Dr Cecile Paris

Pronouns: she,her,hers

Chief Research Scientist

https://people.csiro.au/P/C/Cecile-Paris.aspx

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PO BOX 76
EPPING NSW 1710 AUSTRALIA

Biography

Current Role:

I am a Chief Research Scientist at Data61, and was the Director for the Collaborative Intelligence (CINTEL) FSP for the past 4 years, a CSIRO-wide research programme about leveraging the intelligences and capabilities of humans and machines to form the best performing teams.

I am an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia).

Prior to leading CINTEL, I was the Leader of a Research Group now called Humans and Machines, within the Analytics and Decision Sciences Research Programme at CSIRO's Data61.

Short Biography:

I received her PhD in Artificial Intelligence (AI) (more specifically in Natural Language Processing and User Modelling) in 1987 from Columbia University (New York) and my Bachelor degree from the University of California in Berkeley. My research has focused on Natural Language Processing (also called Computational Linguistics, and Language Technologies) and User Modelling throughout her career. I joined the Information Sciences Institute (ISI), an AI research laboratory in Marina del Rey (Los Angeles, Ca), where I stayed until 1996, working on knowledge based systems and Explainable AI. I then moved to the UK (ITRI, at the University of Brighton, UK), where I researched multilingual generation systems. I joined CSIRO late 1996, creating the Natural Language Processing team (now called "Language and Social Computing", currently led by Dr Stephen Wan). I was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology & Engineering (ATSE) in 2016 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW in 2019.

I was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology & Engineering (ATSE) in 2016 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW in 2019.

I received the CSIRO Lifetime Achievements Awards in 2024, and the ACS Australasian Artificial Intelligence Award for Distinguished Research Contribution in 2025.

Research:

My research is user-centred AI. I have always been interested in (1) assisting people with their information needs in the digital age, where information is growing at an unprecedented pace and where new types of data are becoming available; (2) unlocking information contained in textual form so as to make it available for reasoning and decision making; and (3) understanding how people communicate with each other and with information.

In recent past, I have been looking at the best way for humans to work with AI, with AI supporting people rather than always replacing them. This is what the Collaborative Intelligence (CINTEL) research programme was about, working with researchers from a wide variety of expertise, both discipline-wise and domain-wise.

My research is typically multidisciplinary and rooted in practical concerns with a clear path to impact. The application domains have included government services, health, electronic business applications, knowledge management, e-Science, and emergency situation assessment.

Some news article from CSIRO

Other Interests

Sailing; Reading; Contemporary Dance; Music; The Arts in general; Gardening.

Professional Areas

Current Roles

Chief Research Scientist
Data61
Chief Scientist (past)
Data61

Academic Qualifications

1987

PhD, Computer Science/Computational Linguistics
Columbia University, New York (USA)
1982

MSc, Computer Science
Columbia University, New York (USA)
1980

BA (Hons), Computer Science
University of California at Berkeley (USA)

Professional Experiences

2016-present

Honorary Professor
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
01/2017-01/2017

Distinguished Fellow
The University of Tokyo, Japan.
2016-present

Adjunct Professor
RMIT, School of Science in the College of Science, Engineering and Health, Melbourne, Australia.
2015-present

Honorary Professorial Fellow
The University of Wollongong, Australia
10/2015-10/2015

Distinguished Fellow
The University of Tokyo, Japan.
09/2014-11/2014

Distinguished Fellow
The University of Tokyo, Japan.
2013-present

Senior Principal Research Scientist and Group Leader; also Project Leader
CSIRO Digital Productivity and Data61.
2010-2014

Adjunct Professor
ANU (Australian National University), Department of Engineering and Computer Science,Canberra, Australia.
2004-2010

Executive Board Member
HCSNet, the ARC Network for Human Communication Science, Australia.
12/2004-1/2005

Visiting Professor
University of Bremen, Germany.
15/05/2004-31/05/2004

Guest Lecturer
University of Bari, Italy.
01/05/2004-14/05/2004

Guest Researcher
Fraunhofer/IPSI, Germany.
2002-2007

Advisory Board Member
ICAN (Innovative Collaborations Alliances Networks), a Key Research Centre at UTS, Sydney, Australia.
1997-present

Honorary Associate
Sydney University, School of Information Technologies, Sydney, Australia.
06/1997-06/1997

Guest lecturer
University of Bari, Italy.
1996-2013

Senior Principal Research Scientist, Science Leader, Team & Project Leader
CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, ICT Centre, Computational Informatics and Digital Productivity.
1996-2016

Adjunct Professor
Macquarie University, Division of Information and Communication Sciences, Sydney, Australia
1993-1996

Principal Research Fellow
Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI), University of Brighton, UK.
05/1995-06/1995

Guest Researcher
LAFORIA (Institut Blaise Pascal, associated with CNRS, the National Research Center in France), Paris, France.
05/1992-05/1992

Guest Researcher
IPSI-GMD (The Gesellschaft fur Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung), Darmstadt, Germany.
1992-1994

Assistant Research Professor
University of Southern California (USC), Department of Computer Science, Los Angeles, Ca, USA
1987-1990

Research Scientist
USC/ISI Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, Ca, USA.
1990-1994

Research Group Leader and Assistant Research Professor
USC/ISI (Information Sciences Institute) -- joint appointment with ISI and the University of Southern California (USC), Computer Science Department, Los Angeles, Ca, USA.
05/1989-06/1989

Guest Researcher
The Institut fur Angewandte Informationsforschung and • Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Saarland, Saarbrucken, Germany.
1981-1987

Graduate Research Assistant
Columbia University: Computer Science Department. New York (USA)

Achievements and Awards

2025-2025

Australasian Artificial Intelligence Award for Distinguished Research Contribution
ACS (Australasian Computer Society)
2024-2024

CSIRO Lifetime Achievement Award
CSIRO, Australia's national science agency
2017-2017

Rei Miyata, the PhD student I co-supervised, receives the President's Medal
The University of Tokyo, Japan
2016-2016

Best student paper award (Yufei Wang; I was co-supervisor and co-author)
ALTA (Australasian Language Technology Association)
2016-2016

Winners of the Shared Triage Task
CLPsych (Computational Linguistics and Psychology) 2016
2016-2016

The team won the Geo-Location Shared Task
EMNLP (Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing) W-NUT (Workshop on Noisy User Generated Text)
12/2015-12/2015

Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of significant achievements in project delivery and customer engagement with the Boeing Corporation
CSIRO Data61
12/2015-12/2015

Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of significant achievements in project delivery and customer engagement for our work for the State Library of New South Wales.
CSIRO Data61
2015-2015

ACS Disruptor Award for ESA, an Emergency Situation Management System developed in Dr Paris' group
ACS (Australian Computer Science)
2015-2015

Best paper award
WISE 2015 - Web Information Systems Engineering
2015-2015

Team Award for direct impact on project delivery and customer/client engagement
CSIRO Data61
2015-2015

Best paper award
IEEE Big Data Cloud 2015
oct 2014-dec 2014

Distinguished Fellow
University of Tokyo, Japan
2013-2013

Andrew Lampert, the PhD student I co-supervised, receives the Vice-Chancellor’s commendation for his thesis
Macquarie University, Australia
2013-2013

Impact from Science award for our work on Social Media Monitoring and the Early Adopters Group
CSIRO ICT Centre
2013-2013

Team award for our work on the Online Community for Parents for the Department for Human Services
CSIRO ICT Centre
2011-2011

Business Excellence Award for our work on “Social Networks for Human Services” with the Department for Human Services
CSIRO ICT Centre
2011-2012

Inventors Award
CSIRO ICT Centre
2011-2011

CHISIG Medal
CHISIG (Computer Human Interaction Special Interest Group of the HSESA) & HFESA (Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia)
2011-2011

Leadership award, commendation
CSIRO ICT Centre
2010-2010

Best Reviewer award
Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
2009-2011

Top10 Publishers Award
CSIRO ICT Centre
2009-2009

Finalist team at the Elsevier Grand Challenge in 2009 (3 finalists out of 70 international participants)
Elsevier
2008-2008

Recognition Award for our summarisation work in the Elsevier Grand Challenge
CSIRO ICT Centre
2007-2007

CSIRO Partnership Excellence Award for setting benchmarks in relationship development and enabling strong growth in the CSIRO – Boeing Strategic Partnership
CSIRO ICT Centre
2006-2006

CSIRO Partnership Excellence Award in 2006 a developing a deep partnering relationship with Boeing Phantom Works and delivering highly-valued outcomes to the Boeing Corporation over a continuous 3 year period, in technologies for information management
CSIRO ICT Centre
2006-2006

Best paper award
ALTA (Australasian Language Technology Association)
2005-2006

Best Demonstration award
CSIRO ICT Centre
2005-2005

CSIRO award for our work on our project with the Boeing Corporation (EDKMS)
CSIRO ICT Centre
2004-2004

Distinguished alumnus
Columbia University (New York, USA)
2004-2004

Best Presentation at the CSIRO ICT Conference
CSIRO ICT Centre
2003-2003

CSIRO Partnership Excellence Award for our work on our project with the Boeing Corporation (DFDMSA)
CSIRO ICT Centre
2002-2002

My PhD Student Einat Amitay receives the Australasian Distinguished Dissertation Award
CORE (Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia
1999-1999

CSIRO award for our work on the CISRA (Canon Information Systems Research Australia)project: the User Interface Card (http://www.uicard.com/) - the system received the Australian Design Award the following year, in 2011
CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences (CMIS)
1999-1999

CISRA (Canon Information Systems Research Australia) award for the User Interface Card project team
CISRA

Other highlights

2019-

Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales
2016-

Elected Fellow of the Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology & Engineering (ATSE)

Grants

2023-2026

CSIRO OCE (Office of Corporate Executive). PostDoctoral Fellowship, in collaboration with others at Data61, for a project on "Developing a Trusted AI Agronomist"
2019-2025

CSIRO OCE (Office of Corporate Executive). PostDoctoral Fellowship for a project to mine social media to obtain insights about mental health and resilience
2017-2020

CSIRO OCE (Office of Corporate Executive). PostDoctoral Fellowship, in collaboration with Minerals, for a project to mine social media to obtain insights about Social Licence to Operate
2016-2016

CSIRO OCE (Office of Corporate Executive). Visiting Professor Grant, to invite Professor Keith Vander Linden, Calvin College, USA
10/2016-12/2016

CSIRO OCE (Office of Corporate Executive). Visiting Professor Grant, to invite Professor Kyo Kageura, University of Tokyo, Japan.
2016-2019

CSIRO OCE (Office of the Chief Executive) Two PhD Fellowships (Austr $ 17K/year per student).
2016-2017

Grant from Women & Leadership Australia for the Advanced Leadership Program (Aust $12K)
02/2014-12/2014

In-kind funding from AWS to use the AWS infrastructure to develop a system to monitor Twitter for emotional content. In collaboration with the Black Dog Institute
2013-2014

NSW Mental Health Commissioner in collaboration with the Black Dog Institute to investigate Mental Health on Social Media ($ 50K)
2004-2006

CRSS Grant, a University of Melbourne-CSIRO collaborative research program: WAUTER: Web-sites Automatic Usability Testing EnviRonment (with Dr Balbo).
1996-1999

Office of Naval Research (ONR), User-Centered Direct-Interaction Systems programme: `Assessing the applicability of an authoring tool for on-line help ?
1991-1994

Advanced Research Program Agency (ARPA): `EXPECT: Intelligent Support for System Construction And Documentation' under the program: Knowledge-Based Systems Technology (with Dr. Swartout).
1990-1993

National Science Foundation (NSF): `Phrasing text according to the situation' (with Dr Bateman)

Community and Corporate Citizenship

2011

OzChi 2011 Technical co-chair
2000-2016

CHISIG Chair

Attachments

Cecile Paris Full CV [pdf - 0.99MB]

Publications

We have publications by Dr Cecile Paris