CRN People

Meet our people

Professor Nava Subramaniam

Professor
RMIT College of Business - Accounting

Keywords: Governance, Accountability, Not-for-profit

Professor Nava Subramaniam is presently looking at how not-for profit entities namely social enterprises and charities can be better structured and governed, and how service delivery can be co-designed.

Associate Professor Marta Poblet Balcell

RMIT Graduate School of Business and Law

Keywords: democracy, participation, technology

Associate Professor Marta Poblet Balcell is interested in developing participatory processes that leverage technologies in order to augment collective intelligence for democracy.

Kavitha Chandra-Shekeran

RMIT University- Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Keywords: Industry engagement, supporting with industry partners

Kavitha Chandra-Shekeran is the Sector Manager (Business, Design and Urban), working as part of the Research Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at RMIT University. She is responsible for the establishment and development of research collaborations between RMIT researchers and commercial and not for profit partners including government.

Judy Lawry

RMIT – School of Media and Communications

Keywords: Community and Civic engagement, listening, Community Development, Climate Change

Dr Judy Lawry is a Senior Lecturer in School of Media and Communication. Her research and teaching interests focus on ' Communication for Social Change.  Specifically she conducts research related to how communication can be used to enable communities and citizens create the future that they want.

George (Chao Chi) Hong

RMIT School of Health and Biomedical Science

Keywords: Online survey, health science, behaviour science

George (Chao Chi) Hong is a PhD student currently exploring the use of crowdsourcing to gather data for his research.

Leila Irajifar

RMIT – School of Architecture and Urban Design

Keywords: Urban Resilience, Smart Cities, Participatory Planning, Crowdsourcing, Co-Design, Disaster Management, Crisis Mapping

Dr Leila Irajifar is an interdisciplinary academic working in the intersection of disaster management, spatial planning and urban design. She is a lecturer at RMIT University, teaching core courses in the Master of Disaster, Design and Development including urban resilience, crisis mapping and shelter after disaster. She is co-leading CRN@RMIT at the moment and her recent research focuses on the applications of crowdsourcing in urban resilience planning and crisis mapping.

Yashar Jamei

RMIT School of Property,construction and project management, College of Social Science

Keywords: Netatmo Weather station, Air Temperature, Wunderground

Yashar Jamei is a PhD student who uses local weather station data around Melbourne for his research.

Amanda Alderton

RMIT GUSS

Keywords: softGIS, local knowledge, lived experience

Amanda Alderton is a PhD student interested in understanding the lived experience of local places and neighbourhoods through citizen science and crowdsourced data. In particular she is interested in softGIS and similar platforms that gather local knowledge and encourage more participatory urban planning.

Dr April Kartikasari

RMIT Health and Biomedical Sciences

Keywords: Biomarker, cancer, non-invasive and economical diagnostic

Dr April Kartikasari’s current proposed work is to use epigenetic knowledge in cancer immunology to develop a tool for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring of relevant treatments. This diagnostic tool is aimed to be non-invasive, economical and accurate to diagnose cancer and predict the immunological outcome of relevant treatment. This is aimed to massively help the current invasive and non-conclusive diagnostics available for cancer, and also to predict the best treatment choices for the patients based on their immunological profiles.

Dr Leah Li

RMIT, School of Media and Communication

Keywords: crowdsourcing, collective, connectivity

Dr Leah Li’s research areas are in digital communication, place branding and international public relations that requires the use of crowdsourcing model to get the best communication outcomes.

Heather Mallinson

RMIT - Industry Engagement

Keywords: local government, engagement, business

Heather Mallinson is interested in how Industry Engagement activities link many parts of the university with SMEs, big business and peak bodies for collaboration.

Daniel Martin

AnswerCrowd

Keywords: Research, Recruitment, Engagement

AnswerCrowd is a Crowd Sourced Market Research platform

Dr Luis Mata

RMIT, GUSS

Keywords: Public elicitation, citizen science, public engagement

Dr Luis Mata has recently established web-based Public Elicitation Platform aimed at collecting research data from a wide range of non-academic participants across the world.

Michael Rowe

RMIT Graduate School of Business and Law

Keywords: Online community, business model, innovation.

Michael Rowe’s PhD thesis was titled ‘Value Creation through Crowdsourcing’. He is committed to the idea that harnessing the collective wisdom of stakeholder communities provides a compelling alternative to conventional management decision-making.

Associate Professor Susanne Tepe

RMIT University- School of Property, Construction and Project Management

Keywords: Serious Games for Learning, Environmental Health, Occupational Health and Safety

Dr. Susanne Tepe is Associate Professor of Occupational Health and Safety at RMIT, where her research interests are focused on implementation and evaluation of OHS

interventions in complex environments. She uses action research, qualitative methods and games to compliment her traditional scientific methods. She has a history of employment and consulting in the strategic management of OHS, Environment and Quality.

Dr John Douglas Thomson

Senior Lecturer

RMIT University- College of Business – School of Business and Law

Keywords: Cloud Computing, Social Media, Corporate Governance, Value added; model development; interrelationships with other software developments

Have e-Business PhD and supervising a candidate PhD crowdsourcing thesis

He has been a senior manager with over twenty years experience in e-business, industry policy and major projects operational experience with Australian federal government and major global corporations, and in leading or membership of research programmes.

Now he is following career in academic research and teaching with recent experience in international student recruitment and education.

Johanne Trippas

RMIT School of Science (CSIT)

Keywords: User preference, interactive crowdsourcing

Johanne Trippas is a PhD student who has worked with Figure Eight (previously known as CrowdFlower) to understand user preferences in a spoken search environment such as Siri and Google Now. She has provided Figure Eight 101 talks for her research group and individual consultancy.

Anthony Aisenberg

CrowdSpot - RMIT

Keywords: Field Reporting, community engagement, international development, environmental management, urban planning, marketing, media

Anthony Aisenberg is the founder of Crowdspot - a software tool able to be used to create map-based community engagement projects. He is an urbanist with a passion for solving city challenges with technical solutions. Anthony is a fellow of the Centre for Sustainability Leadership and is on the board of Engage 2 Act.

Tess Hayes

EPA Victoria

Keywords: Citizen science, community engagement, education, environment

Tess Hayes is the Citizen Science Officer at the Environment Protection Agency Victoria. She engages with local communities to raise awareness of environmental issues. She achieves this goal, by delivering educational and engagement programs that are informed by current science and best practice.

Ruth Huang

RMIT Design and Social Context

Keywords:

Dr Ruth Huang is a research fellow working in design and social context

Saiedur Rahaman

RMIT School of Science Cluster

Keywords: Data mining and machine learning, Context-aware computing

Dr Mohammad Saiedur Rahaman is a research assistant working in the RMIT School of Science Cluster.

Associate Professor Margaret Hamilton

RMIT Computer Science and IT/ School of Science

Keywords: Mobility, transport, satisfaction

Associate Professor Margaret Hamilton’s research is in Mobility.  She has been working on projects involving journey planning, particularly for elderly and disabled passengers, but also for tourists, commuters, people who want to walk in the shade, exercise or ride bikes around Melbourne, or people who  visit coffee shops. She would like crowdsourced data to identify/share/discuss good journeys or trips in and around Melbourne for lots of different people.  She is also interested in traveller safety, comfort, privacy and support.  Her overall area of research is Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and she needs crowd-sourced data because it is authentic relevant and can possibly be real-time.

Professor Ralph Horne

RMIT, Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research and Innovation for the College of Design and Social Context

Keywords: geography, low carbon, transitions

Professor Ralph Horne is a geographer with interest in urban transitions

Hardik Bhimani

RMIT Management

Keywords: idea evaluation, cognition, open innovation

Hardik Bhimani conducts behavioral innovation experiments to examine the extent to which human psychological factors influence crowdsourcing process.

Dr Peter Chambers

RMIT Criminology and Justice, GUSS
Keywords: infrastructure, vulnerability, transport justice

Interests: writing book examining deeper roots of conflict between motorists and cyclists, very interested in patterns of land use, 'infrastructure' (in the broadest sense), ideas of 'accidents' and systemic vulnerability (and how this is legally, politically and culturally visible), and bikes in gig economy + disruption platforms.

Professor William Cartwright

RMIT College of Science – Geospatial Science

Keywords: Crowdsourcing, Neocartography, Web mapping, Data visualisation

William Cartwright is Professor of Cartography and Geographical Visualization in the School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, where he specialises in the application of New Media technologies to Cartography. He joined the University after spending a number of years in both the government and private sectors of the mapping industry. He holds undergraduate qualifications in Cartography and graduate qualifications in education, media studies, information and communication technology education and graphic design. He is President of the International Cartographic Association and a member of the ICA’s Commission on Geographical Visualization and and the Commission on Maps and the Internet. He chairs the ICA Working Group.

Dr Jaz Hee-jeong Choi

RMIT University- College of Design and Social Context – School of Media and Communications

Keywords: Urban Informatics, Digital Ethnography, Co-creation, Co-design, Play, liveable and equitable cities, Civic engagement, Co-creative urban transformation, mutual aid

Dr Jaz Hee-jeong Choi is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow at the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT. Previously, she was the Director of the QUT Urban Informatics Research Lab, and founded the SIGCHI FoodCHI Network.

She is an advocate for transdisciplinary research, carefully balancing creativity and criticality. Her approach to urban sustainability recognises ‘play’ as the core of transformative interactions in cities as complex techno-social networks. She builds on this to explore how various forms of digital and playful experiences are designed and evolve in different cultural contexts. Her current research explores designing with and for care for liveable and equitable urban futures across three inter-related domains: self-care and mutual aid; impactful research methods, and; co-creative urban transformation.

Professor Matt Duckham

RMIT, School of Science

Keywords: Volunteered geographic information, big data, spatial computing

Professor Matt Duckham is a geospatial scientist, with particular interest in using spatial data from diverse sources, including "humans as sensors" for better spatial decision-making.

Dr Shane Duggan

RMIT/NYU, School of Education

Keywords: maker-spaces; entrepreneurial; startup

Dr Shane Duggan is currently designing a series of studies looking at entrepreneurial and 'maker-spaces' specifically aimed at recent graduates/early career founders. There may be some intersections with crowdsourcing given that this is often taught as part of the education packages in these spaces.

Susan Feitoza

RMIT Europe office in Barcelona

Keywords: health; patient experience; digital

Susan Feitoza is interested in learning more about the crowdsourcing platform and tools that will be used as they might impact on health initiatives. Also seeing if it could apply to other ECPs such BHI and DCP.

Dr Georgia Garrard

RMIT University- College of Design and Social Context- Global, Urban and Social Studies

Keywords: biodiversity sensitive urban design; connection to nature; strategic messaging

Drr Georgia Garrad is interested in the ways in which urban residents value and interact with nature in cities, and how meaningful connection to nature can be enhanced through better urban design.

Helen Gaynor

RMIT, School of Media and Communication

Keywords: Interactivity, Documentary, Activism

Helen Gaynor is a PhD student who is designing on on-line interactive documentary as the practice component of my PhD. Once her PhD is submitted she will be looking to raise the finance actually build the site which is for a local not-for-profit working with homeless teenagers and young people. She has been considering crowdsourcing. Civic engagement lies in the engagement with the not-for-profit which works in the civic space.

Associate Professor Mark Gregory

RMIT School of Engineering

Keywords: public policy, engagement, smart cities

Associate Professor Mark Gregory’s research includes public policy related to telecommunications, Wi-Fi, networks, IoT and other civic / smart city topics.

Associate Professor Anne Harris

VC Principal Research Fellow & ARC Future Fellow

RMIT, Education

Keywords: community, collaboration, creativity

Associate Professor Anne Harris runs a research lab in SOE called Creative Agency which supports research in all forms of creativity and creative practice. The research lab is explicitly inter-sectoral, interdisciplinary and intercultural. She is also on the DERC executive and work in digital media and ethnography in her own research.

Professor Reza Hoseinnezhad

RMIT,School of Engineering

Keywords:  Bag of words, Anomaly detection, Clustering

Professor Reza Hoseinnezhad is working on machine learning methods for multiple instance learning using point processes, and one of the application areas is in crowdsourcing.

Victor Lee

Co-founder, Communiteer

Keywords: collaboration, engagement, scalability

Communiteer is a social venture with the mission to facilitate social impact via cross-sector collaboration. It specialises in skill-based volunteering delivered via on online collaboration platform. It uses a project-based approach to tackle volunteering projects, combined with a crowd-sourcing methodology in connecting with volunteers, in order to deliver on outputs and outcomes in a more accessible and flexible manner.

Dr Sara Moridpour

Senior Lecturer

RMIT University- School of Engineering Cluster – Civil and Infrastructure Engineering

Keywords: Transport Modelling, Traffic Engineering, Data Analysis

Dr Sara Mordipour is an expert in traffic engineering and transportation modelling.
She works in the areas of driving behaviour modelling and analysis, road freight management, transport infrastructure maintenance planning and management, transport network modelling and simulation, and road safety.

Dr Laura Mumaw

RMIT University, GUSS; Gardens for Wildlife Victoria

Keywords: Citizen science, Human-nature relations, municipal biodiversity

Dr Laura Mumaw’s current work promotes civic engagement in biodiversity stewardship, through citizen co-design and co-management of wildlife gardening programs with local government. Her research results demonstrate how residents engaged in wildlife gardening not only improve habitat on their land, but develop an interest in the native plant and animal species they find there, noting new and more frequent observations. She is interested in harnessing this interest and these observations using citizen science and crowdsourcing to engage the community in collecting and sharing ecological and social data about human-nature relations and the characteristics and changes in municipal biodiversity.

Dr Susan Palmer

Gather My Crew

Keywords: strengthening community with technology

Gather My Crew is a non-profit that is working to change the way people build supportive communities around them during tough times. We provide a free, digital help roster and promote discussion about the challenges of asking for and accepting help during vulnerable times.

Dr Jing Qi

Lecturer, Languages (Chinese)

RMIT University- College of Design and Social Context – School of Global, Urban and Social Studies

Keywords: Digital Ethnography, Intercultural Spaces, Chinese Communities

Jing Qi's interdisciplinary research orientation is broadly concerned with internationalisation of education. Jing draws together research experience in multilingual, sociological, cultural and technological studies to bring an innovative perspective to educational research. She has worked for fifteen years in universities in Australia and China, designing and delivering teaching in the disciplinary areas of education and languages. She has also acted as an educational consultant to universities and schools in Australia and internationally. 

Jing has published in areas including transnational education, sociology of education and education equality, language education, doctoral education, teacher education, and blended and mobile learning. Her book, Knowledge Hierarchies in Transnational Education, was published in 2015 by Routledge. Currently Jing is working with colleagues on a research project to develop transcultural research supervision pedagogies, which position doctoral research candidates as intellectual agents of transcultural and multilingual knowledge co-construction.  

Mr Mark Raphael

Business Development Manager

RMIT University- STEM College – School of Engineering

Keywords: Innovation, Industry Ecosystem Development, Student/ Industry Engagement

Mr Mark Raphael is a research and university sector professional with extensive experience managing large scale industry-focused research bids and industry development projects and services. Mark is currently Business Development Manager at RMIT's School of Engineering where he leads industry development initiatives in the School by managing industry partnerships, projects and engagement activities. Mark manages the 'RMIT Engineering Talent Pipeline Program' which works to connect industry partners to the engineering graduates needed to operate and grow their businesses in this increasingly competitive talent landscape.

Dr Anthony Richardson

RMIT, GUSS

Keywords: complexity, urban resilience building public/citizen consensus

Dr Anthony Richardson is interested in urban resilience, and particularly the problematic connections between a neoliberal 'every person for themselves' mindset and the current focus on de-centred (or 'ecological') resilience (as seen in the Melbourne Resilience Framework, for example). He is interested in ways of building public consensus as to the nature of urban resilience (and which elements of any particular city should be resilient).

Dr Gerry Roe

Sector Manager, Health, Biomedical and ICT

RMIT, Research & Innovation

Keywords: innovation, policy, ICT

Dr Gerry Roe is interested in open innovation platforms for providing engagement.

Dr Panayiota Romios

RMIT University- College of Design and Social Context- Global, Urban and Social Studies

Keywords: Humanitarian Action, Humanitarian Values, Australian Red Cross,

Dr Panayiota Romis has over two decades of experience in the design and implementation of research and evaluation projects that support strategic policy, prioritisation and performance measurement. Dr Romis’ focus is on providing an evidence base that supports organisational-wide efforts to engage in policy dialogue and advocacy, and to influence reform that will improve the health outcomes of the Victorian community.  Areas of research include homelessness, cultural competency in health care, women’s health, Indigenous communities, aged care and the circumstances under which these interrelate.

Dr Flora Salim

Senior Lecturer

RMIT University- School of Science Cluster- Computer Science and IT

Keywords: crowdsensing, user and behaviour analytics, urban computing

Dr Flora Salim’s group has developed app-based crowdsensing tools for activity and behaviour recognition and longitudinal analysis. They have developed an algorithm / framework for analysing data quality of crowdsourced sensor data. They have also worked with crowdsourced data for event and incident detection.

Her research areas are mobile, pervasive, ubiquitous computing, and Intelligent Transportation Systems. Her specific interests include human mobility, crowdsensing (with mobile, wearables, or Internet of Things), data and visual analytics, and innovative user interfaces.

Associate Professor Falk Scholer

RMIT Computer Science & IT, School of Science

Keywords: user-based evaluation and measurement; response scales; quality of crowdsourcing responses

Associate Professor Falk Scholer’s primary research includes the user-based evaluation of search engines. He regularly uses crowdsourcing platforms to obtain human responses such as judging the relevance of documents in response to information needs; or the quality of summaries of a particular document.

Dr Salman Shooshtarian

RMIT PCPM

Keywords: Thermal comfort, urban heat, vegetation

Dr Salman Shoostarian’s work explores assessment of thermal comfort in outdoor spaces to create sustainable and successful public spaces.

Professor Charlotte Williams

Associate Dean, Soc. Work and Human Serv.

RMIT University- College of Design and Social Context- Global, Urban and Social Studies

Keywords: ethnicity/diversity/neighbourhoods

Professor Charlotte Williams’ research interests focus on issues of contemporary multiculturalisms, ethnicities and ‘race’ as they come to bear on welfare and professional practices, but more broadly in corporate issues of equality and social justice within the context of particular welfare regimes.

She has extensively theorised issues of place, locality and nationhood as they impact on welfare practices particularly in relation to the racialisation or exclusion of minoritised groups. Research approaches include participatory action methodologies and qualitative methodologies that articulate the voice of marginalised groups.

Professor Bruce Wilson

Director, EU Centre of Excellence

RMIT Global Urban and Social Studies

Keywords: Democratic processes, participatory action research, engaging with local assets

Professor Bruce Wilson has a core focus on implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, and on the quadruple helix involvement in change processes.

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Back to the CRN

Explore more of the Crowdsourcing Research Network.

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torres strait flag

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Luwaytini' by Mark Cleaver, Palawa.

aboriginal flag
torres strait flag

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.