The Centre for Innovation in IT Services and Applications (iNEXT) is a research centre for networks and distributed systems, computer vision, and mobile IT services and applications.
iNEXT's research program has a special focus on innovative applications such as assistive mobile health, cloud-based services, distributed systems, information security, next-generation software-defined and virtualised networks, multimedia, intelligent image processing and pattern recognition algorithms, computer vision, and high-end visualisation technologies for large and complex data.
Industry engagement
iNEXT has a variety of resources and expertise to offer funding partners.
UTS aims to facilitate high value partnerships between external organisations and our researchers by setting up research agreements which provide innovative, flexible and effective solutions to commercially or socially important problems. These partnerships can last anywhere from six months to five years or more, and deliver specific value to the funding partner.
The Industry Engagement and Commercialisation (IEC) team is the central contact point for engagement between UTS and our external partners. Through our collective past experiences members of the IEC team have a clear understanding of our partner's needs and are open to new proposals and ways to do business. Find out more about partnering with UTS.
Research opportunities
iNEXT seeks students interested in addressing the following focus areas:
- next-generation IT services and applications
- tackling missing and limiting characteristics of the current Internet, namely mobility, security, quality of service, collaboration, and service enabling on demand
- developing enabling mechanisms that will allow the transformation of the current connectivity infrastructure into the service infrastructure of tomorrow's Internet.
iNEXT students will undertake innovative solutions for the next generation Internet and its applications with emphasis on m-commerce, m-health, and visual information processing.
Our research programs
Service enabling mechanisms for next generation Internet service infrastructure
This program tackles comprehensively the core problems with the current Internet, namely mobility, security, service on-demand, and quality of service for breakthrough, next-generation Internet applications. The success of this program has been confirmed with the support of four ARC grants (three Discovery and a small ARC), one UTS Incentive grant and two Research Infrastructure grants. The program has produced two postdocs, five PhDs and three masters and over 50 DEST publications in international journal and conferences.
Assistive healthcare infrastructure and m-health applications
This program has focused on developing a sensor/actor grid for assistive healthcare over the last 1.5 years. The program also aims to develop mobile health monitoring systems for elderly, pregnant women and at-risk people. Our research was recently rewarded with an ARC Discovery for 2007-2009 and a UTS Challenge grant for 2007.
Advanced video surveillance systems
This program has developed video surveillance systems of advanced conception for high-end security applications by using innovative algorithms and camera networks. The program has attracted one ARC DP 2004-2006 and one ARC LP 2006-2008, one UTS REG, one AusIndustry grant and produced a large number of high quality publications including journals such as IEEE T-PAMI.
Information visualisation for network, business intelligence and surveillance applications
This program focuses on defining innovative methods and systems for several areas of information visualisation, including: large-scale data visualisation, surveillance, software visualisation and program understanding, visualization of associated data attributes, visual web data mining, and visual user interfaces. This program has been awarded an ARC DP and several other grants.
Image processing and analysis on innovative architectures
This program focuses on the application of spiral and hexagonal architectures for improved pixel mapping and topological properties and explores several application domains such as video compression, face and signature recognition, in-vehicle road sign detection and number-plate recognition. This program has attracted an ARC DP led by an ECR and several other grants
Student support
iNEXT provides an excellent support framework for its research students with a team of active, experienced supervisors and necessary equipment for a wide range of research projects.
The iNEXT research centre has four state-of-the-art laboratories for conducting experiments. Academic staff, PhD and masters students use these facilities to build prototypes and conduct experiments.
- The networking lab houses equipment for experimenting with network and router-related research. State-of-the-art equipment includes: Nortel Passports 8600 series routers, Norte Accelar 1100 series routers, Alteon Web Switch, Alteon SSL Accelerator, Red-M Bluetooth/GPRS server (Red-Access), an IBM Blade Server (with eight servers), e-health Server and various wireless routers interconnected into an ARN intranet.
- The ubiquitous lab comprises equipment for mobile ubiquitous computing experiments. State-of-the-art equipment includes mobile devices, Bluetooth networks, WiFi networks, wireless medical sensors, Mote sensors and servers.
- The computer vision and image processing lab hosts equipment for image and video acquisition and analysis: three servers with large file storage and camera drivers, two Sony XCD-X710CR cameras, one high-resolution Basler camera and one high-frame rate Basler camera; plus tripods, illuminators, and various lenses. The lab is soon to be expanded by a dedicated surveillance lab.
- The information visualisation lab currently is equipped with a number of large display devices to conduct an ARC discovery project, and a Capital Market CRC project in visual analytics of financial data. It will soon be equipped with multimodal interaction devices, multimedia equipments, user interface equipment to facilitate the ongoing and coming visualisation projects.
Further information
Find out more about research degrees at UTS
Contact us
Get in touch to find out about more about iNEXT, our research programs or partnering with us.
email: Doan.Hoang@uts.edu.au
phone: +61 2 9514 7943
fax: +61 2 9514 4535
Our location
Level 4, Building 10
UTS City Campus
235 Jones Street
Broadway NSW 2007