Honours Scholarship Recipients

Our congratulations to the following people who have been awarded an Honours Scholarship.

Michael Binkins - University of Western Sydney
Paris Buttfield-Addison - University of Tasmania
Karla Cook - University of Southern Queensland
Greg Darke - University of Sydney
Tracy Footitt - University of Western Australia
Thomas Hancock - University of Newcastle
Callum Hedemann - Queensland University of Technology
Jonathon Mah - University of Adelaide
Luis Miranda - University of Sydney
Xavier Verhoeven - University of Melbourne

Each recipient will receive $4000, paid in two even amounts midway through each semester.

A short summary of their Honours Projects are below:

Michael Binkins - University of Western Sydney

Sonification of Gestures and Movement in an Interactive and Immersive Environment
I propose the creation of an audio/visual installation using the tools of the rapidly emerging culture of surveillance, to generate a stream of data, which will facilitate the manipulation and synthesis of sound, creating an immersive environment, driven by internal movement and behaviour patterns.

Paris Buttfield-Addison - University of Tasmania

Using a portable RFID scanner for PIM
My Honours topic involves the Applied Computing fields of Personal Information Management and RFID. Personal information management (PIM) refers to both the practice and the study of the activities people perform in order to acquire, organize, maintain, retrieve and use information items such as documents (paper-based and digital), web pages and email messages for everyday use to complete tasks (work-related and not) and fulfill a persons various roles (as parent, employee, friend, member of community, etc.)

Karla Cook - University of Southern Queensland

Representations: uses, opinions and contributions to learning.
This project draws on recent theoretical accounts of multiple and multi-modal representations of science understandings to devise, trial and evaluate new approaches to teaching and learning science concepts. These approaches, catering for diverse learning pathways, focus on student understanding that representations of scientific knowledge are multi-modal and interconnected.

Greg Darke - University of Sydney

Activity driven file interface
Modern task management typically requires the coordination of many digital resources - email, calendar items, documents and contacts. This information is becoming more distributed, moving online and across multiple devices - smart phones, laptops and desktop computers. As a result, coordinating all these devices and resources is becoming increasingly difficult, particularly when these tasks involve multiple people. Pervasive computing, in particular 'Activity based computing' can help alleviate this difficulty by seamlessly integrating resources. My research will focus on looking into methods that can be used to associate data with specific tasks, such as documents that are likely to be related to each other because they were used together. I will also be evaluating how effective these methods are.

Tracy Footitt - University of Western Australia

Improved File Management Using FSEvents
The goal is to improve the management of the Universities file system, by developing a management system similar to Apples TimeMachine to be used for the backup and recovery of all files. In some networks containing multiple users, especially Universities, there is the need for multiple users to own a copy of the same file. Whilst TimeMachine is ideal for systems with individual users, it does not scale well to multiple user environments, hence the need for a system which takes into account the redundancy of storing multiple copies of the same file. The goal of this project is to create a file management system where each file is only stored once for multiple users rather than multiple times, hence reducing the volume of storage required.

Thomas Hancock - University of Newcastle

Telling the Truth? The Use of Narrative and aesthetic in producing documentaries
My honours project involves the production of a creative project - a (proposed) half hour video documentary that provides an intimate insight into a small, squatter community affectionately known as 'Tin City'. The project - essentially an ethnographic study - looks into the lives of a small handful of recluses who choose to live in these small tin shacks in the middle of a remote, coastal sand dune located near Stockton, NSW.

Callum Hedemann - Queensland University of Technology

Algorithmic Composition
My studies will focus on both the areas of advanced computational processes and programming techniques, as well as formalising the process of musical composition into an algorithmic form, ready for software implementation. I will be exploring and experimenting in the context of various styles of music, ranging from orchestral/classical to electronica. The outcome resulting from my honours project will be software (one or more computer programs) capable of generating musical compositions autonomously, as well as several of my own compositions created using these techniques.

Jonathon Mah - University of Adelaide

Data Mining User Desktop Interactions
My project involves capturing the actions of the user, mining that information to establish the current context, and then using the context to provide better recommendations for further actions. Data that can be captured could include the currently running applications, open documents and web sites, and open iChats. This can be supplemented with external information, for example the time of day, the current wireless network (to help determine physical location), and attached USB devices.

Luis Miranda - University of Sydney

Binaural Hearing
Binaural hearing is still a relatively unexplored subject in psychoacoustics, where very few and inconclusive studies have been conducted. The aim of the research I will be conducting next semester is to shed light and get more conclusive results in understanding the way the two ears work together. A key aspect of the research will be to know how much having one or two ears contribute to the loudness of a sound.

Xavier Verhoeven - University of Melbourne

The psychophysical bases of illusory motion
This study aims to determine whether there are two underlying mechanisms of illusory motion perception relying on neuronal adaptation to contrast or luminance. This study will also look at the variation across a large sample to determine whether the strength of the illusion depends on individual differences in the processing of contrast and luminance information, and systematically characterise these differences.