Lab members

Dr Yong Xiang is a Professor at the School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Australia. He is also the Director of Deakin Univ.-Southwest Univ. Joint Research Centre on Big Data and the Director of Deakin Blockchain Innovation Lab. He was the Associate Head of School (Research) (2013-2018), the Director of Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics Research Cluster (2013-2019), and the Director of Data to Intelligence Research Centre (2019-2020).

Professor Xiang is an internationally recognized researcher in information security and privacy, signal and image processing, data analytics and machine intelligence, Internet of Things, and blockchain. He has obtained many research grants, including six Discovery and Linkage grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC), and published numerous research papers in high-quality international journals and conferences. He is the co-inventor of two U.S. patents and some of his research results have been commercialised.

Professor Xiang was a member of the ARC Research Evaluation Committee (Mathematics, Information and Computing Sciences), evaluating the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) in 2018. He is the Senior Area Editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters and the Associate Editor of IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials. He served as Guest Editor for several journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Multimedia Magazine, etc. He has been invited to give keynote speeches and chair committees in many international conferences, review papers for numerous international journals and conferences, serve on conference program committees, chair technical sessions in conferences, and assess grant applications for the ARC. Professor Xiang is a senior member of the IEEE.

Longxiang Gao received his PhD in Computer Science from Deakin University, Australia. He is currently a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of Deakin Blockchain Innovation Lab at School of Information Technology, Deakin University. Before joined Deakin University, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at IBM Research & Development, Australia. His research interests include Fog/Edge computing, Blockchain, data analysis and privacy protection.

Dr. Gao has over 50 publications, including patent, monograph, book chapter, journal and conference papers. Some of his publications have been published in the top venue, such as IEEE TMC, IEEE IoTJ, IEEE TDSC, IEEE TVT, IEEE TCSS, and IEEE TNSE. He has being Chief Investigator (CI) for more than 20 research projects (the total awarded amount is $5.1million), from pure research project to contracted industry research.

Dr. Gao is a Senior Member of IEEE and active in IEEE Communication Society. He has served as the TPC co-chair, publicity co-chair, organization chair and TPC member for many international conferences. He is the Associate Editor of IEEE Access and the Assessor of Australian Research Council (ARC) projects. Meanwhile, he served as president of Chinese Association of Professionals and Scholars, Australia, which is the premier organization promoting and facilitating education, industry-relevant research and business opportunities between Australia and China with more than 2000 members of Chinese professionals, PhDs and young scholars living and working in Australia. He is currently serving as execute president of advisory committee, Chinese Association of Professionals and Scholars, Australia.

Dr. Xuequan Lu is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at Deakin University in Australia. He is currently a member of Deakin Blockchain Innovation Lab. He has spent more than two wonderful years as a Research Fellow in Singapore. Prior to that, he received his Ph.D in the College of Computer Science and Technology at Zhejiang University (China) in June 2016. His research interests include computer graphics and vision, and mainly fall into the category of Visual Computing, for example, geometry modeling, processing and analysis, animation/simulation, 2D data processing and analysis. 

Dr. Keshav Sood is currently a Lecturer in Deakin University, Melbourne. Previously he worked as Research Fellow in Advanced Cyber Security Engineering Research Centre (ACSRC), The University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. He worked on the project funded by Defence Science and Technology Group. He also worked as mentor in online future learn course on cyber security issues in small and medium scale enterprises. He was a trainee with the Terminal Ballistic Research Laboratory (TBRL, DRDO, Ministry of Defense) in Chandigarh, India. He is a Professional Engineer with Engineers Australia accreditation. His research interests include Software-defined networks, internet of things, and cyber security.

LU-XING YANG is a lecturer of cybersecurity in School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Australia. He received BSc degree from School of Mathematics and Statistics in Chongqing University in 2012, and PhD degree from College of Computer Science in Chongqing University in 2015. He visited Imperial College London from 2014 to 2015. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in Delft University of Technology from 2016 to 2017, and an Alfred postdoctoral research fellow in Deakin University from 2018 to 2019. His research interests include network dynamics and cybersecurity, and he has published more than 60 academic papers in peer-reviewed international journals including cybersecurity flagship journals IEEE TIFS and IEEE TDSC. His google citations is over 1600 times, and his H-index is 23.

Dr. Youyang Qu is currently a research fellow in Deakin Blockchain Innovation Lab. He received his B.S. degree of Mechanical Automation in 2002 and M.S. degree of Software Engineering in 2015 from Beijing Institute of Technology, respectively. He got his Ph.D. degree at School of Information Technology, Deakin University. His research interests focus on dealing with security and customizable privacy issues in Social Networks, Machine Learning, IoT, and Big Data. He is active in communication society and has served as a TPC Member for IEEE flagship conferences including IEEE ICC and IEEE Globecom. He is also the publicity chair of SPDE2020.

Dimaz Wijaya is currently a research fellow in Deakin Blockchain Innovation Lab. He has a B.Comp. from Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia. He received his MNS degree from Monash University and has just completed his Ph.D. program from the same university. His research interest includes privacy in blockchain and cryptocurrency and blockchain applications in public services.

Dr. Ashish Nanda is currently a research fellow in Deakin Blockchain Innovation Lab. He has a Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia, and a B.Tech. degree in computer science and engineering from Amity University, India. He was a casual academic at UTS, Australia. His research interest included Wireless Networks and Cybersecurity.

Dr. Di Wu graduated with a PhD degree from the School of Computer Science, Centre for Artificial Intelligence, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. He also received the B.Sc(First class honours). and M.Sc. degrees in information technology from Deakin University, Australia. His research area focuses on applying deep learning and machine learning techniques for computer vision, knowledge graph and cyber security problems. He has substantial industry experience in software design and development while working on various projects at China Telecom Shanghai.

Mr. Taotao Cai is the associate research fellow in Deakin University. He also received the M.E degree in computer science from Shenzhen University, China in 2016. His research interests include graph data processing, social network analytics & computing, and knowledge graph. Taotao Cai has published seven papers in these research fields, and most of them are in leading journals and conferences, such as TKDE, ICDE, Information Systems, etc.

Shang Gao received her Ph.D. degree in computer application from the Northeastern University, China in 2000. She is currently a senior lecturer in School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. Her current research interests include computer network and appli- cations, hypertext and hypermedia, and distance education.

Entrepreneur, Investor, Innovator, CEO of Gaia Technology (Australia and China) . graduated from the University of Melbourne, master of Information System, Bachelor of Software Engineering. Experienced in blockchain projects, especially for Healthcare, supply chain system, education, finance and on-chain governance.

Stephan Zhang has extensive experience and broad range of knowledge in blockchain field and currently working as CTO at Gaia Technology. He has worked as Chief Product Designer at EOSHEX Co. specialising in blockchain product, designed and developed EOS121-DAC, EOS World Map, Lucky Box Proxy, Hex-Blockchain Supply-chain Management System and many more popular decentralised application. Stephan Zhang graduated from RMIT University with a Bachelor Degree in Business, and completed Blockchain Business Strategy DevelopmentCertificate, he is also an Associate Member of CPA(2007). In 2019, he was selected as Chief Blockchain Arbitrator at Blockchain Arbitration Chamber, and was selected as one of eight representatives globally at EOS Alliance Dispute Resolution & Arbitration Working Group.

Dr. Bai Li is a Security and Cognitive Architect at Woodside Energy Ltd., where he works on development, infrastructure and architecture of Industrial IoT and Big Data platforms. He also serves as an external supervisor for the DBIL to bridge the industries and academia. In the past ten years, he has worked in many areas including augmented reality, SAP, IT security, cognitive services, data science, big data and industrial IoT.

Prior to joining Woodside, Dr. Li was the research fellow for the School of Information Technology in Deakin University and was responsible for developing recovery protocols in wireless sensor networks in the project funded by the Department of Defence. He earned a doctoral degree, and a Bachelor of Computing in Computer Science in 2007 and Software Development in 2012 from Deakin University.

Dr. Li is also the co-founder of the largest online IoT community (www.tinyosstudy.com) in China in the early days of IoT from 2006 to 2015. The website significantly helped to build a close relationship between universities and industries and promote the IoT concept around the world at that time. His one-year research work in Honours degree focusing on path-based DDoS attacks to sensor networks led to one journal paper (A) and two conference papers published in 2007. Subsequently the work attracted funding from Defence Signal Directorate. He spent many years on IoT security research including network prevention, detection and recovery and implemented his own recovery protocols on TinyOs platform in Zigbee networks before he moved to industry.

Dr. Li is currently an active researcher and developer in IoT community including The Things Network (LoRaWAN network community) and an IEEE member. He has been participating in many IoT related talks and Meetups. His research includes Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence etc. He has many publications including conference papers, journal papers and books focusing on IoT and blockchains.

Mr. Chaochen Shi got a B.E. with first class honors from Queen Mary University of London, and a M.S. with merit from University College London. He is doing his PhD now as a member of DBIL Lab at Deakin University. His research interests are in the area of blockchain technology and ledger-based applications.

Mr. Chenhao Xu is currently pursuing his PhD degree at School of Information and Technology, Deakin University. He graduated from Beijing Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in software engineering in 2018. He has worked for IBM and Ping An in China as a software engineer. He is an expert in programming, learning, and using various software tools. At present, my research direction focuses blockchain, such as privacy, security, and performance optimization in blockchain.

Mr. Md. Palash Uddin is pursuing the PhD degree at the School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, Australia. He is also an Assistant Professor (on leave) of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department in Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University (HSTU), Bangladesh. He has completed the MSc degree from the department of CSE, Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology, Bangladesh and the BSc degree in CSE from HSTU, Bangladesh. His research interest includes machine learning, blockchain and remote sensing image analysis. He has several Web of Science-indexed journal and IEEE conference publications and got received “Best Paper Award” in two IEEE conferences (R10HTC 2017 and ICAEEE 2018) in Bangladesh.  

Ms. Yao Zhao is pursuing a Ph.D. degree at the School of Information Technology, Deakin University. She has completed a master’s degree in computer science and technology at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2019. She worked for Suning Finance as the blockchain product manager. Besides, she used to be a blockchain developer in Dazhong News Group in 2020. Her research direction includes blockchain application, consensus mechanism, IoT, and service computing.

Ms. Akanksha Saini received the B.Tech. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Punjab Technical University, in 2015 and M.Tech. degree in Information, Communication and Electronics Engineering from Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, South Korea, in 2018. She is currently pursuing the PhD degree at School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Melbourne, Burwood Campus, Australia. Her research interests include identity and privacy protection, cryptography, Internet of Things, smart healthcare and Blockchain technology. She has published peer reviewed international journals and conferences over the past few years.