Higher Degree by Research

- So my project started in the context of COVID, where I had originally planned to travel to Myanmar and do field research there. But with COVID-19 restrictions, I had to find a new innovative way to conduct my research. And in that context, I connected with CARE International and their daughter organisation, Aung Myin Hmu, in Myanmar, and we were able to set up a partnership together that enabled us to collect data during COVID, and then later on, the military coup in Myanmar, which is a really fruitful way of conducting field research from afar as a PhD student. By working together with CARE and Aung Myin Hmu, what we were really able to do was collect unique data on women during this very tumultuous time in Myanmar, and when access to women in Myanmar was really difficult, both with COVID-19 and then the military coup on the 1st of February in 2021. So we were able to collect their stories and give a platform for their voices that can also help inform business decisions about how to act and make decisions around their presence in Myanmar, and also other international organisations that's seeking to understand that situation better. So we really hope to bring light to the women's situation in Myanmar. So I think for me, one of the key things that I've learned and gained from working together with CARE and Aung Myin Hmu has been how to manage a project and how to manage a team across an online platform at this time of COVID-19, but also across different countries. And to learn from practitioners in the field who are not academic researchers, but are definitely doing research and working together with garment workers every day. And so learning from them, but also learning how to project manage a research project of that size and scope. So one of the key things that me and my supervisors contributed to the partnership with CARE and Aung Myin Hmu was providing workshops and trainings for them on key academic skills that they identified as something that they wanted to develop. So for example, we ran a set of workshops around feminist interview techniques, and helping them understand sort of key ways to actively listen to participants when doing interviews. And these were things that they were already doing, but we just helped them frame that in a different way and perhaps finetune those skills.

- As you know, Carsales is a online marketplace for selling secondhand cars. So at this moment, Carsales uses a manual evaluation process, to value secondhand cars. And this manual evaluation process actually creates some problems, like for the evaluator, they need to travel over Australia. And Australia is big, so it's like time consuming, expensive, and not easy to travel to evaluate the car. For the seller, it is inconvenient, because they need to set a schedule, or organise a meeting with the evaluator. So my research is totally focused on this, and my research seeks to use AI, which will be done on a mobile phone, to accurately, and automatically, determine the value of the secondhand car. All of the parts on my supervisor team from RMIT, and Carsales, they help me to settle down. How can I balance between my PhD life, as well as life in Carsales. In Carsales, I work on the AI team. And the AI team has some subsections. They have a team like data science. I work on the data science team. And in data science, there is a member who is called the AI Lead. So he is actually my boss at Carsales, and directs me on how to move through a project. Especially when I started, I needed to set up in Carsales. He helped me a lot, how I can set up in a like in a team environment. Then I needed lots of elements, like my data set. I needed to set up my account. Like there are some big accounts, like Amazon Web Services. I never had experience with that, and they help me a lot, how I can work with them, as well as the communication skill between all of the people on the AI team.