Dr Qinghua Lu

Dr. Qinghua Lu is the Group Leader of Software Systems Research Group at CSIRO and a Senior Principal Research Scientist specialising in AI engineering, AI safety and responsible AI.

She is the only member from Australia among the 40 experts appointed to the United Nations' Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, the first global scientific body dedicated entirely to AI. Within the United Nation's AI Panel, she leads Working Group 4 on Security, Systems, and Environmental Implications.

She has been actively contributing to global and national AI initiatives, including the International Network of AI Safety Institutes, Frontier Model Forum, Australia’s AI Safety Standards. In recognition of her leadership and impact, she received the Asia-Pacific Women in AI Trailblazer Award in 2023.

She has published over 200 papers in premier international journals/conferences and delivered influential keynotes including “AI Engineering: From Software-Centric Systems to AIware-Centric Systems” at the 48th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026, A* conference).

Selected Recent Publications and Impact
* Q. Lu. “AI Engineering: From Software-Centric Systems to AIware-Centric Systems”. ICSE'26 keynote. A* ranked conference.
* Q. Lu, A. E. Hassan, D. Lo, T. Zimmermann. "Engineering Agentic Systems: Towards Verification-First AIware Engineering." IEEE Software. 2026.
* Y. Yang, G. Long, Q. Lu, L. Zhu, J. Jiang. "Bi-level Personalization for Federated Foundation Models: A Task-vector Aggregation Approach." AAAI'26. 2026. A* ranked conference.
* Q. Lu, D. Zhao, Y. Liu, H. Zhang, L. Zhu, X. Xu, R. Kazman. AgentArcEval: An architecture evaluation method for foundation model based agents. Journal of Systems and Software. 2026. A ranked journal.
* J Chen, Z. Wang, J. Sun, Z. Xing, Q. Lu, Q. Huang, X. Xu, L. Zhu. "From Exploration to Revelation: App-Level Context-Aware Deceptive Pattern Detection for Mobile Applications." ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. 2026. A* ranked journal.
* S. Lee, H. Perera, Y. Liu, B., Q. Lu, L. Zhu, O Salvado, J. Whittle. "Responsible AI Question Bank for Risk Assessment." ACM Computing Surveys (2026). A* ranked journal. Adapted version adopted in NSW AI Assurance Framework.
* D. Zhao, Z. Xing, Q. Lu, X. Xu, L. Zhu. “SeeAction: Towards Reverse Engineering How-What-Where of HCI Actions from Screencasts for UI Automation”. ICSE'25. ICSE Distinguished Paper Award. A* ranked conference.
* L. Bas, Q. Lu, I. Weber, L. Zhu. Engineering AI Systems: Architecture and DevOps Essentials. Addison-Wesley, 2025.
* M. Shamsujjoha, Q. Lu, D. Zhao, L. Zhu. "Swiss cheese model for ai safety: A taxonomy and reference architecture for multi-layered guardrails of foundation model based agents." ICSA'25. 2025. A ranked conference.
* Y. Liu, S. K. Lo, Q. Lu, L. Zhu, D. Zhao, X. Xu, S. Harrer, J. Whittle. "Agent design pattern catalogue: A collection of architectural patterns for foundation model based agents." Journal of Systems and Software. 2025. A ranked journal.
* Q. Lu, L. Zhu, X. Xu, Z. Xing, J. Whittle. “Toward Responsible AI in the Era of Generative AI: A Reference Architecture for Designing Foundation Model-Based Systems”. 2024. IEEE Software Best Paper Award (selected as the single best paper across the magazine that year).
* Q. Lu, L. Zhu, J. Whittle, X. Xu. Responsible AI: Best Practices for Creating Trustworthy AI Systems. Addison-Wesley, 2023. Reached #3 Amazon’s AI best-seller.
* S.U. Lee, H. Perera, Y. Liu, B. Xia, Q. Lu, L. Zhu, J. Cairns, M. Nottage. “Integrating ESG and AI: A Comprehensive Responsible AI Assessment Framework”. CSIRO Report, 2024.
* Q. Lu, L. Zhu, X. Xu, J. Whittle, D. Zowghi, A. Jacquet, Responsible AI Pattern Catalogue, ACM Computing Surveys. A* ranked journal. Adopted by Australia’s National AI Centre Digital Pathways and the National Framework for the Assurance of AI in Government, and is widely used by industry to improve AI products or assess AI frameworks.
* Q. Lu, L. Zhu, X. Xu, J. Whittle, Z. Xing. “Towards a Roadmap on Software Engineering for Responsible AI”. CAIN'22. ACM Distinguished Paper Award.

Full Publication List: Google Scholar profile

Community Services

Here is the list of community services in the recent 3 years.
* Steering Committee Member, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) - A* conference
* Steering Committee Member, International Conference on AI Engineering (CAIN)
* Software Engineering in Practice Track Chair, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'28)
* Area Chair of Software Engineering for AI, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'26)
* Organisation Chair, Annual International Workshop on Agentic Engineering (AGENT)
* Steering Committee Chair, Annual International Workshop on Responsible AI Engineering (RAIE)
* Program Chair, AIware'25
* Program Chair, 4th International Conference on AI Engineering (CAIN'25)
* Local Chair, WWW'25
* PC member or reviewers: ICSE, FSE, ICSA, CAIN, AIware, AAAI, IJCAI, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CAI, BPM, SAML, ECSA, etc.
* Associate Editor: IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence
* Associate Editor: IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials
* Associate Editor: IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering
* Editorial Board Member: Empirical Software Engineering Journal
* Editorial Board Member: Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, Springer Nature
* Associate Editor: Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence
* Associate Editor: Blockchain Research and Applications, Elsevier
* Associate Editor: IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering