Associate ProfessorKewen Liao

I am an algorithms researcher with a PhD in Computer Science from The University of Adelaide. My research began in theoretical computer science and has since expanded to data science and machine learning, including:

• Time series, image, text, graph, and streaming data analytics
• Multimodal, geometric, and interpretable machine learning
• Few-shot, federated, and continual learning
• Clustering and combinatorial optimisation under constraints
• Bridging traditional and learning-based algorithms 

I serve as Co-Directors of the cross-faculty Tackling Hate Lab and School of IT's Smart Sensing, Coding, and Analytics Lab, where I lead research in AI-driven social media data analytics and sensor data analytics respectively. I am strongly committed to applied data science and AI research through interdisciplinary collaboration, aiming to generate meaningful societal and economic impact. Our current projects leverage deep learning (DL) and reinforcement learning (RL); large language models (LLMs) and vision–language models (VLMs); computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP); as well as agentic AI and multi-agent techniques to develop AI- and GenAI-powered solutions in areas including:

• IoT, medical, and health sensor data analytics
• Medical and industrial image analysis
• Online harmful content and group detection and moderation
• Online opinion dynamics simulation and intervention
• Sports injury prediction and prevention
• Motivational and adaptive education

In addition, I serve as the School of IT’s Graduate Research Coordinator and am actively seeking highly motivated and outstanding students, research assistants, and research fellows interested in collaborating on research in the above-mentioned or related areas.