Recent awards and recognition

View the most recent awards received from academics in the Centre of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.

MBIE Endeavour Fund 2023

Three proposals from staff at the Centre have been approved for funding through the MBIE Endeavor Fund. The successful proposals are:

  • Machine Learning for Emergency Medical Dispatch: A Data Driven Approach. The team includes Yi Mei (lead), Fangfang Zhang, Kirita-Rose Escott, Jordan MacLachlan, and Mengjie Zhang.
    • Duration: 3 years
    • Contract value (GST excl.): $1,000,000
  • An artificial intelligence framework for development of novel selective kinase inhibitors. The team includes Binh Nguyen (lead), Joanne Harvey, and Paul Teesdale-Spittle.
    • Duration: 3 years
    • Contract value (GST excl.): $999,999
  • Information measurement for explainable artificial intelligence. The team includes Paul Teal (lead), Kirita-Rose Escott, Bastiaan Kleijn, Marcus Frean, and Mona Krewel.
    • Duration: 3 years
    • Contract value (GST excl.): $1,000,000

There were also three additional successful proposals that involved staff from the Centre. These were:

  • AI-based behavioural analytics for live sports broadcast. This was led by the University of Auckland and involved Mengjie Zhang.
    • Duration: 3 years
    • Contract value (GST excl.): $1,000,000
  • Redefining the future of forensic drug testing using NMR. This was led by the University of Canterbury and involved Paul Teal.
    • Duration: 3 years
    • Contract value (GST excl.): $1,000,000
  • Connecting people and place - Immersive technologies for sustainable tourism experiences in Aotearoa. This is a Research Programme and involved Kevin Shedlock.
    • Duration: 5 years
    • Contract value (GST excl.): $8,208,513

IEEE CIS Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award

In July 2023, Dr. Ying Bi, the Centre's Postdoctoral Research Fellow, received the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award. Each year, IEEE awards one person the Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award from all nominations worldwide in Neural Networks, Evolutionary Computation, Fuzzy Systems, and hybridisation of any of the above techniques with other machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. This is the first time this award has been won by someone at Victoria University of Wellington, marking a historic achievement in New Zealand. Dr. Ying will be presented with a formal certificate and a cash prize of $1000 USD at next year's IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence. Her PhD thesis, titled "Genetic Programming for Feature Learning in Image Classification," was completed in 2020 under the supervision of Professors Mengjie Zhang and Bing Xue.

Best Paper Award at an International Conference

The paper "Grammar-guided Linear Genetic Programming for Dynamic Job Shop Scheduling" by Zhixing Huang, Yi Mei, Fangfang Zhang, and Mengjie Zhang received the Best Paper Award for the Genetic Programming Track at the 2023 ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2023). This Conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal, on 15–19 July 2023. GECCO is a top conference (ARC/ERA Tier A) in Evolutionary Computation, and nearly 1,000 people attended this conference.

20th Annual (2023) "Humies" Awards for Human-Competitive Results Produced by Genetic and Evolutionary Computation

"Learning Emergency Medical Dispatch Policies via Genetic Programming" by Jordan MacLachlan, Yi Mei, Fangfang Zhang, Mengjie Zhang, and Jessica Signal received a Silver Award at the 20th Annual (2023) "Humies" Awards for Human-Competitive Results, produced by Genetic and Evolutionary Computation. They received a prize of $2000 USD at the 2023 ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2023), at Lisbon, Portugal, on 15–19 July 2023.

Competition awards

The work by Hengzhe Zhang, Qi Chen, Bing Xue, and Mengjie Zhang won first place in Track 2 of the competition of Interpretable Symbolic Regression for Data Science at the 2023 ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2023), in Lisbon, Portugal, on 15–19 July 2023.