Russell completed bachelors degrees in both Science and Biomedical Engineering at Flinders University in 2000. Following this he completed a PhD in neuroscience in 2004 at the Department of Physiology, University of Adelaide. Directly after the award of his PhD Russell then joined the Insect Vision Laboratory at the University of Adelaide first as a Post Doctoral Researcher, then, in 2006, as an ARC Research Fellow (Industry).

Russell completed a Graduate Certificate in Education in 2008 and became the Curriculum Coordinator for the Faculty of Science in 2009. In 2010 Russell took up a lecturing position in Mechanical Engineering, still at The University of Adelaide. Russell moved to the University of South Australia in 2011 as a Senior Lecturer and in 2014 became the Program Director for the Masters of Autonomous Systems within the School of Engineering.

In 2012, Russell was recognised as one of the young South Australian scientists of the year. In late 2019 Russell joined the Centre for Maritime Engineering at Flinders University as the Associate Professor of Autonomous Systems. Russell’s main research interest is in applying self-adaptive biologically inspired signal processing for use in robotics and surveillance.

Dr. Chen received the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from The University of Adelaide, Australia, in 2013 and 2017 respectively. From 2017 to 2021, he was a postdoctoral researcher and a lecturer in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Adelaide. He joined the College of Science and Engineering at Flinders University as a lecturer in 2022. His current research interests include antenna design and engineering, microwave absorbers, and wearable and reconfigurable electromagnetic structures based on novel materials.

Dr. Chen was a recipient of several awards including the Young Scientist Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA) 2015, the Young Scientist Best Paper Award and Travel Bursary Award at ICEAA 2016, an Honorable Mention at IEEE AP-S Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (APS/URSI) 2017, a CST University Publication Award 2017, and the Best Paper Award at IEEE Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference 2021. Dr. Chen serves as the Chair of the IEEE South Australia Joint Chapter on Microwave Theory and Techniques (MTT) & Antennas and Propagation (AP) from 2019 to 2020.

Paulo Santos received his PhD degree in artificial intelligence from Imperial College, London, UK in 2003, working on the development of spatial reasoning systems for mobile. He was a research assistant at the School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK (2003-2005), working on a European Union funded project for the development of Cognitive Vision Systems. Dr. Santos led a research group in AI and Robotics in Sao Paulo, Brazil (2005-2019), conducting a number of research projects on AI and Robotics of industrial interest.

During this period, Dr. Santos was also a visiting researcher at the following world-class institutions: University of Leeds, UK (2007, 2010); Ryerson University, Canada (2010), Bremen University, Germany (2012); Corunna University, Spain (2014). Currently Dr. Santos is an Associate Professor at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, continuing his research on Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

Aaron comes from the University of South Australia, where he completed his PhD which focussed on the use and advancement of biologically inspired vision algorithms for the detection of micro-targets (around a pixel in size) in imagery.

After completion he looked at using similar techniques to successfully enhance the detection of koalas in gum plantations for the forestry industry. He recently joined the Centre for Defence Engineering Research and Training (CDERT) group at Flinders University in February 2022 as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate to investigate how to enhance underwater acoustic imaging in turbid marine environments.

Andrew received his B.Eng. (Comp. Sys.) degree from Flinders University in 2005 and his Ph.D. (Robotics Engineering) also from Flinders University in 2012, studying particle filter-based localisation systems for autonomous underwater vehicles.

Previous positions include post-doctoral research associate positions in conjunction with ASC, PMB and Naval Group. Projects included; empirically derived lifetime modelling of battery systems, working on simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) systems for inspection robots and optimal path planning for underwater vehicles. His research interests include system modelling, mapping, navigation, control, and planning for autonomous platforms such as ASVs, AUVs, and AGVs.

Phil received his PhD in biologically inspired visual sensing for robotics from the University of South Australia in 2020. Later in 2020 he joined the Centre for Maritime Engineering at Flinders University as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate under Professor Karl Sammut. He was involved in the formation of the Centre for Defence Engineering Research and Training (CDERT).

Phil works across all aspects of maritime mechatronics and robotics and is currently engaged on the development of a seabed crawler vehicle in collaboration with Thales under a Trusted Autonomous Systems Defence CRC program. His research focuses on developing adaptive biologically inspired signal processing algorithms for multi-modal perception tasks in robotics, and the complex task of tuning these algorithms using evolutionary computation techniques.

Dr. Jonathan Wheare received his PhD from Flinders University in 2019. His research interests include mission planning systems, simulation, and control of autonomous vehicles.  He has extensive experience in developing ROS 1/2 systems and simulators for ground, surface, and sub-surface autonomous vehicles including a number of entries for national and international robotics competitions.

He is currently developing the system architecture for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle and working on a ROS2 based autonomy system for a vehicle being developed in collaboration with Thales Australia under a Trusted Autonomous Systems Defence CRC program.

Alex’s research is in geolocation methods in the EME branch of CDERT and he has additional interests in problems in graphs, AI and game theory.

Locating users of the electromagnetic spectrum provides significant challenges in practice. An accurate estimation of the source of an emitter must account for interference, measurement error and other subtleties which become significant over large distances. Alex contributes to developing effective methods for handling these difficulties and then presenting the location data in a meaningful way.

Real world scenarios are often abstracted into networks for modelling and analysis. A network’s ability to encode combinatorial and geometric information makes them an invaluable tool for decision support, modelling communication and interactions, cyber security and various game-like scenarios. 

Jody McKerral (Fisher) has a background in applied mathematics but has a strong interest in interdisciplinary problems. She has investigated a range of biophysics related problems, examining emergent properties and constraints of complex systems. Her research has included the role turbulence plays in structuring ecosystem dynamics, assembly rules of microbiomes, the geometric biasing of diffusion, and is now focussed on spectrum security. She undertook a Fulbright placement during her PhD with Albert-László Barabási at the Centre for Complex Network Research in Boston (Northeastern University), using networks to look at universal properties of microbiomes. Jody undertook her PhD research with Jim Mitchell (biophysics and systems biology), Jerzy Filar (mathematics), and Nima Dehmamy (physics). Following a postdoctoral position in the Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration, she is now a research fellow in the Satellite Spectrum Monitoring group with Professor Sam Drake.