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EPPING NSW 1710 AUSTRALIA
Biography
Dr Liming Zhu is a Research Director at CSIRO and former Head of Data61, Australia’s national digital and AI research capability, and a conjoint professor at UNSW. He leads research and national initiatives spanning AI engineering, responsible and safe AI, privacy, cybersecurity, digital resilience, and computational platforms.
He is internationally recognised for work at the intersection of advanced AI systems, software engineering, national capability, and AI governance. Dr Zhu has contributed to major national and international AI safety, assurance and standards initiatives, including the International AI Safety Report expert process, OECD.AI work on risks and accountability, ISO AI standards, Australia’s voluntary AI safety standard, AI assurance guidance, and guidance on watermarking and labelling AI-generated content.
Dr Zhu has published over 400 papers and delivered influential keynote talks, including “Software Engineering as the Linchpin of Responsible AI” at ICSE 2023. His books, Responsible AI: Best Practices for Creating Trustworthy AI Systems and Engineering AI Systems: Architecture and DevOps Essentials, advocate rigorous approaches for building, deploying, operating and governing trustworthy, safe and impactful AI systems.
Selected Recent Publications and Impact
Dr Zhu’s recent work has helped establish responsible AI as a system-level engineering discipline, translating principles of trust, safety and accountability into practical methods for AI architecture, lifecycle assurance and governance. His responsible and safe AI engineering work have informed Australian Government and industry AI assurance and impact assessment practices, including national AI safety standards and guidance.
L. Zhu. “Designing for Meaningful Oversight: Human and Organisational Agency in Multimodal AI Systems”. ICMI 2025 keynote.
D. Wang, M. Xue, B. Li, S. Campete, L. Zhu. “Provably Unlearnable Data Examples”. NDSS 2025. NDSS Distinguished Paper Award.
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 2025. ICSE Distinguished Paper Award.
L. Bas, Q. Lu, I. Weber, L. Zhu. Engineering AI Systems: Architecture and DevOps Essentials. Addison-Wesley, 2025.
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).
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.
L. Zhu. “Software Engineering as the Linchpin of Responsible AI”. ICSE 2023 keynote.
Co-organiser, Dagstuhl Seminar 23302: Software Architecture and Machine Learning, 2023.
Q. Lu, L. Zhu, J. Whittle, X. Xu. Responsible AI: Best Practices for Creating Trustworthy AI Systems. Addison-Wesley, 2023.
Q. Lu, L. Zhu, X. Xu, J. Whittle, Z. Xing. “Towards a Roadmap on Software Engineering for Responsible AI”. CAIN 2022. ACM Distinguished Paper Award.
X. Xu, C. Pautasso, L. Zhu, V. Gramoli, A. Ponomarev, A.B. Tran, S. Chen. “The Blockchain as a Software Connector”. WICSA 2016. Most Influential Paper Award (ICSA 2026).
Selected impact stories include
Technical leadership of responsible AI engineering frameworks adopted or referenced in Australian government and industry practice.
Contributions to Australia’s voluntary AI safety standard, national AI assurance guidance, AI-generated content guidance, and international AI safety science initiatives.
Foundational work on blockchain architecture, digital trust and data-sharing infrastructure, including contributions to ISO blockchain standards and leadership in establishing Australia’s Consumer Data Right Data Standards Body.
Earlier national impact through LIXI reference architecture work, supporting more efficient digital data exchange across Australia’s lending sector.
Achievements and Awards
-
2024-2025
Best Paper Award
IEEE Software -
2025-2025
Finalist, Australian Financial Review AI Awards
Australian Financial Review (AFR) -
2025-2025
Distinguished Paper Award
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) -
2016-2026
Most Influential Paper Award
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSA) -
2025-2025
Distinguished Paper Award
Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium -
2022-2022
Distinguished Paper Award
ACM SIGSOFT -
2019-now
Fellow
Blockchain Australia -
2004-2014
Most Influential Paper Award
Australian Software Engineering Conference
Current Roles
-
Research Director
AI engineering, responsible and safe AI, privacy, cybersecurity and digital resilience -
Leadership Team Member
Responsible AI Research Center -
Expert Advisory Panel Member (Australia Representative)
The International AI Safety Report -
Conjoint Full Professor
UNSW
Academic Qualifications
-
2007
PhD
University of New South Wales -
2016
GAICD
The Australian Institute of Company Directors (ACID)
Professional Experiences
-
2025-2026
Research Unit Director
Data61 -
2015-2025
Research Director
Data61's Software and Computational Systems -
2020-2021
Director
Data61's Engineering and Design -
2022-2023
Mission Lead
CSIRO's Critical Infrastructure Protection and Resilience Mission -
2016-2024
Chair
Standard Australia's Committee on Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies -
2006-2015
Various Roles including Research Group Leader
NICTA
ORCID 0000-0001-5839-3765
We have publications by Dr Liming Zhu