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Dr Yanchang Zhao

Team Leader

https://people.csiro.au/Z/Y/Yanchang-Zhao

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Contact details:

GPO BOX 1700
CANBERRA ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA

Biography

Dr. Yanchang Zhao is a Principal Research Scientist and a Team Leader of the Causal and Explainable AI Team at Data61, CSIRO. Prior to that, he was a Data Analytics Lead with IBM Australia in 2017, a Senior Data Scientist with the Australian Government in 2009-2016 and an Australian Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Industry (APDI) with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in 2007-2009.

He has 17 years' hands-on experiences in data science and analytics and has authored/co-authored 70+ publications (incl. 4 books) on DM/ML research and applications. He has delivered dozens of talks (incl. keynote addresses, invited talks, tutorials and training courses) at universities, government, industry and international conferences.

He is a Founder of the Canberra Data Scientists Meetup Group. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Member of the ACM and SIGKDD and a Secretary of the ACM SIGKDD ANZ Chapter. He has been a Steering Committee Member (2013-2023) and Co-Chair (2024) of the Australasian Data Science and Machine Learning Conference (AusDM), and a Program/Conference Chair for the AusDM conferences in 2012-2016 & 2018-2022 and a Program Committee member for premier academic conferences, such as AAAI 2017-2022 and KDD 2022-2023.

Research Interests:
* Interpretable/explainable AI
* Causal discovery and inference

A PC/SPC member of
* The ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2022-2024)
* The Web Conference (WWW 2024)
* The Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD 2018-2024)
* The ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2020-2024)
* The European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD 2015-2018, 2023)
* The AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2017-2022)
* The IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA 2020-2022)
* The Pacific Rim International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI 2010-2022)
* The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2018-2020)

Call For Papers: Special Issue on "Causal and Explainable Artificial Intelligence", the Applied Sciences journal. Submission deadline: 30 Apr 2024.

Other Interests

  • R
  • Python
  • Data mining
  • Machine learning
  • Data science and analytics

Achievements and Awards

  • 2020-2020

    DNFC Customer First Award – Highly Commended
    CSIRO

  • 2020-2020

    Best Paper Award of the Industry and Government Program
    The IEEE Big Data 2020 Conference

  • 2020-2020

    The 2020 IEEE Region 10 Outstanding Small Section Award
    IEEE

  • 2018-2018

    Research Innovation Award
    The Australian Water Association

Current Roles

  • Research Team Leader
    Leading a research team on Causal and Explainable AI

  • Senior Researcher on AI/ML projects
    Research on AI and machine learning on projects collaborated with government, industry and academia

  • Co-supervisor of students
    Co-supervising PhD/MSc students with RMIT, UniSA, UniMelb and UTS

Professional Experiences

  • 2022-Present

    Team Leader
    Data61, CSIRO

  • 2023-Present

    Principal Research Scientist
    Data61, CSIRO

  • 2017-2023

    Senior Research Scientist
    Data61, CSIRO

  • 2017-2017

    Data Analytics Lead
    IBM Australia

  • 2011-2017

    Senior Data Scientist
    Department of Immigration

  • 2009-2011

    Senior Data Mining Specialist
    Department of Human Services

  • 2007-2009

    Australian Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Industry (APDI)
    University of Technology, Sydney

Grants

  • Jan 2019-Sept 2019

    Data61 Challenge Grant on Smart City and Energy

  • 2007-2009

    ARC Linkage Project (LP0775041) on Data Mining of Activity Transactions to Strengthen Debt Prevention. $469,000.

  • 2010-2013

    ARC Linkage Project (LP100200774) on Detecting Significant Changes in Organisation Customer Interactions Leading to Non-Compliance. $300,000.

  • 2009-2010

    University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Early Career Researcher Grant (ECRG) project on Efficient Mining of Negative Sequential Patterns. $24,941.

  • 2008-2009

    UTS ECRG project on Combined Association Rule Mining. $25,000.

Community and Corporate Citizenship

  • 2023-present

    Guest Editor of the Applied Sciences journal Special Issue on "Causal and Explainable Artificial Intelligence"

  • 2023-present

    Chair of the 2023 ICDM Workshop on Causal and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (CXAI 2023)

  • 2012-present

    Steering Committee Member of the Australasian Data Science and Machine Learning Conference (AusDM)

  • 2023-present

    Member of the Advisory Board of the Machine Learning for Social Good Centre at the University of Auckland, New Zealand

  • 2022-present

    Editor of the International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management (IJDMMM)

  • 2018-present

    Secretary of the ACM SIGKDD ANZ Chapter

  • 2014-present

    Founder and organiser of the Canberra Data Scientists Meetup Group

  • 2019-2020-2023-present

    Chair of the Computer Society of the IEEE ACT Section

  • 2013-present

    IEEE Senior Member

  • 2018-present

    ACM Member and SIGKDD Member

  • 2023-2023

    Chair of Computer Track of the IEEE TENSYMP 2023 Conference

  • 2012-2022

    Program/Conference Chair of the Australasian Data Science and Machine Learning Conference (AusDM) 2012-2016 & 2018-2022

  • 2020-2020

    Member of the Data61 Diversity and Inclusion Committee

  • 2020-2020

    Treasurer of the IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA 2020)

  • 2015-2015

    Exhibit & Demo Co-Chair of the ACM SIGKDD Conference 2015

  • 2013-2013

    Program Chair of the International Workshop on Data Mining Applications in Industry & Government (DMApps 2013), in conjunction with PAKDD 2013

  • 2007-2009

    Chair of the International Workshop on Domain Driven Data Mining (DDDM'07, DDDM'08, DDDM'09), in conjunction respectively with KDD'07, ICDM'08 and ICDM'09

We have publications by Dr Yanchang Zhao