Research
Artificial Intelligence, Safe and Equitable AI Innovation, Human Alignment, Human-AI Collaboration, Machine Learning, Commonsense Reasoning, Social Robotics, AI and Law, Behavioural Design, Strategic Innovation and Digital Transformation
Mary-Anne is a leading authority on robust AI decision-making using techniques in human-ai collaboration, AI and law, machine learning, behavioural economics, belief revision, social robotics, social choice, machine learning, business, strategic management, law and ethics. She is the Founder and Director of the UNSW Business AI Lab and Deputy Director of the UNSW AI Institute.
Mary-Anne is the chief investigator on 12 national competitive Australian Research Council projects focused on AI, nine as the First Chief Investigator and seven with International Partners . In addition, she is a research leader for a range of industry projects with funding and support from Roche, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Stockland, IBM, Google, Telstra, EY, Play Communications, Samsung, Boeing, The French Academy of Science, British Council, The Austrian Government, DEST, SWIFT and Denmark's National Bank.
Australian Research Council Research Projects
1. Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2016 - 2018 $380,000
Project Title: Robust Intelligence: Rational Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
Chief Investigator: Mary-Anne Williams
Partners: Peter Gärdenfors (Lund University, Sweden), Henri Prade (CNRS), Pavlos Peppas (Patras University, Greece)
Summary: Intelligent agents exercise profound and growing impact in business and society. However, significant problems arise in intelligent agent deployment as their theoretical underpinnings do not ensure rational decision-making in complex real-world settings. This project will bridge the gap between theory and practice with an innovative framework for rational decision-making under risk and uncertainty. It will open the door to previously unimaginable transformational technologies that will drive new entrepreneurial opportunities in agent-based global services.
2. Australia Research Council Linkage Project 2012 - 2014 $335,000 + significant in-kind support
Project Title: A Framework for Physical and Social Collaboration: Towards the Smarter Planet Vision
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams and Benjamin Johnston UTS.
Partner: Glenn Wightwick, Director, IBM Research and Development, and Chief Technologist IBM Australia
Summary: This project will make intelligent collaborative technologies a reality by advancing the theory of collaborative action and developing an innovative framework and practical methods which will allow intelligent systems to undertake the collaborative actions required for applications in transport, energy management, sustainability, and healthcare.
3. Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2012 - 2014 $320,000
Project Title: Adaptive Cyber-Physical Technologies with Attention-Driven Commonsense Behaviours
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams
Partner: Peter Gärdenfors (Lund University, Sweden)
Summary: Designing intelligent cyber-physical systems for open, complex and changing environments presents enormous scientific challenges. This project will develop an innovative framework, methods and tools that provide cyber-physical technologies with attention-based commonsense capabilities for adapting to new, unexpected and unforeseen situations.
4. Australia Research Council Linkage Project 2011 - 2014 $280,000 + significant in kind support
Project Title: Establishing a Next-Generation Framework to Determine the Influence of Intelligent Water Metering on Householder Attitudes and Behaviours
Chief Investigators: Stuart B White, Rodney A Stewart, Mary-Anne Williams, Damien P Giurco, Kelvin R O'Halloran
Partners: Mid Coast Water and the Institute of Sustainable Futures
Summary: This project will test competing theories on how householders respond to interactive water consumption data from smart meters. The outcome is a novel framework for intelligent water management underpinned by innovative research into causal mechanisms linking data communication to knowledge and the impact of knowledge on attitudes and behaviours.
5. Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2008 - 2011 $270,000
Project Title: Developing and Managing Sustainable Technology-enabled Innovation Capabilities
Chief Investigators: Steve Elliot (University of Sydney) and Mary-Anne Williams
Summary: This project will help organisations develop sustainable innovation capabilities using disruptive technologies.
6. Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2007 - 2011 $340,000
Project Title: Planning, Communication, and Collaboration in Cognitive Systems
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams
Partner: Peter Gärdenfors (Lund University, Sweden)
Summary: This project develops a better understanding of collaboration in complex environments.
7. Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2004 - 2007 $150,000
Project Title: Intelligent Agent and Semantic Web empowered eFinance: A Knowledge Management Approach to enable and sustain Innovation
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams and Steve Elliot (University of Sydney)
Partner: Dieter Fensel (University of Innsbruck, Austria)
Summary: This research project made strong theoretical advances by developing an integrated and scalable knowledge engineering approach to the problems confronting Australian Industry.
8. Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2002 - 2006 $200,000
Project Title: Agent-Oriented Concept Management
Chief Investigator: Mary-Anne Williams
Partner: Peter Gärdenfors (Lund University, Sweden).
Summary: For agents to communicate effectively, they must share concepts and attribute the same meaning to shared concepts. Concept management is a new area of research with important applications to intelligent systems.
9. Australia Research Council Project Large 2000 - 2003 $200,000
Project Title: Information and Knowledge Integration
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams
Partner: Grigoris Antoniou (University of Crete, Greece)
Summary: One of the key issues in global information infrastructures like the World Wide Web and enterprise networks is the ability to combine information from different sources in meaningful ways. The problem of information and knowledge integration lies at the heart of the project.
10. Australia Research Council Large Project 1998 - 2001 $180,000
Project Title: Exception-Tolerant Information Systems for Managing Uncertain Information
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams
Partners: Didier Dubois and Henri Prade (CNRS, France).
Summary: This project designed and developed exception-tolerant techniques to allow business systems to perform effectively when using qualitatively uncertain information.
11. Australia Research Council Large Project 1997 - 2000 $200,000
Project Title: Reasoning with Changing and Incomplete Information Project
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams and Grigoris Antoniou
Summary: Developed a decision making framework for handling decisions based on changing and incomplete information using techniques from Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.
12. Australia Research Council Large Project 1996 - 1999 $170,000
Project Title: Entrenchment-Based Reasoning about Action.
Chief Investigators: Norman Foo, UNSW/University of Sydney, Pavlos Peppas and Mary-Anne Williams.
Summary: This project developed innovative algorithms for challenging planning problems that allowed for changing requirements.
Other Major External Research Projects
13. Digital Diagnosis Innovation Project with Roche 2022 - 2024
14. Safe and Responsible AI for Retention with Toustone 2023
15. Google Faculty Award, Machine Learning 2021 - 2022
16. Google Faculty Award, Machine Learning 2019 - 2020
17. CBA Social Robotics Research Partnership 2016 - 2020 $300,000 cash and $700,000 in-kind
18. CBA, Stockland, ATN Social Robotics Undergraduate Projects Partnership $300,000 in-kind
19. IBM PhD Fellowship 2016 - 2017: Mahya Knox, Design Thinking for Data Analytics US$20,000
20. IBM PhD Fellowship 2015 - 2016: Mahya Knox, Data Analytics, Innovation and Competitive Advantage US$20,000
21. CBA-UTS Data Analytics Project, shifting the organisation from a static business intelligence mindset to an agile and predictive data analytics mindset. Funding: $1,300,000
22. Euro DESCA Project 2014, FP7 Model Consortium VOICE: Virtual Open Incubation Ecosystem - This project involves 8 University Partners. It aims to help bridge the gap in the broader entrepreneurial development ecosystem by providing an international, virtual innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem based on open innovation, crowdsourcing and co-creation principles, where individual users and start-ups meet, find collaborators and partners, co-create ideas and prototypes, utilise the wisdom of the crowd to assess the value of the project idea and/or prototype, share and find connections/partners, business and technical information, knowledge on start-up related topics, online tools, online content and open educational material as well as access to capital and crowd-funding. Funding: €3.4M Partners: Universities in Denmark, France and Greece.
23. Australia Japan Foundation 2014, Social Robotics Collaboration with the University of Tokyo and the University of Osaka with two ECRs Xun Wang, Benjamin Johnston. Funding: AUD$20,000
24. IBM PhD Fellowship 2012 - 2013: Wei Wang Social Network for Robots US$20,000
25. Social Robotics 2011 - 2013: Developing a Framework for Human-Robot Interaction within the PR2 robot community (MIT, Stanford University, Cornell University, University of Tokyo, University of California Berkeley, Bosch) and Willow Garage $300,000 UTS Funding
26. IBM PhD Fellowship 2011 - 2012: Risk Management and Planning US$20,000
27. Endeavour PhD Fellowship 2012: 2012, Shan Chen 6-month visit to Indiana University Bloomington. Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems $25,000
28. IBM PhD Fellowship2011 - 12: Rony Novianto Attention Architectures US$20,000
29. Endeavour PhD Fellowship 2011: Rony Novianto 6-month visit to Lund University Sweden. Cognitive Robotics $25,000
30. Endeavour PhD Fellowship 2011:, IBA, Karachi, Pakistan 6 month visit to UTS: Belief Revision for Robots $25,000
31. Endeavour Research Fellowship 2010: Sajjad Haider IBA, Karachi, Pakistan 6 month visit to UTS: Internet of Things, $25,000
32. IBM PhD Fellowship 2010 - 11: Xun Wang Risk Management US$20,000
33. UTS Partnership Project + IBM Faculty Award 2007 - 2008 $80,000 (cash) $100,000 (in kind)
Project Title: Cognitive Agents and Robots in Virtual Worlds, Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams and Glenn Wightwick IBM Australia. Summary: Innovative methods for objects in virtual worlds and simulated environments.
34. UTS Challenge Grant 2006 - 2008 $68,000
Project Title: A Transdisciplinary Framework for Innovation and Collaboration
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams (Project Leader) across 6 Faculties involving 15 Researchers.
Summary: Innovation and collaboration are critical for Australia's future growth, strategic positioning and competitive advantage.
35. DEST China Australia Research Grant 2006 - 2008 $40,000
Project Title: Practical Cognitive Agents
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams, Xiaoping Chen, China, and Wei Liu UWA Summary: Enriching collaborative international infrastructures and exploring on-demand services management. This project gained considerable interest and was highlighted at WORLD EXPO 2010 Shanghai and featured in an Australia-China Project book distributed at WORLD EXPO 2010.
36. Denmark's National Bank Project 2005
Project Title: Risk Management in Complex and Dynamic International Business Environments
Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams and Niels Bjørn-Andersen, Copenhagen Business School.