PRaDA adds depth and breadth

Professor Svetha Venkatesh, one of Australia’s most distinguished researchers, has joined Deakin University.

Professor Venkatesh, who has moved from Curtin University in Western Australia, will head up a new Strategic Research Centre at Deakin -  PRaDA, Pattern Recognition and Data Analytics.

“It is a pleasure to welcome Svetha and her team to Deakin,” said Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Lee Astheimer.

“Over the past two years we have strategically added considerable breadth and depth to our research, recruiting around 200 research intensive academics.

“Svetha’s arrival along with her team enhances that research growth significantly.”

Professor Venkatesh and her team’s research interests focus on:

• graphical models and their application to multi-media surveillance,
• building large-scale observations systems and
• new media capture paradigms.

She is also involved in two new exciting start-up companies.

iCetana is an award-winning company that develops intelligent video surveillance software that enables operators to focus only on the one percent of events requiring attention.

TOBY Playpad is a revolutionary new way to accelerate learning for children with Autism.

Professor Venkatesh’s research colleagues joining Deakin include:

Associate Professor Dinh Phung

Dr Santu Rana (Research Associate)

Dr Sunil Gupta (Research Fellow)

Dr Budhaditya Saha (Research Fellow)

Dr Thi Duong

Dr Thin Nguyen

Dr Truyen Tran

They will be based on the University’s campus at Waurn Ponds.