Research Grants

Main Government Grants

MBIE Funding

  • Data Science for Aquaculture (Originally named "A data-science driven evolution of aquaculture for building the blue economy"), MBIE SSIF Fund on Data Science . March 2020- Feb 2027. Grants: $13,000,000. Host is VUW, Cawthron, PFR, Otago and NAII are Collaborators. [Science Leader: Mengjie Zhang. Key Researchers: Ivy Liu, Bing Xue, Yi Mei, Harith Al-Sahaf, Binh Nguyen, Richard Arnold] More information can be seen from the Homepage.

  • Cyber-physical seafood systems: Intelligent and optimised green manufacturing for marine co-products. MBIE Endeavour Research Program. Oct 2020-Sep 2025. Grant: $16,280,000. Host is PFR, and Collaborators are VUW, CI, Otago, Deakin. [VUW Co-PI: Mengjie Zhang and Bing Xue. Key Researchers: Ivy Liu, Qi Chen, Sharon Gao, Aaron Chen]

  • Bridging the gap between remote sensing and tree modelling with data science . NZ-Singapore MBIE SSIF/Catalyst Fund on Data Science. Oct 2020-Sep 2023. Grant: $3,000,000. Host is Landcare, and Scion, UoC, VUW are collaborators. [VUW People: Mengjie Zhang, Bing Xue]

  • Enabling unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to use tools in complex dynamic environments. Oct 2021-Sep 2026. MBIE Research Program. Grant: $9,837,002. Host is UoC, and VUW is a partner/collaborations. [VUW People: Mengjie Zhang, Bing Xue]

Marsden Fund and RSNZ Funding

  • Genetic Programming for Evolving Interpretable Models for Symbolic Regression. Marsden Fund of NZ. Grant: $300,000. 2021-2024. [Qi Chen (PI), Wolfgang Banzhalf (AI), Bing Xue (Mentor), Mengjie Zhang and Ivy Liu (Collaborators)].
  • Genetic Programming for Symbolic Regression. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2020-2023. Grant: $707,000. [Mengjie Zhang (PI), Bing Xue and Ivy Liu (Collaborators)]
  • Evolutionary Automated Design of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Image Classification. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2020-2023. Grant: $707,000. [Bing Xue (PI), Gary Yen and Mengjie Zhang (AI)]
  • Large-scale Evolutionary Feature Selection for Classification. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2016-2019. Grant: $300,000. [Bing Xue (PI), Xin Yao and Mengjie Zhang (AI)]
  • Automatic Design of Heuristics for Dynamic Arc Routing Problem with Genetic Programming. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2016-2019. Grant: $300,000. [Yi Mei (PI), Mengjie Zhang (Mentor)]
  • Genetic programming for dynamic flexible job shop scheduling. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2016-2022. Grant: $550,000. [Mengjie Zhang (PI), Kay Chen Tan (AI), Su Nguyen (Research Fellow)]
  • Distributed data-intensive service composition. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2016-2019. Grant: $300,000. [Hui Ma (PI), Mengjie Zhang (Mentor)]
  • Genetic Programming for Job Shop Scheduling. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2013-2016. Grant: $520,000. [Mengjie Zhang (PI), Key Chen Tan (AI)]
  • Genetic Programming for Classification Tasks. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2009-2012. Grant: $465,000. [Mengjie Zhang (Sole Investigator)]
  • Novel Program Structures and Search Algorithms in Genetic Programming, Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2006-2008. Grant: $140,000. [Mengjie Zhang (Sole Investigator)]
  • Predictive Difficulty Measures in Genetic Programming based on Complex Networks. International Mobility Fund, New Zealand. 2011. Grant: $8050. [Mengjie Zhang (NZPI), Jing Liu (Overseas PI)]

NSC-SfTI Fund

  • Precision Farming. National Science Challenge SfTI Spearhead. 2019-2022. Grant:$3,000,000 (Trench 2). (with Cawthron, UoA, UoC). VUW Grant: $512,300. [VUW: Mengjie Zhang, Bing Xue]
  • Karetao Hangarau-a-Mahi: Adaptive learning robots to complement the human workforce. National Science Challenge SfTI Spearhead. 2019-2022. Grant:$3,000,000 (Trench 1). [VUW: Will Browne (CO-PI)]
  • Precision Farming. National Science Challenge SfTI Spearhead. 2017-2019. Grant:$2,000,000 (Trench 1). (Cawthron is the Host) [VUW: Mengjie Zhang]
  • Karetao Hangarau-a-Mahi: Adaptive learning robots to complement the human workforce. National Science Challenge SfTI Spearhead. 2017-2019. Grant:$2,000,000 (Trench 1). [VUW: Will Browne (CO-PI)]
  • Rat-based machine learning. National Science Challenge SfTI Seed Fund. 2017-2019. Grant: $200,000. [Will Browne (PI)]

Industry and International Grants

  • "AI and Machine Learning for Medical Applications". Huayin Medical (Industry) and Academician Workstation. Oct 2020-Sep 2023. Grant: $234,000. [Mengjie Zhang (PI), Bing Xue (Co-PI), Sharon Gao, Qi Chen, Andrew Lensen.]

  • "Deep Learning Architecture with Context Adaptive Features for Image Parsing (DP200102252)". Australia ARC Discover Project. 2020-2022. Grant: $480,000 AUD. [Mengjie Zhang (Partner Investigator), with Brijesh Verma at CQU (CI)].

  • "Distributed and Automated Evolutionary Deep Architecture Learning with Unprecedented Scalability". Dutch Research Council (NWO) & industry partners Elekta and Ortec Logiqcare. 2020-2024. Grant: €1,086,368 Euro. [Mengjie Zhang (International Collaborator), with Peter Bosman at Delft (PI)]

  • “AI/ML techniques for Waste Collection in NZ”, industrial project with Northland Waste, 2019-2020. Grant: $16,000 NZD. [Yi Mei (PI)]

  • “Cooperative Co-evolution for Large Scale Black Box Optimisation”, 61673194, National Natural Science Foundation of China, 2017-2020. Grant: ¥610,000 RMB [Yi Mei (Overseas AI)]

  • Evolutionary Ensemble Learning Based on Multimodal Swarm Intelligence. National Natural Science Foundation of China. 2019-2022. 2019-2022. Grant: ¥640,000 RMB. [Bing Xue (Overseas PI), with Jing Liang (PI in China)]

  • "Evolutionary computation for data mining". Zhengzhou University Overseas Strategic Research Collaboration Grant. 2019. ¥100,000RMB. [Bing Xue (Overseas PI), with Prof. Jing Liang (PI)]

  • "Large Scale Manufacturing Planning and Scheduling with Meta-heuristic and Hyper-heuristic Techniques". High-Tech Industry Project. 2018-2019. Grant: $80,950 NZD.

  • "Face/Object Recognition and Feature Construction by New Genetic Programming and Deep Transfer Learning Techniques". High-Tech Industry Project. 2016-2018. Grant: $330,000 NZD [Bing Xue (PI), Mengjie Zhang (Co-PI)]

  • "Sentiment Classification based on Bi-LSTMs and attention". Overseas Collaboration Funding in State Key Lab in Software Engineering at Nanjing University. 2019-2021. Grant: ¥40,000 RMB. [Xiaoying Gao (Overseas PI), with Lin Shang in China (PI)]

  • "A Novel Framework for Optimised Ensemble Classifier". Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (DP160102639). 2016-2018. Grant: $270,000. [Mengjie Zhang (PI), with Brijesh Verma (CI)]

  • "Conditional outlier detection in Massive Data" (using rough sets, granular computing, evolutionary computation techniques). National Natural Science Foundation of China. 2012-2015. Grant: ¥550,000 RMB. [Mengjie Zhang (Co-PI), Bing Xue (AI), with Lin Shang in China (PI)]

  • "Anomaly Detection in Crowded Scenes using Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Programming". Overseas Collaboration Funding in State Key Lab in Software Engineering at Nanjing University. 2014-2016. Grant: ¥30,000 RMB. [Mengjie (Overseas PI), Bing Xue (AI), with Lin Shang in China (PI)]

  • "Feature Manipulation Based on Evolutionary Computation and Rough Sets Methods". Overseas Collaboration Funding in State Key Lab in Software Engineering at Nanjing University. 2011-2013. Grant: ¥40,000 RMB. [Mengjie Zhang (Overseas PI), Bing Xue (AI), Lin Shang in China (PI)]

Main Internal Research Grants

* Interpretable Genetic Programming for Combinatorial Optimisation. University Research Fund. Jan 2021 - Dec 2022. Grant: $32,000 NZD. [Yi Mei (PI), Mengjie Zhang (AI)]

* "Evolving neural networks for text classification". University Research Fund. Jan 2020 - Dec 2021. Grant: $30,000 NZD. [Xiaoying Sharon Gao (PI)]

* Evolutionary Learning for High-dimensional Imbalanced Data Classification. University Research Fund. Jan 2020 - Dec 2021. Grant: $62,006.36 NZD. [Bing Xue (PI), Mengjie Zhang (AI)]

* “Real-Time Tourist Trip Recommendation using Genetic Programming”, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2018. $28,720 NZD [Yi Mei (PI)]

* Novel Approaches to High-dimensional Symbolic Regression. University Research Fund. June 2017 - 2018. Grant: $32,187.72 NZD. [Bing Xue (PI), Mengjie Zhang (AI)]

* Evolutionary Computation for Feature Selection in Large-Scale Data Mining. University Research Fund. 2016 - June 2017. Grant: $21,413.14 NZD. [Bing Xue (PI), Mengjie Zhang (AI)]