University of Wollongong, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
What unites my work is a curiosity about the people inside complex projects, and how research, teaching, and the right tools can support them better. From the field to the classroom, I am drawn to questions that sit between disciplines, and to building tools that make a tangible difference for the people they are designed for.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
- 2024: UNSW Founders Micro Grant, A$1,250 (Co-Investigator/Co-Lead). PsycheGuard
- 2023: Learning and Teaching Innovation Grant, A$14,630 (Co-Lead, UoW). Empowering academics' assessment feedforward to students by using an Agile Chatbot
- 2022: Hong Kong Polytechnic University Research Grant, A$116,863.20 (Co-Investigator). Development of a machine learning model to predict green building project cost performance
- 2022: Global Research Small Grants Scheme, A$7,850.40 (Chief Investigator, UoW). Developing a chatbot for sharing construction safety knowledge
- 2022: WATTLE Grant, A$500 (Co-Investigator, UoW). Novel Technologies for Teaching and Learning 2.0
- 2024: Social Impact Award, UNSW Digital Makers Competition (PsycheGuard)
- 2024: People's Choice Award, UNSW Digital Makers Competition (PsycheGuard)
- 2024: Nominee, Vice-Chancellor's Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning Award, University of Wollongong
- 2023: Certificate of Appreciation, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Department of Building and Real Estate
- 2022: Best Reviewer Award, International Journal of Construction Management
- 2022: Nominee, Eric Wigglesworth Award, The University of Newcastle
- 2015: Nominee, CIOB International Innovation and Research Awards (Undergraduate Dissertation)
The unifying methodological signature of my research is the application of artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning, deep learning, and conversational AI, to questions about people, projects, and the systems they work in. My current work spans four connected themes.
People in projects: mental health, safety, and wellbeing. This theme builds on my doctoral work on co-worker safety interventions in construction. Current work includes PsycheGuard, a conversational AI tool I lead in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology that supports the mental health of construction workers, alongside continuing research on psychosocial risk, organisational safety culture, and resilience engineering.
AI in project management practice and education. I lead work on intelligent learning assistants and feedforward agents that help students engage with assessment, particularly those who are introverted, multilingual, or supported by accessibility services. Adjacent work develops machine learning models to predict project cost and performance outcomes in the built environment, including research on green building project performance.
Sustainability, energy, and the built environment. Across published work in journals including the Journal of Cleaner Production, Energy and Buildings, and Environmental Science and Technology, I have applied neural networks and other machine learning methods to questions about carbon emission intensity, energy demand forecasting, building-related emissions, and the social acceptance of energy-efficiency retrofitting.
Global and cross-disciplinary applications. My methods extend beyond the built environment into public health, including modelling the global prevalence of hypertension and obesity, and recent work uses machine learning and text-mining to examine decolonisation discourse in African higher education. International collaboration is central to this work, with partners at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Queensland University of Technology, and institutions in Ghana.
- Member, The Chartered Institute of Building (ACIOB)
- Member, Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS)
- Member, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia (HFESA)
- Member, Ghana Institute of Construction (GIOC)
My Teaching
I teach into postgraduate project management programs at UNSW Canberra, including delivery and curriculum redevelopment of subjects in the School of Engineering and Technology. My teaching is online-first, designed for working professionals, and emphasises authentic assessment grounded in students' own workplace projects.