Design & Creative Technologies

DESIGN & CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES RESEARCH REVIEW 2015 FROM THE DEAN It is my pleasure to bring you this fourth issue of the advance our society in the social, cultural and economic magazine τεχνη & λογόσ profiling the research of the spheres. From a learning perspective, that form of thinking Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies during the year can serve to challenge our students to a greater critical 2015. While the Faculty houses the Schools of Art & Design, awareness of the world in which they live. The Pacific Media and Communication Studies, this year has seen the merging Centre’s ‘bearing witness’ project presents a notable example within the faculty of the schools of Engineering, Computer of the ‘research-teaching-practice nexus’ approach to and Mathematical Sciences, to create a more visible presence research in the Faculty. Often highly grounded and situated, in the Engineering and Technology areas. Complementing in many cases the work is conducted with partners and in this range of disciplines, Colab as a combined research and practice contexts. For instance in Professor David Robie’s teaching unit in Creative Technologies has a central role work with students engaged in ‘journalism as research’, in both tying together and transcending the disciplinary on the 30 year anniversary of the sinking of the Rainbow threads of this diversity in the faculty. Warrior. The Faculty exists to take advantage of this very diversity, In this edition we introduce a set of research and academic aiming to generate a distinctive fusion of creative disciplines leaders, who joined the Faculty in 2015, through their through research, teaching and practice. Thereby our goal personal ‘reflections’, where they outline their visions is to make a global and local impact on the communities for their disciplines and their schools. In this, my last and professions which we serve. In this edition we profile contribution to this report as Dean of the Faculty, I am the researchers and their work originating within their encouraged by their enthusiasm, keen sense of vision and differing disciplinary contexts and spreading wider through desire to lead the Faculty in new directions, while building community and industrial connections. on the strong base already in place. I hope you enjoy reading the magazine, and come away nourished, enlightened, The Faculty’s disciplines of design, science, technology, informed and inspired by the magnificent work of the communication and the arts are exercised in the research Faculty’s scholars. Ka Kite Ano. projects and profiles presented here. The types of research we engage in are varied too. There is research of a highly theoretical nature undertaken by our scholars, and we make Desna Jury no apologies for that, as that higher order thinking can Dean, Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies Auckland University of Technology RESEARCH REVIEW Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies Volume III An annual magazine of the Faculty of DCT at Auckland University of Technology Online edition is available at: www.aut.ac.nz/dctresearch ISSN 2382-0225 (print) ISSN 2382-0233 (online) Publication Date: July 2016 Editors: Tony Clear Slavko Gajevic Diana Kassabova Associate Dean Research Research Development Specialist Research Specialist [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Acknowledgments All researchers who contributed articles and images Anne French, Research Strategy and Management consultant at DCT Faculty For her interviews with Professor Nik Kasabov and Professor Stephen Henry Kelly Burt, Web Content Coordinator at DCT Faculty For her photos of Professor Geoffrey Craig, Dr Ricardo Sosa, Associate Professor Verica Rupar, Dr William Liu, Dr Hyuck Chung, and Associate Professor Tom Moir The NZ Innovation Council for providing the photo of Professor Stephen Henry Editorial commentary The voluminous lists of publications included in this Review have been drawn from the University’s research repository. They appear as the reporting system has generated them based on the original data entered by the researchers, without further editing. Design and Production CREATIVE PRINT & MEDIA SOLUTION www.printsprint.co.nz 2 INFO DCT RESEARCH REVIEW 2015 CONTENTS CONTENTS Staff awards and distinctions gained in 2015 5 Reflections 7 Profiles from Discipline Areas within the Faculty Art & Design 13 Colab 23 Communication Studies 29 Computer and Mathematical Sciences 37 Engineering 51 RESEARCH OUTPUTS - COMPLETED RESEARCH DEGREES Masters Degrees 2015 66 PhD Completions 2015 70 RESEARCH OUTPUTS - STAFF PUBLICATIONS Art & Design 74 Colab 93 Communication Studies 99 Computer and Mathematical Sciences • School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences • Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research (IRASR) • Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI) 109 Engineering • School of Engineering • Institute of Biomedical Technologies (IBTec) 138 3 CONTENTS DCT RESEARCH REVIEW 2015 STAFF AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS GAINED IN 2015 STAFF AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS GAINED IN 2015 STAFF AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS GAINED IN 2015 Associate Professor Charles Walker Appointed as Creative Director of the New Zealand Exhibition at the 2016 Venice Biennale. Christina Milligan Producer of “The Price of Peace” which won Best Documentary at the ImagineNative 2015 Film Festival in Toronto. Directed by Kim Webby. Professor David Robie Presented with the 2015 AMIC Asian Communication Award at the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre’s Gala Dinner in Dubai for his “unstinting contribution as a journalist, educator and human rights and environmental champion in the region”. Jim Marbrook Won the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence in the category “Emerging Researcher”. Justin Matthews Producer of the comedy/drama web series “High Road” which received awards for Best Production (Oceania) and Best Directing (International) at the Webfest Montreal Festival. Professor Nikola Kasabov Won the University 2015 Medal for sustained and outstanding contribution to the academic success of AUT. Dr Stephen Reay and the DHW team Won several awards at the New Zealand’s Best Design Awards 2015: • Supreme Award “The Purple Pin” and Gold Award in the category New Zealand’s Best Public Good Design for Designing better healthcare experiences; • Silver Award in the category New Zealand’s Best Spatial Design (Offices and Workplace Environments). Professor Stephen Henry Won Supreme Innovator of the Year Award for Potential Cancer Treatment at the 2015 New Zealand Innovators Awards. Professor Sergei Gulyaev Elected a Councillor of the Royal Astronomical Society of NZ. 5 STAFF AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS GAINED IN 2015 DCT RESEARCH REVIEW 2015 REFLECTIONS Members of the Software Engineering Global interAction research Lab (SEGAL) ON BECOMING A RESEARCHER Contributed by Adjunct Professor Daniela Damian My three months at AUT in 2015/2016 were fruitful in Similarly, SERL students are able to present and get feedback interacting with graduate students, learning and connecting on their research at national and international workshops and with new projects, and identifying new opportunities for conferences, thanks to AUT’s policy to provide travel funds for collaboration within AUT and beyond. On a sabbatical leave published work. During our ongoing research collaboration, from my University of Victoria (UVic) in Canada, where I lead they can also do longer research visits at the University of the SEGAL research lab (thesegalgroup.org), this was my Victoria to interact with the students in my research lab. second working visit in SERL (AUT’s Software Engineering These are all invaluable opportunities for them to grow as Research Laboratory) in the last four years. I thus have the researchers. opportunity to reflect upon the benefits of traveling and interacting with students and researchers at other universities International exchange is critical abroad, and what we, as enablers of research, can do to help New Zealand’s location makes it less ideal for travel, but our students become researchers. I posit that exposing AUT students to the international world is very important. Not enough can be said about A growth mindset complementing a graduate student’s in-depth literature A researcher’s life is one of inquiry, continuous dissatisfaction review and meticulous lab research skills with interactions with one’s findings, always in pursuit of greater insights. But across (international) research labs and cultures. Travel how does one become a researcher? Is ‘researching’ a skill to conferences, research visits to other universities, or we can truly teach or is the best we can do merely enable simply working with international researchers is crucial for opportunities for one to grow into it? broadening one’s view of research results, perspectives of what research means, of ways to present and argue about It takes a village research. Research is largely based on individual, lonely effort. However, In this respect, AUT’s funding of researchers’ (students growing into a researcher rarely is. We become researchers included) travel to present their research papers at by learning from others, with others. As a graduate student, international events is a unique, important opportunity I I recall the long discussions with my lab mates about their have not seen at North American universities (where travel is research designs, the first conference where I presented and provided by the project PI’s own research funding). It exposes received

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