Media Release
May 28 2008
EDS Defence Services awards UniSA PhD Research Scholarship
EDS
Defence Services Australia (EDS DS) in conjunction with UniSA’s
Defence and Systems Institute
(DASI) has awarded a postgraduate PhD Research Scholarship in the field
of Defence Complex Systems to Grant Osborne.
DASI Deputy Director,
Associate Professor David Cropley said the scholarship is an
important step in forging a relationship between the University and EDS
Defence Services Australia.
“The support that EDS Defence Services Australia is providing enables
the University, through DASI, to give students the best possible
opportunities to conduct high quality, high impact research in areas
that are central to national security,” Prof Cropley said.
Grant Osborne’s research focuses on promoting the investigation of
digital forensic evidence and data analysis through information
visualisation.
Information Visualisation has been proven to be an effective data
exploration tool in many different domains such as financial trend
analysis and network intrusion detection.
By taking advantage of this existing knowledge, Osborne’s research
focuses on visualisations that can help investigators to explore very
large sets of data from a variety of digital sources.
By developing highly interactive visualisation tools that enable
meticulously crafted views of data, analysts and investigators are then
able to exploit this data.
This research will add to EDS research into the development of an
Operational Picture (OP) of a battle space.
The OP is a technique aiming to pull together often disparate sets of
data from personnel and enemy locations to logistical information,
including munitions and access to fuel, that are required by defence
commanders.
Information Visualisation techniques can be used to help the commander
achieve an overview of the situation that he is faced with. The digital
forensic data exploitation techniques developed could also be vital to
soldiers out on the field, enabling quick analysis of any enemy data
sources discovered.
“EDS Defence Services understands the importance of continually
increasing the body of knowledge within these critical defence areas and
is very pleased to support this three-year scholarship funding program
in this important field of research,” said EDS DS Account Executive,
Louis Rago.
Significantly, as part of the research funding, EDS will also assist in
collaborating with a global EDS reachback program within the US and
Europe.
“EDS is a major long-term provider of complex and high security IT
services to US and European government’s defence operations and through
private sector support of this kind a great deal of real world knowledge
can be transferred and applied to add unique value to the research
outcomes in this area,” Mr Rago said.
Contact for interview
- Associate Professor David Cropley office + 61 8 8302 3301 mobile 0414 972 306 email david.cropley@unisa.edu.au
- Louis Rago C/- David Thompson, EDS office +61 8 8464 2300 mobile 0439 846 199 email david.wayne.thompson@eds.com
Media contact
- Vincent Ciccarello, UniSA office + 61 8 8302 0578 mobile 0434 603 457 email vincent.ciccarello@unisa.edu.au