People and Organisations

Key Members--Victoria University of Wellington

	Prof Mengjie Zhang Project Leader, Professor, ECRG group leader, Victoria University of Wellington Research Area: Genetic Programming, Evolutionary Deep Learning and Computer Vision, Multi-Objective Optimisation, Data Mining and Machine Learning, Transfer Learning, Bioinformatics Email: Mengjie.Zhang@ecs.vuw.ac.nz
	A/Prof Ivy (I-Ming) Liu Associate Professor, Victoria University of Wellington Research Area: Evolutionary Feature Selection, Statistics, Categorical Data Analysis
	Prof Bing Xue Professor, Victoria University of Wellington Research Area: Particle Swarm Optimisation, Genetic Programming, Feature Selection and Dimensionality Reduction, Evolutionary Image Analysis, Transfer Learning
	Dr Yi Mei Senior Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington Research Area: Evolutionary Scheduling and Routing, Differential Evolution, Evolutionary Feature Selection

	Dr Binh Nguyen Senior Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington Research Area: Deep Learning, Health Informatics, Bioinformatics, In Silico Drug Discovery
	Prof Richard Arnold Professor, Victoria University of Wellington Research Area: Reliability, Clustering, Geophysics and Directional Statistics

Key Members--University of Otago

A/Prof Grant Dick Associate Professor, University of Otago Research Area: Computational Intelligence; Adaptive Business Intelligence; Multimodal and Multi-objective Problem Solving; Theoretical Population Genetics; Evolving Systems

Key Members--University of Canterbury

Prof Richard Green Professor, University of Canterbury Research Area: Artificial Intelligence, Computer vision, Machine intelligence

Key Members--Plant & Food Research

	Dr Maren Wellenreuther Science Group Leader, Seafood Production, Plant & Food Research Research Area: Sexual Selection, Adaptation, Aquaculture, Selective Breeding, Population Demography
	Dr Linley Jesson Science Group Leader, Data Sciences, Plant & Food Research Research Area: Data Sciences, Exploring, understanding and communicating information from data.

Key Members--Cawthron Institute

	Dr Chris Cornelisen Group Manager for coastal sciences, Cawthron Institute Research Area: Estuarine and coastal processes, and the interaction between the physical environment and biological systems
	Dr Ross Vennell Coastal and Ecosystems Team Leader, Cawthron Institute Research Area: Oceanographic data analysis, Coastal and shelf ocean modelling, Long period ocean waves, Generating energy from tidal currents

Dr Jane Symonds Senior Aquaculture Scientist, Cawthron Institute Research Area: Applied aquaculture R&D, genetics and biotechnology

Key Members--Nelson AI Institute

	Dr Julian Maclaren Founder & Director, Nelson AI Institute Research Area: Computer Vision, Motion Tracking and MRI.
	Dr Nikki Hawes Research Manager, Nelson AI Institute Research Area: Shellfish Aquaculture, Coastal Marine Ecology, Epigenetics

Project Coordinator

Dr Fangfang Zhang Project Coordinator and Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Victoria University of Wellington Research Area: Evolutionary Computation, King Salmon Health Detection, Genetic Programming, Transfer Learning. Email: fangfang.zhang@ecs.vuw.ac.nz

Research Office

• Dan Thompson, Manager, Research Contracts. Email: dan.thompson@vuw.ac.nz
• Neb Svrzikapa, Enterprise Development Adviser. Email: neb.svrzikapa@vuw.ac.nz
• Priyanka Otawkar, Research Contracts Advisor. Email: priyanka.otawkar@vuw.ac.nz

Past Staff Members

• Dr Nick King, Cawthron, member
• Dr Harris Lin, Plant and Food, member
• Dr Harith Al-Sahaf, VUW, member
• Ying Bi, VUW, Project Coordinator
• Emily Greenbank, VUW, Project Coordinator

Past Postdocs/Students Members

• Dr Ying Bi: Genetic programming, evolutionary deep learning, transfer learning, image classification and analysis. July 2020.
• Dr Cuie Yang: Evolutionary learning and optimisation. July 2021.

Postdoctoral Fellow

1. Dr Julie Blommaert: Genomics, Finfish
2. Dr Junhong Zhao: Deep learning, Image lighting understanding, Image synthesis, Image recognition/segmentation
3. Dr Fangfang Zhang: Multitask Learning, Surrogate, Genetic Programming, Combinatorial Learning and Optimisation. March 2021.
4. Dr Ruwang Jiao: Evolutionary algorithms, large scale optimisation, feature selection. March 2021.

PhD Students

1. Carl McMillan: Object detection, Supervised learning, and Mussel Farms, PhD Thesis. 1 July 2023. Project Funded Scholarship. (with Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
2. Jesse Wood: Machine Learning for Fish Oil Analysis, PhD Thesis. 1 March 2022 (with Prof Bing Xue and Dr Bach Nguyen)
3. Kaan Demir: Evolutionary Computation for Feature Selection in Multi-label Classification. Apr 2021 (with Prof. Bing Xue and Hoai Bach Nguyen)
4. Christian Raymond: Meta Learning, Mar 2021 (with Dr Qi Chen, Prof. Bing Xue and Prof. Mengjie Zhang)
5. Ziyi Sun: Evolutionary Computation for Image Analysis. Oct 2021 (with Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
6. Dylon Zeng: Evolutionary Computation for Image Analysis. Oct 2021 (with Prof Mengjie Zhang, Ivy Liu, and Prof Bing Xue)
7. Qinyu Wang: Evolutionary Computation for image analysis. Sep 2021 (with Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
8. Junhao Huang: Evolutionary Design of Deep Neural Networks. Nov 2020, (with Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
9. Jiabin Lin: Evolutionary Transfer Learning for Feature Selection. Nov 2020, (with Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
10. Gonglin Yuan: Evolutionary Deep Learning for Image Classification. July 2020, (with Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
11. Mike Ruigrok: Machine Learning for Data Science, August 2020 - Jan 2021. (with Dr Maren Wellenreuther (Plant & Food Research), Prof Mengjie Zhang, A/Prof Bing Xue, Dr Linley Jesson (Plant & Food Research), Dr Yi Mei)
12. Abigail McGhie: Machine Learning for Aquaculture data. 2020. (with Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
13. Peng Wang: Evolutionary Computation for Feature Selection. Nov 2019. (with Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
14. Qinglan Fan: Evolutionary Computation for Computer Vision. Nov 2019. (with Dr Ying Bi, Prof Mengjie Zhang and Prof Bing Xue)

Master Students

1. Hamish O'Keeffe, Machine Learning Techniques for Modeling Shellfish Harvest Assessments, MSc Thesis, 1 July 2022. (Callaghan and MBIE Scholarship)(with Prof Bing Xue and Nelson AI Institute)
2. David Knox. Image Segmentation. 2021
3. Fergus Currie. 2021

Honour Students

1. Demelza Robinson: Genetic Programming and Machine Learning for Feature Selection and Symbolic Regression for Quantitative Assessment of Nutrient Content in Horticultural Products (with Prof Mengjie Zhang, Prof Bing Xue, Dr Qi Chen)
2. Finlay Sargisson: Evolving Multi-view Text Representation for Text Classification (with Dr Xiaoying Gao, and Prof Bing Xue)
3. Jesse Wood: Machine learning for New Zealand Fish Data Analysis (with Prof Bing Xue and Bach Nguyen)
4. Binke Xu: Machine Learning for Tree Species Identification (with Prof Mengjie Zhang, Prof Bing Xue)
5. Sai Panda: Evolving Compact Scheduling Rules through Genetic Programming with Numerical and Behavioural Operators (with Dr Yi Mei)
6. Zhanghao Kong: Explainable Text Regression Methods for Analysing Sentiment in Text (with Dr Qi Chen, Dr Sharon Gao)
7. Yunhan Yang: Symbolic regression and transfer learning for fish health prediction. 2020-2021 (with Prof Bing Xue and Dr Linley Jesson)
8. Caleb Buchanan, "Detecting Dolphins: Classifying Acoustic Data Using Computer Vision Techniques", Victoria University of Wellington, 07 March -- 14 Oct 2020 (with Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
9. Christian Raymond, "Evolutionary Computation for Symbolic Regression with a Semi-Structured Representation", Victoria University of Wellington, 07 March -- 14 Oct 2020 (with Prof Bing Xue and Dr Qi Chen)
10. Kaan Demir, "Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimisation for Feature Selection in Multi-label Classification", Victoria University of Wellington, 07 March -- 14 Oct 2020 (with Prof Bing Xue and Dr Bach Hoai Nguyen)

Summer Project Students

1. Demelza Robinson: Genetic programming and machine learning for feature selection and classification for quantitative assessment of nutrient content in horticultural products. 2021 (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
2. Jackson Jourdain: Machine learning for tree species identification. 2021 (with Prof. Bing Xue)
3. Fintan O'Sullivan: Artificial Intelligence based methods for recognising individual kākā. 2021 (with Dr Andrew Lense)
4. Luis Slyfield: Explainable artificial intelligence using genetic programming. 2021 (with Dr Andrew Lense)
5. Yan Lu: Feature selection for multi-label classification. 2021 (with Bach Nguyen)
6. Taran John: An automated approach to evolving scoring module for cuckoo Sandbox by utilising genetic programming. 2021 (with Harith Al-Sahaf)
7. Amer Hussian: Genetic programming for symbolic regression. 2021 (with Dr Qi Chen)
8. Sean McGifford: Transfer learning for AI planning. 2021 (with Dr Yi Mei)
9. Yuan Gao: Genetic programming for real-world image segmentation. 2021 (with Dr Ying Bi)
10. Gaofeng Shi: Genetic programming for job shop scheduling. 2021 (with Dr Fangfang Zhang)
11. Yunhan Yang: Symbolic regression and transfer learning for fish health prediction. 2020-2021 (with Prof Bing Xue and Dr Linley Jesson)
12. Fergus Currie: Multi-Criteria Decision Making for Fish Breeding Program. 2020-2021 (with Dr Yi Mei and Dr Maren Wellenreuther)
13. Alistair McLeay: Detection for the water line in Mussel farm. 2020-2021 (with Prof Mengjie Zhang, Prof Bing Xue, Dr Ross Vennell and Dr Dana Briscoe)
14. Demelza Robinson: Spectral data analysis. 2020-2021 (with Dr Qi Chen, Prof Mengjie Zhang and Prof Bing Xue)
15. Oliver Hopkinson: 2020-2021 (with Prof Bing Xue, A/Prof Ivy (I-Ming) Liu and Dr Jane Symonds)
16. Finn Sargisson: Finfish image analysis. 2020-2021 (with Dr Harith Al-Sahaf and Dr Nick King)
17. Samuel Meenken: Scoring skeletal health from X-ray images of salmon vertebrae. 2020-2021 (with Dr Binh Nguyen and Dr Jane Symonds)
18. Dani Liu: Fish Heath Prediction. 2020-2021 (with A/Prof Ivy (I-Ming) Liu and Prof Richard Arnold)
19. Zichu Yan: Genetic Programming for Low-Quality Fish Image Classification. 2020-2021 (with Dr Ying Bi, Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
20. Kaan Demir: Evolutionary Computation for Feature Selection. 2020-2021(with Dr Bach Nguyen, Prof Bing Xue and Prof Mengjie Zhang)

Research Assistants

1. Junhao Huang: Evolutionary Design of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, April 2023-present
2. Wenbin Pei: Genetic Programming for High-Dimensional Imbalanced Classification. June 2021 - December 2021
3. Jingjing Chen: Mussel farm data labelling. 2021