Academic Staff Researchers
	Professor Philip Sallis - Philip is the Director of the Centre. Until December 2008 he was the Deputy Vice Chancellor at AUT, a position he held for 10 years after coming from the University of Otago, where for 13 years he was Foundation Professor and Head of the Department of Information Science. His undergraduate degrees in History and Computer Science were from Victoria University of Wellington, with a PhD from The City University in London, England and a Post Graduate Diploma (in Theology) from The University of Otago. Dr Sallis has held senior academic positions in the UK, Australia and New Zealand universities with visiting and adjunct professorships in the UK, USA, Hong Kong and Chile. His research background is in Software Engineering (data modelling, metrics forensics and system performance analysis), Geo-Spatial model building (especially mixed data type modelling and simulations) and Computational Linguistics (especially authorship authentication and thematic analysis). He was for 3 years President of the NZ Computer Society and is a Fellow of the Society in addition to being a member of the Royal Society of NZ, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Concurrently with his role as Director of the Centre, Dr Sallis is AUT’s Pro Vice Chancellor (Innovation and Enterprise), Chairing the Board of Directors for AUT Enterprises Limited and advising the Vice Chancellor on strategic development. He has published extensively, taught at all levels and supervised to completion numerous Masters and PhD students. He has worked internationally with government, business and industry as a consultant and also as an entrepreneur in his own right. phone: +64 9 921 9010 email: psallis@aut.ac.nz
	Akbar Ghobakhlou - Akbar is a Research Fellow in the Centre. His early tertiary qualifications are in Electrical Engineering and he received his BSc(Hons) in Information Science and Master’s degree in signal processing from the University of Otago. His PhD thesis is on the topic of “connectionist-based adaptive speech recognition systems”. He has been involved in a number of research projects ranging from robotic navigation to multimodal biometric person verification systems from which he has published numerous articles and registered a patent. His current research interest includes signal and image processing, pattern recognition, evolving connectionist systems, audio and text mining. phone: +64 9 921 5860 email: akbar@aut.ac.nz
	Centre Administrator Kitty Ko, Kitty is also a research officer in the Centre.  Her background is in Information Systems.  She has a BA(Hons) in Accounting, an MBA and is a Chartered Accountant. She is responsible for the GRC website and involved in the projects of the Centre as well. phone: +64 9 921 9999 x5803 email: kko@aut.ac.nz
	Dr Subana Shanmuganathan - Subana is a research fellow in the Centre.  Following the completion of her PhD at AUT she was for two years a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Post Doctoral Fellow at Ritsumeiken Asia Pacific University (APU) before returning to her Research Fellowship.  Subana’s research background is in environmental modelling using contemporary computational methods based on neural network technology. Her current work is predominantly in data mining and data depiction using contemporary statistical clustering and visualisation techniques. She has published a book, several journal articles and presented refereed papers at leading international conferences. phone: +64 9 921 9567 email: sshanmug@aut.ac.nz
	Sara Zandi, Sara is a research officer in the Centre. She has a BSc in Computer and Information Sciences. She is undertaking MPhil degree research in the GRC. Her research topic relates to Geoinformatics and Geospatial Database Processing. She is also engaged in database and web monitoring application development currently underway at GRC.  She mostly works with the GRC's real time database (design and development) and also the web monitoring application interface for the various monitoring projects of the GRC. phone: +64 9 921 9999 x6592 email: szandi@aut.ac.nz
	Professor Monte Cassim, President of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Japan and Vice-Chancellor of Ritsumeikan Trust. As Professor of Environmental Science, his research centers on biodiversity regeneration in tropical ecosystems and life cycle assessment of production processes and service delivery systems. He also works on health informatics and knowledge discovery in health and environmental systems. His work with GRC is mostly concerned with defining the environmental systems underlying the interaction of the variable mix described by the Eno-humanas project.  He has published extensively and is a regular speaker at conferences and such venue as United Nation on environmental issues. email: m-cassim@apu.ac.jp
	Professor Bill Claster, Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Japan. Principally an statistician, Bill's research areas include text and data mining, eLearning, and geoinformatics and environmental factors in grape growing for wine production. He is working with the GRC on novel approaches to normalise mixed data type results from the data being collected from various sensors and stored real-time in the GRC database.  He has published numerous journal articles and conference papers in applied statistics particularly in cluster analysis and data depiction techniques. email: wclaster@apu.ac.jp
	Professor Olaf Diegel, director of the Creative Industries Research Institute at AUT. His main areas of interest are in reduction of time in the product development cycle, product development and design, CAD/CAM, smart machines, smart homes, mechatronics, visual basic and on-line communication technologies. Olaf is working particularly in the area of sensor and telemetry systems with GRC. He is the winner of three science and technical innovation awards and is regularly invited to international conferences and meetings. phone: +64 9 9219485 email: odiegel@aut.ac.nz
	Professor Mary Carmen Jarur Munoz, Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile. An Electrical Engineer, Mary Carmen's principle interests are in system configuration design and computational neural network methods. She has previously also worked in the areas of robotics and sensor technologies.  Her current work with the Eno-Humanas project is with algorithm development and optimisation for the frost prediction and irrigation management problems. phone: +56 71 203542 email: mjarur@ucm.cl
	Professor Christian López, Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile. Christian teaches Civil Engineering and is finishing a Master’s Degree at the Centro de Geomática at Universidad de Talca. His research interests are in using geomatic techniques for determining ‘green space’ suitability for urban planning and visualisation. His current work with the Enometrica involves using sensor nodes for sampling the temperature, humidity, air pressure and solar radiation in three locations. email: chlopez@ucm.cl
	Professor Carlos Mena, Director, National Geomatics Research Centre (NGRC) for Chile, located at the Universidad de Talca, Chile.   Carlos's personal research interests are geodetic science, cartography and geo-referenced data management.   He has published extensively and continues to speak internationally at scientific conferences and strategic policy planning meetings.   His research sits alongside his current major work in developing national policy for the field of Geomatics.   The NGRC and GRC exchange data and are collaborating on a new project in remote sensing.  Carlos is also currently working with GRC to develop new initiatives in Geomatics postgraduate curriculum in Chile and New Zealand. email: cmena@utalca.cl
	Professor Ajit Narayanan, Ajit is the Head of School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. His research areas includes application of artificial intelligence techniques in bioinformatics and systems biology computational statistics, modelling and simulation and computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. He is interested in applying discriminant analysis and other analytical methods to GRC's quest to observe and determine correlation and variable value dependance between different data types. His publication includes books, journal articles and international conference presentations. phone: +64 9 921 9345 email: ajnaraya@aut.ac.nz
	Dr Leopoldo Pavesi, Leopoldo's research interests are in Computer Engineering and especially in Computer System Architecture and Robotics.  Having left the university sector for private industry to take up an R&D Director's role, Leo continues to be an advisor to the Eno-Humanas Project and his earlier work with server design and software development continues to underpin the telemetry and data logging aspects of this project. email: leopavesi@gmail.com
	Roberto Rock, CEO Business Incubator, Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile.  Roberto has degree in Mechanical Engineering and Business Management.   His postgraduate study was in Holland with post-experience study in the USA.   Roberto is working with the Eno-Humanas Project and a new Wind Turbine Project for the GRC in association with UCM in Chile.  He is also collaborating with the AUT Business Innovation Centre on aspects of the GRC's product development projects. email: rrock@ucm.cl
	Professor Marcelo Trujillo, Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile. Marcelo's interests are in data mining, data analysis and visualisation.  He is particularly interested in the Eno-Humanas Project in order to explore ways to best produce result visualisation from dynamic data processing for such aspects as frost prediction.   He is working with GRC to develop and optimise algorithms for frost predication and irrigation management using computational neural network and other contemporary computing techniques.   email: trujillo@ucm.cl
	Dr Jacqueline Whalley, Jacqui is a Senior Research Lecturer in Computer Science. Her research interests include: Geoinformatics, Computer Graphics, Image and Sound Processing, and Information Visualization. Prior to joining AUT Jacqui developed a system for the European Union that provided fisheries data analysis and visualization with a focus on knowledge discovery and informed decision making. Since then she has been undertaking research into 3D GIS with a focus on the integration of multimedia and historical records for Whenua (land) and Whanau (people) and visualizations of Genetic Biodiversity and Environmental Genomic data. phone: +64 9 921 5860 email: jwhalley@aut.ac.nz
Postgraduate Researchers and their projects