Tim Miller

Professor Tim Miller
School of Computing and Information Systems
Faculty of Engineering and IT
The University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010, Australia

Co-Director of the Centre for AI & Digital Ethics (CAIDE)

Email: tmiller (at) unimelb.edu.au
Phone: +61 3 8344 1318
Office: Room 3329, Melbourne Connect building, corner of Swanston and Grattan streets, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010

I am a Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne, and Co-Director for the Centre of AI and Digital Ethics (CAIDE).

My primary area of expertise is in artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on:

Human-AI interaction and collaboration
Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
Decision making in complex, multi-agent environments
Reasoning about action and knowledge

My work is at the intersection of artificial intelligence, interaction design, and cognitive science/psychology. My areas of education expertise is in artificial intelligence, software engineering, and technology innovation. I have extensive experience developing novel and innovative solution with industry and defence collaborators.
I am a member of the AI and Autonomy Lab in the school.

Research Projects and Funding

2019-2021: Explanation in Artificial Intelligence: A Human-Centred Approach --- Australian Research Council DP190103414. With Frank Vetere, Eduardo Velloso, Liz Sonenberg, Piers Howe (Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences), Paul Dourish (UCI).
2019-2021: Explanatory AI for Maritime Domain Awareness -- DST Group. With Kerry Trentelman, Adam Saulwick (DST Group), Ronal Singh, Michelle Blom, Liz Sonenberg.
2019-2020: Agent Modelling for Cooperative Target Surveillance -- DST Group. With Prajakta Desai (DST Group), Ronal Singh.
2019-2020: Explainable AI through Narratives -- DST Group. With Steve Wark, Marcin Nowina-Krowicki, Greg O'Keefe (DST Group), Joshua Newn, Ronal Singh.
2018-2019: Collaborative Human-Agent Planning --- Microsoft Research. With Ronal Singh, Frank Vetere, and Liz Sonenberg.
2017-2018: "Why?": Causal Explanation in Trusted Autonomous Systems --- CERA Next Generation Technologies Fund grant. With Piers Howe (Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences), Liz Sonenberg (School of CIS), Glennn Moy, Luke Marsh, Darren Williams (DST Group).
2017-2018: Collaborative Human-Agent Planning for Survivability --- CERA Next Generation Technologies Fund grant. With Liz Sonenberg, Sergio Jimenez, and Darryn Reid (DST Group).
2016-2017: Survivability and Distributed Adaptability in Autonomous System --- with Don Gossink, Slava Shekh, Axel Benda, Mohammad Zamani, and others, (DST Group), Adrian Pearce, Liz Sonenberg, Michelle Blom, and Nir Lipovetzky.
2016-2017: Autonomous Team Tactics Discovery with Automated Planning --- with Michael Papasimeon, Lyndon Benke (DST Group), Adrian Pearce, Liz Sonenberg, and Nir Lipovetzky.
2016-2018: Catering for individuals' emotions in technology development --- Australian Research Council DP160104083. With Leon Sterling, Sonja Pedell (Swinburne University), Antonette Mendoza, and Alex Lopez-Lorca.
2016-2017: Automated Reasoning Under Irreducible Uncertainty --- with Darryn Reid (DST Group), Adrian Pearce, Liz Sonenberg, and Nir Lipovetzky.
2014-2016: Increasing knowledge and motivating collaborative action on Low Carbon Living through team-based and game-based mobile learning --- CRC for Low Carbon Living. With Shirley Leitch (Swinburne), Antonette Mendoza, Robert Enker (Dept. of Building Innovation and Sustainability), and others.
2013-2015: Software engineering of people-oriented technology and services --- Australian Research Council DP130102660. With Leon Sterling, Alex Lopez, and Sonja Pedell (Swinburne).
2014-2015: Evaluation of a robotic arm for people with limited upper-body mobility --- DSDBI Technology Voucher and Student Voucher. With Marita Cheng, 2Mar Robotics.
2013-2015: Foundations of human-agent collaboration: situation-relevant information sharing --- Australian Research Council DP130102825. With Liz Sonenberg, Adrian Pearce, Christian Muise, Paolo Felli, and Frank Dignum (Universiteit Utrecht)
2012-2013: Improving software verification, validation, and testing for air traffic systems --- Awarded by Airservices Australia. With Adrian Pearce, Alistair Moffat, and Chris Leckie.
2010-2012: Integrating and Automating Testing in Multi-agent Systems Development --- Australian Research Council LP100100037. With Lin Padgham and John Thangarajah (RMIT).
2009-2010: Intelligent reasoning in agent interaction --- Early-career researcher grant (University of Melbourne)

I am currently not taking on any new PhD or MPhil research students.

I receive many queries regarding supervision, many of which are spam. As such, I can only respond to queries that I believe are genuine. If you would like to approach me regarding PhD or MPhil supervision, please demonstrate that you know my research interests and that you have similar interests, otherwise you may not receive a reply.

Potential PhD/MPhil students: I do not genereally have funding for students. When I do, I advertise and recruit from applicants. You may be eligible for a scholarship from the University of Melbourne (see http://services.unimelb.edu.au/scholarships/research for details), but note that scholarships for international students are extremely competitive.

Potential student interns: I do not usually have funding for internships. When I do, I recruit from University of Melbourne students. I am unable to consider any requests for paid internships.

Current PhD and MPhil students

Henrietta Lyons - Contestability of automated decision-making; with Eduardo Velloso
Abeer Alshehri - Explainable intention recognition; with Mor Vered (Monash University)
Ruihan Zhang - Explainable machine learning; with Ben Rubinstein and Kris Ehinger
Rinu Sebastian - Explainable object recognition; with Kris Ehinger
Steven Spratley - Transparent Reasoning Agents; with Kris Ehinger
Thao Le - Explainable machine learning; with Ronal Singh and Liz Sonenberg
Guang Hu - Explainable agency via epistemic planning; with Nir Lipovetzky
Lyndon Benke - Deception in complex environments; with Adrian Pearce and Nir Lipovetzky

Completed PhD and MPhil Students

Prashan Appuhamilage - Explainable reinforcement learning; with Liz Sonenberg and Frank Vetere
Fatma Faruq - Multi-agent planning (joint PhD supervision with the University of Birmingham)
Eman Alatawi - Automated software testing with dynamic symbolic execution; with Harald Sondergaard
Mohammad Sherkat - Systematic design for emotional goals in people-oriented software engineering; with Antonette Mendoza
Ping Ping Tan - Heuristic approaches to automated detection of changes between versioned documents; with Karin Verspoor
David (Knobby) Clarke - Automated race detection in Java programs; with Antonette Mendoza and Toby Murray
Ronal Singh - Designing for Multi-Agent Collaboration: A Shared Mental Model Perspective; with Liz Sonenberg
Burkhard von der Osten - Intelligent decision-making in coupled socio-ecological systems (PhD awarded September 2017).
Yude Lin - Symbolic execution with Over-Approximation; with Harald Sondergaard and Toby Murray
Yoosef Abushark (RMIT) - Static verification of agent design models; with John Thangarajah and James Harland, RMIT (PhD awarded July 2017).
Bin Lu - Supporting Agent-Oriented Models within the Software Life Cycle; with Leon Sterling (PhD awarded in August 2012).

This page lists peer-reviewed publications that I have (co-)authored, as well as some under preparation that are complete enough for download. Most papers are downloadable, however, in many cases, these are pre-print versions.