Profile

I am a Professor of Distributed Systems & Chair in Applied Data Sciences, as well as the Director of the Trusted Networks Lab at Queensland University of Technology. My main research interest is around dynamic network modelling. Networks and network science provide powerful representation of physical and logical relationships to gain insights into a broad range of systems, from communication and cyber-physical systems and Internet of Things to individual and entity relationship networks and interactions to guide value-creating decisions. I am particularly interested in delivering end-to-end trust in data and systems involved in distributed networks, using tools such as blockchain and distributed ledger technology, understanding network dynamics driven by mobility to forecast diffusion processes, such as disease spread, and sustainable in-situ intelligence in networks.

From 2008 to 2019, I was at CSIRO, where I established and led the Distributed Sensing Systems Group that spans Brisbane, Hobart, and Canberra, and is one of the leading large scale sensing groups worldwide.  I currently maintain a visiting scientist role with the DSS Group. I have a PhD in Information and Computer Science at University of California, Irvine, an MS in Computer Networks and Distributed Computing from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UCI, and a BE in Computer and Communications Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut.

I have worked and studied in four continents (so far), in both academic and R&D organizations, and greatly enjoyed the diversity of these experiences, both professionally and personally. In 2005, I was a Project Scientist at UCI, before joining University College Dublin, Ireland as a research fellow in 2006. I then joined CSIRO, Australia in 2008, and I currently hold an Adjunct Professor appointment at University of New South Wales. I have held Visiting Scientist/Academic roles at MIT’s CSAIL Lab in 2011 and University of Oxford’s Sensor Networks Lab in 2017. I am a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a Distinguished Visitor of the IEEE Computer Society.

Honours and Awards

  • Distinguished Visitor, IEEE Computer Society, 2022-2024
  • Eureka Prize finalist, 2019
  • EWSN Best Paper Award, 2016
  • QLD iAward Merit Award, 2014
  • CSIRO Medal for Environmental Achievement, 2011
  • Endeavour Executive Award, 2011
  • Elected as IEEE Senior Member, 2010
  • Enterprise Ireland Commercialization Award, 2007
  • Irish Research Council Embark Award, 2006

Selected Presentations – All Presentations

Blockchain for Cyberphysical Systems: Applications, Opportunities and Challenges, IEEE Globecom Tutorial, 2018.

Towards an Optimised Blockchain for IoT, IoTDI, Pittsburgh, USA, April 2017.

Information Bang for the Energy Buck: Towards Energy- and Mobility-Aware Tracking, EWSN, Graz, Austria, February 2016.

Long-term Tracking in Batmon: Lessons and Open Challenges, MLSDA Keynote Speech, Gold Coast, Australia, December, 2014

Long-term Continental Scale Tracking of Flying Foxes: Where delay tolerance meets resource constraints, IEEE SenseApp Keynote Speech, Sydney, Australia, October, 2013.

Camazotz: Multimodal Activity-base GPS Sampling (presented by Philipp Sommer), IPSN, Philadelphia, USA, April 2013.

Adaptive GPS Duty Cycling with Radio Ranging for Energy-Efficient Localization, ACM Sensys, Zurich Switzerland. November, 2010.

Selected Media Coverage – All Media Coverage

Who’s to blame when driverless cars have an accident, The Conversation, republished by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), March, 2018.

How to make batteries that last (almost) forever, The Conversation & republished by Australian Broadcasting Corporation, July, 2017.

How Blockchain could Revolutionise the Internet of Things, Forbes, June, 2017.

What if intelligent machines could learn from each other, The Conversation, August, 2016.

The implications of tracking animals and people, interview on ABC Radio, Goldfields-Esperance, WA, Australia, February, 2016.

Imagine what we could learn if we put a tracker on everyone and everything, The Conversation, February, 2016.

City bikeshare programs may make commuters more active, Reuters, June, 2015.

The Architect of a Social Network for Scientists, TIME, November, 2014.

SMS service could spot the next Ebola outbreak zone, Wired Magazine UK, October 2014.

How An Intelligent Text Message Service Aims To Tackle Ebola In Western Africa, MIT Technology Review, October, 2014.

Solar-Powered Fruit Bat Trackers Could Turn Bikeshare Programs Into Data Fleets, Fast Company, January, 2014.

Selected Publications – All Publications

M. Kim, D. Paini, R. Jurdak, Modeling stochastic processes in disease spread across a heterogeneous social system, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (2) 401-406, 2019. pdf

A. Dorri, M. Steger, S. Kanhere, and R. Jurdak, “BlockChain: A Distributed Solution to Automotive Security and Privacy”, IEEE Communications Magazine, Volume 55, Issue 12, pages 119-125, December, 2017. DOI: 10.1109/MCOM.2017.1700879.

A. Dorri, S. Kanhere, and R. Jurdak, “Towards an Optimized BlockChain for IoT,” In proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Internet-of-Things Design and Implementation (IoTDI 2017), as part of CPSWeek, Pittsburgh, USA, April, 2017.

K. Zhao and R. Jurdak, “Understanding the spatiotemporal pattern of grazing cattle movement,” Nature Scientific Reports, 6:31967 EP, August 2016.
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P. Sommer, J. Liu, K. Zhao, B. Kusy, R. Jurdak, “Information Bang for the Energy Buck: Energy- and Mobility-Aware Tracking,” In proceedings of The International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks (EWSN), Graz, Austria, February, 2016.Winner of Best Paper Award
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R. Rana, M. Hume, R. Jurdak, J. Soar, J. Reilly, “Transforming knowledge capture in healthcare: Opportunistic and Context-aware affect Sensing on Smartphones,” IEEE Pervasive Computing, 15 (2), 60-69, 2016.
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R. Jurdak, K. Zhao, J. Liu, M. AbouJaoude, M. Cameron, D. Newth, “Understanding Human Mobility from Twitter,” PLOS ONE, 10(7): e0131469. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0131469. July, 2015.
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J. Liu, K. Zhao, P. Sommer, S. Shang, B. Kusy, & R. Jurdak,”Bounded Quadrant System: Error-bounded Trajectory Compression on the Go,” In proceedings of the 31st IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), Seoul, Korea, April, 2015.
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R. Jurdak, B. Kusy, P. Sommer, N. Kottege, C. Crossman, A. McKeown, D. Westcott, “Camazotz: Multimodal Activity-based GPS Sampling,” In proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), Philadelphia, USA, April, 2013.
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R. Jurdak, P. Corke, D. Dharman, and G. Salagnac. “Adaptive GPS Duty Cycling and Radio Ranging for Energy-Efficient Localization,” In proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (Sensys), pages 57-70. Zurich, Switzerland, November 2010.
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P. Corke, T. Wark, R. Jurdak, W. Hu, P. Valencia, and D. Moore. “Environmental Wireless Sensor Networks,” Proceedings of the IEEE, Special Issue on Emerging Sensor Network Applications, Vol. 98, No. 11, pages 1903-1917, November 2010. (Invited paper)
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R. Jurdak, A. G. Ruzzelli, and G.M.P. O’Hare. “Radio Sleep Mode Optimization in Wireless Sensor Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Vol. 9 No. 7, July, 2010.
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R. Jurdak, P. Baldi, and C.V. Lopes. “Adaptive Low Power Listening for Wireless Sensor Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. Volume 6, Issue 8, pp. 988-1004. August, 2007.
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