What we do

The Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII) is internationally recognised as one of the top AI research hubs through our excellence in research, collaboration and education.

Distinguished Professor Jie Lu

“As the biggest centre for Artificial Intelligence in Australia, AAII has a team of world-class researchers undertaking programs in major fronts of Artificial Intelligence.”

Distinguished Professor Jie Lu

Director, Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, University of Technology Sydney

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Our vision

To achieve excellence and innovation in sustainable and comprehensible artificial intelligence by developing powerful theoretical foundations, innovative technologies and application systems and by leading knowledge advancement which translates into significant social and economic impacts.

About AAII

The Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII), led by Distinguished Professor Jie Lu AO, is Australia’s largest research hub in the field of artificial intelligence. Formerly known as the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, AAII was established in March 2017 at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). It was elevated to institute status in August 2020 in recognition of its high-quality research achievements, broad research scope, and strong local and international reputation, impacts and collaborations. AAII currently comprises eight key research laboratories working across major research areas on both fundamental AI research and AI technology-transfer and applications research.

AAII includes 35 academic staff, 10 postdoctoral fellows, and more than 200 PhD students. Since 2017, its core members have secured 50 Australian Research Council (ARC) projects – including an Australian Laureate Fellowship, an Australian Industry Laureate Fellowship, four Future Fellowships, 13 Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards, Discovery Projects, Linkage Projects, and an Industrial Transformation Research Hub – as well as 110 national and international industry projects spanning agriculture, transportation, health, telecommunications, defence, and other sectors. Since its inception, AAII staff have published more than 2,000 papers in high-ranking international journals and conferences, and 228 PhD candidates have graduated.

In addition, AAII core members have delivered more than 60 keynote presentations at national and international conferences and received multiple national and international awards. AAII students have also received more than ten best paper awards from leading journals and conferences. These achievements demonstrate AAII’s strong national and international recognition.

Our research areas

AAII consists of 8 key research laboratories with three main research areas: fundamental research, technology transfer research, and applied research.

Fundamental Research

  • Computational Intelligence
  • Deep Learning
  • Transfer Learning
  • Large-scale Graph Processing
  • Concept Drift
  • Reinforcement Learning
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Probabilistic Machine Learning
  • Big Dimensionality
  • Neuromorphic Computing
  • AI-Driven Software Security Analysis
  • Computer Vision
  • Explainable AI

Technology Transfer Research

  • Brain-Computer Interface
  • Recommendation Systems
  • Social Networks
  • Social Robotics
  • Decision Support Systems
  • Cloud Computation
  • Blockchain
  • Human Autonomy Team
  • Bioinformatics
  • Data Science and Visualisation
  • Text Mining
  • AI Privacy & Security
  • Network Analytics

Applied Research

  • Health Care
  • Financial Services
  • Internet of Things
  • Business Intelligence
  • Logistics
  • Transportation
  • Education
  • Defence
  • Marine Safety
  • Property
  • Food
  • Weather Prediction

The Growth of AAII: From Centre to Institute

In 2007, a collaboration of four main laboratories in intelligent systems became a tier-one Centre: the Centre for Intelligent Information Systems (CIIS). In 2008, with the addition of a new Quantum Computation laboratory, CIIS became the Centre for Quantum Computation & Intelligent Systems (QCIS).

With the rapid growth of AI research in early 2017, four AI-related labs from QCIS and the Computational Intelligence and Brain Computer Interface (CIBCI) centre established the Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CAI), which was officially launched in March 2017, then renamed as the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute in August 2020.

Get in touch

To find out more about the work we do or how you can get involved, email us at aaiiadmin@uts.edu.au.