Biography
My research interests are in the areas of data mining and machine learning, particularly in their applications to solve real-world problems in defence, intelligence, cybersecurity, and healthcare. I work in similarity measures, anomaly detection, clustering, classification, ensemble learning, learning from small subsamples of data, and robust and explainable machine learning. I received my PhD (Data Mining) from Monash University in 2017. I have published more than 30 scientific papers in top tier conferences and journals in the field of data mining and machine learning. I have been a named investigator on research grants and contracts of over $1.9 million, where I am the lead (sole) CI in two of those. My research is supported by the US Airforce Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and Office of Naval Research (ONR) Global; and Australian Office of National Intelligence (ONI) and Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group. I am actively collaborating with researchers at other universities in Australia, USA, China and Japan. I am serving as a topic editor in the MDPI Applied System Innovation (ASI) journal. I regularly review research articles and papers for top-tier journals and conferences. I have supervised one PhD and eight master’s thesis students to completion and am currently supervising two PhD students and two master by research student. Before coming to academia and research, I worked as a software developer and data engineer for four years.
Read more on Sunil's profileResearch interests
Data Mining and Machine Learning — Practical and Robust Data Mining, Similarity Measures, Classification, Clustering, Anomaly Detection, Ensemble-based and Random Methods, Learning from small subsamples of data, Learning from mixed (numeric and categorical) data, Explainable AI, Autonomous Systems, and Health Informatics
Affiliations
- Australian Computer Society [2008 - ]
- IEEE Computer Society [2014 - ]
- IEEE Young Professionals [2014 - ]
Teaching interests
Data Mining, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Database, Programming, Professional Practice, Placement and Internship, Capstone Projects
Units taught
SIT103 Data and Information Management
SIT223 Professional Practice in IT
SIT306 IT Internship
SIT740 Research & Development in IT
SIT790 Major Thesis
SIT750 Mastery of IT
SIT720 Machine Learning
SIT772 Database and Information Retrieval
Knowledge areas
Data Mining, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Health Informatics
Professional activities
- Fellow of the UK Higher Edication Academy (FHEA)
- Topic Editor for the MDPI Applied System Innovation (ASI) journal [2021 - ]
- PC Member - Conferences such as IJCAI, AAAI, ECML/PKDD, PAKDD, IJCNN and ICONIP, etc.
- Journal Reviewer - ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD), Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), IEEE Intelligent Systems
Research groups
Smart Data Networks Lab and Machine Intelligence Lab under the Centre for Data to Learning at Deakin School of IT.
Awards
- Deakin Faculty of Science, Enginering and Built Environment Teaching and Learning Award [2022]
- Deakin School of IT Research Award for Excellence in Early Career Research Performance [2021]
- Deakin School of IT Teaching and Learning Award for Excellence in unit leadership and supporting student learning [2021]
- Four student travel awards during PhD candidaure [2013-2016]
- Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) for PhD at Monash University [2013]
- Research student stipend for MIT (Research) at Monash University [2011]
- Research trainee scholarship by Katholieke University of Leuven, Belgium [2009]
- Dean’s award for outstanding academic achievement by University of Southern Queensland [2007]
Publications
Overcoming weaknesses of density peak clustering using a data-dependent similarity measure
Z Rasool, S Aryal, M Bouadjenek, R Dazeley
(2023), Vol. 137, pp. 109287-109287, Pattern Recognition, C1
Spectral-Spatial Anomaly Detection of Hyperspectral Data Based on Improved Isolation Forest
X Song, S Aryal, K Ting, Z Liu, B He
(2022), Vol. 60, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, C1
Jagannath Aryal, Chiranjibi Sitaula, Sunil Aryal
(2022), Vol. 11, pp. 1-21, Land, Basel, Switzerland, C1
Thanh Nguyen, Mohamed Abdelrazek, Dung Nguyen, Sunil Aryal, Duc Nguyen, Sandeep Reddy, Quoc Nguyen, Amin Khatami, Thanh Nguyen, Edbert Hsu, Samuel Yang
(2022), Vol. 8, pp. 1-12, Machine Learning with Applications, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, C1
K Santosh, Nicholas Rasmussen, Muntasir Mamun, Sunil Aryal
(2022), Vol. 8, pp. 1-20, PeerJ Computer Science, London, Eng., C1
STIFS: Spatio-Temporal Input Frame Selection for Learning-based Video Super-Resolution Models
A Agrahari Baniya, T Lee, P Eklund, S Aryal
(2022), SIGMAP 2022 : Proceedings of the Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications conference 2022, Lisbon, Portugal, E1
sGrid++: Revising Simple Grid Based Density Estimator for Mining Outlying Aspect
D Samariya, J Ma, S Aryal
(2022), Vol. 13724, pp. 194-208, WISE 2022 : Proceedings of the Web Information Systems Engineering 2022 international conference, Biarritz, France, E1
usfAD: a robust anomaly detector based on unsupervised stochastic forest
S Aryal, K Santosh, R Dazeley
(2021), Vol. 12, pp. 1137-1150, International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics, C1
Vector representation based on a supervised codebook for Nepali documents classification
C Sitaula, A Basnet, S Aryal
(2021), Vol. 7, pp. 1-18, PeerJ Computer Science, United States, C1
Levels of explainable artificial intelligence for human-aligned conversational explanations
R Dazeley, P Vamplew, C Foale, C Young, S Aryal, F Cruz
(2021), Vol. 299, Artificial Intelligence, C1
Scene image representation by foreground, background and hybrid features
C Sitaula, Y Xiang, S Aryal, X Lu
(2021), Vol. 182, Expert Systems with Applications, C1
New bag of deep visual words based features to classify chest x-ray images for COVID-19 diagnosis
C Sitaula, S Aryal
(2021), Vol. 9, Health Information Science and Systems, England, C1
Content and context features for scene image representation
C Sitaula, S Aryal, Y Xiang, A Basnet, X Lu
(2021), Vol. 232, Knowledge-Based Systems, C1
C Sitaula, T Shahi, S Aryal, F Marzbanrad
(2021), Vol. 11, Scientific Reports, England, C1
Ensemble of Local Decision Trees for Anomaly Detection in Mixed Data
Sunil Aryal, Jonathan Wells
(2021), Vol. 12975, pp. 687-702, ECML PKDD 2021 : Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Research Track, Bilbao, Spain, E1
SPAD+: An Improved Probabilistic Anomaly Detector based on One-dimensional Histograms
Sunil Aryal, Arbind Agrahari Baniya, Muhammad Razzak, K Santosh
(2021), pp. 1-7, IJCNN 2021 : Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Shenzhen, China, E1
Sunil Aryal, Kai Ting, Takashi Washio, Gholamreza Haffari
(2020), Vol. 34, pp. 124-162, Data mining and knowledge discovery, Cham, Switzerland, C1
Jonathan Wells, Sunil Aryal, Kai Ting
(2020), Vol. 62, pp. 3203-3216, Knowledge and Information Systems, Berlin, Germany, C1
Fusion of whole and part features for the classification of histopathological image of breast tissue
C Sitaula, S Aryal
(2020), Vol. 8, Health Information Science and Systems, England, C1
HDF: Hybrid deep features for scene image representation
Chiranjibi Sitaula, Yong Xiang, Anish Basnet, Sunil Aryal, Xuequan Lu
(2020), pp. 1-8, IJCNN 2020 : Proceedings of the 2020 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Online from Glasgow, Scotland, E1
A New Effective and Efficient Measure for Outlying Aspect Mining
Durgesh Samariya, Sunil Aryal, Kai Ting, Jiangang Ma
(2020), Vol. 12343, pp. 463-474, WISE 2020 : Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, E1
Indoor image representation by high-level semantic features
C Sitaula, Y Xiang, Y Zhang, X Lu, S Aryal
(2019), Vol. 7, pp. 84967-84979, IEEE access, Piscataway, N.J., C1
Unsupervised deep features for privacy image classification
C Sitaula, Y Xiang, S Aryal, X Lu
(2019), Vol. 11854, pp. 404-415, Image and video technology : 9th Pacific-Rim Symposium, PSIVT 2019, Sydney, NSW, Australia, November 18-22, 2019, Proceedings, Sydney, N.S.W., E1
Tag-based semantic features for scene image classification
C Sitaula, Y Xiang, A Basnet, S Aryal, X Lu
(2019), Vol. 11955, pp. 90-102, ICONIP 2019 : Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Neural Information Processing of the Asia-Pacific Neural Network Society 2019, Sydney, N.S.W., E1
A novel data pre-processing technique robust to units and scales of measurement
Arbind Baniya, Sunil Aryal, K Santosh
(2019), Vol. 16, pp. 1-8, Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Intelligent Information Processing Systems: 26th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Sydney, New South Wales, E1
Modeling neurocognitive reaction time with gamma distribution
Meena Santhanagopalan, Madhu Chetty, Cameron Foale, Sunil Aryal, Britt Klein
(2018), pp. 1-10, ACSW '18: Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference, Brisbane, Qld., E1-1
Anomaly detection technique robust to units and scales of measurement
Sunil Aryal
(2018), Vol. 10937, pp. 589-601, PAKDD 2018: Pacific-Asia Conference on Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Melbourne, Victoria, E1-1
Relevance of frequency of heart-rate peaks as indicator of 'biological' stress level
Meena Santhanagopalan, Madhu Chetty, Cameron Foale, Sunil Aryal, Britt Klein
(2018), Vol. 11307, pp. 598-609, ICONIP 2018: International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Siem Reap, Cambodia, E1-1
Image clustering using a similarity measure incorporating human perception
H Shojanazeri, S Aryal, S Teng, D Zhang, G Lu
(2018), pp. 1-6, IVCNZ 2018 : International Conference on Image and Vision Computing New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand, E1-1
A novel perceptual dissimilarity measure for image retrieval
H Shojanazeri, D Zhang, S Teng, S Aryal, G Lu
(2018), pp. 1-6, IVCNZ 2018 : International Conference on Image and Vision Computing New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand, E1-1
Application of e-government principles in anti-corruption framework
Arjun Neupane, Jeffrey Soar, Kishor Vaidya, Sunil Aryal
(2017), pp. 56-74, Digital Governance and E-Government Principles Applied to Public Procurement, Hershey, Pa., B1-1
Defying the gravity of learning curve: a characteristic of nearest neighbour anomaly detectors
K Ting, T Washio, J Wells, S Aryal
(2017), Vol. 106, pp. 55-91, Machine Learning, C1-1
Data-dependent dissimilarity measure: an effective alternative to geometric distance measures
S Aryal, K Ting, T Washio, G Haffari
(2017), Vol. 53, pp. 479-506, Knowledge and Information Systems, C1-1
A generic ensemble approach to estimate multidimensional likelihood in bayesian classifier learning
Sunil Aryal, Kai Ting
(2016), Vol. 32, pp. 458-479, Computational intelligence, Chichester, Eng., C1-1
Revisiting attribute independence assumption in probabilistic unsupervised anomaly detection
Sunil Aryal, Kai Ting, Gholamreza Haffari
(2016), Vol. 9650, pp. 73-86, PAISI 2016 : Proceedings of the 11th Pacific Asia Workshop on Intelligence and Security Informatics 2016, Auckland, N.Z., E1-1
The potential for ICT tools to promote public participation in fighting corruption
A Neupane, J Soar, K Vaidya, S Aryal
(2015), Vol. 4, pp. 2291-2307, Public affairs and administration: concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications, Hershey, Pa., B1-1
Beyond tf-idf and cosine distance in documents dissimilarity measure
Sunil Aryal, Kai Ting, Gholamreza Haffari, Takashi Washio
(2015), Vol. 9460, pp. 400-406, AIRS 2015 : Information Retrieval Technology: Proceedings of the 11th Asia Information Retrieval Societies Conference, Brisbane, Queensland, E1-1
The potential for ICT tools to promote public participation in fighting corruption
Arjun Neupane, Jeffrey Soar, Kishor Vaidya, Sunil Aryal
(2014), pp. 175-191, Human Rights and the Impact of ICT in the Public Sphere: Participation, Democracy, and Political Autonomy, Hershey, Pa., B1-1
Mp-dissimilarity: a data dependent dissimilarity measure
S Aryal, K Ting, G Haffari, T Washio
(2014), pp. 707-712, ICDM 2014 : Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining 2014, Shenzhen, China, E1-1
Improving iForest with relative mass
Sunil Aryal, Kai Ting, Jonathan Wells, Takashi Washio
(2014), Vol. 8444, pp. 510-521, PAKDD 2014 : Proceedings of the 18th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Tainan, Taiwan, E1-1
DEMass: a new density estimator for big data
Kai Ting, Takashi Washio, Jonathan Wells, Fei Liu, Sunil Aryal
(2013), Vol. 35, pp. 493-524, Knowledge and information systems, Berlin, Germany, C1-1
MassBayes: a new generative classifier with multi-dimensional likelihood estimation
Sunil Aryal, Kai Ting
(2013), Vol. 7818, pp. 136-148, PAKDD 2013 : Proceedings of the 17th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 2013, Gold Coast, Qld., E1-1
Funded Projects at Deakin
Other Public Sector Funding
Ensemble Learning for Outlier Detection.
Dr Sunil Aryal
DSTO contract
- 2021: $5,000
- 2020: $15,000
Modeling Adversary Intent Using Multiobjective Reinforcement Learning.
Prof Richard Dazeley, Dr Sunil Aryal
DSTO Grant - Research - Defence Science & Technology Organisation
- 2021: $53,728
A competency-aware multi-agent framework for human-machine teams in adversarial environments.
Prof Richard Dazeley, Dr Sunil Aryal, A/Prof Tim Wilkin
DSTO Grant - Research - Defence Science & Technology Organisation
- 2022: $26,118
- 2021: $125,124
Utilizing Extractive - Abstractive Summarization for Understanding the Narrative of Social Media Users from Multimodal Data.
Dr Imran Razzak, Dr Mohamed Reda Bouadjenek, Dr Sunil Aryal
The Office of National Intelligence
- 2022: $5,000
- 2021: $15,000
Application of Generic Actual Argument Model to represent complex decisions and generate narratives.
Prof Richard Dazeley, Dr Sunil Aryal, Dr Bahadorreza Ofoghi, Prof John Yearwood
Department of Defence
- 2022: $30,000
Design and delivery of a Graduate Certificate of Secondary Digital Technologies.
A/Prof Julianne Lynch, A/Prof Andrew Cain, Dr Jo Raphael, Dr George Aranda, Dr Sunil Aryal, Dr Chathu Ranaweera, Dr Carly Sawatzki, Dr Matthew Thomas, Dr Guy Wood-Bradley, A/Prof Glenn Auld, Dr John Cripps Clark, A/Prof Linda Hobbs
DETVic Grant - Research - Department of Education and Training Victoria
- 2023: $274,434
Industry and Other Funding
Developing robust framework for practical data mining.
Dr Sunil Aryal
Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development
- 2022: $76,207
- 2021: $70,214
- 2020: $70,828
Machine Learning in Heterogeneous Data from Multiple Sources
Dr Sunil Aryal, Dr Mohamed Reda Bouadjenek
Air Force Office of Scientific Research United States of America
- 2023: $108,930
Contributions to Edge and Multimodal Machine Learning.
Dr Mohamed Reda Bouadjenek, Dr Sunil Aryal, Dr Muna Al-Hawawreh
Technology Innovation Institute - Sole Proprietorship LLC
- 2022: $162,113
Supervisions
Chiranjibi Sitaula
Thesis entitled: Developing New Image Features for Scene Image Classification
Doctor of Philosophy (Information Technology), School of Information Technology