People
Research group and supervision
Higher degree research candidates working across coordination, learning, and the assurance of intelligent systems.
I currently supervise seven higher degree research candidates as primary, joint, or secondary supervisor, alongside a completed HDR cohort and more than a dozen honours and undergraduate research projects. Topics span decentralised and federated learning, human-swarm teaming, satellite autonomy, AI for health, and the assurance of AI systems. Where a project produced a peer-reviewed output, it is listed beneath the student.
Current HDR candidates
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Aisha Alabsi
Towards Heterogeneity-Aware Decentralised Federated Learning
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Khan Md Hasib
AI-Assisted Diagnostic Framework for Multimorbidity
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Noha Abuaesh
Knowledge Representation for Human-Swarm Teaming
OutputPrime-Weighted Exponential Neurons: Traceability in AI and Robotic Systems · IEEE SMC · 2026 · in press
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Qianchu Li
Can AI Improve the Training of Uncrewed Aerial Systems Operators?
OutputApplications of Machine Learning in Assessing Cognitive Load of UAS Operators and in Enhancing Training · Drones · 2025
OutputCan Artificial Intelligence Improve Training of Uncrewed Aerial Systems Operators? · HFES Annual Meeting · 2026 · in press
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Anirban Roy
Collective Intelligence of Satellites Through Decentralised Learning
OutputSelf-Supervised Object Detection in Remote Sensing · 2025 · under review
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Abdelaziz Mostafa
Graph Neural Networks for Misinformation Detection
OutputTheory-Informed Intent Modelling for Disinformation Detection · 2025 · under review
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Randall McCutcheon
Test and Evaluation of AI Systems
OutputEstablishing a Baseline for Assurance of Complex and Critical Artificially Intelligent Systems · 2025 · under review
Completed HDR
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Shajoti Amin
Pedagogies for Teaching Cyber Safety to Primary School Children
OutputSecuring Young Minds: Analysing Primary Teachers’ Perspectives and Practices in Cyber Safety · ACIS · 2024
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Shrouk El-Amir
An Improved Framework for Classifying Imbalanced Big Data
OutputClassification Imbalanced Data Sets: A Survey · Int. J. Computer Applications · 2019
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Sara Abdel Razek
A Framework for Forensic Investigation in Cloud Storage
OutputCloud Storage Forensics: Survey · Int. J. Engineering Trends and Technology · 2017
Honours projects: Computing and Cyber Security
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Alimah Muhammad
Comparative Analysis of Machine Learning Algorithms for Anomaly Detection
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Nadia Govier
Algorithm for Simultaneously Learning Multiple Intrinsically Motivated Objectives
Fourth-year engineering research projects
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Jonathan Zhou
Adversarial Patrolling via Modified Shepherding
OutputAdversarial Patrolling Using a Shepherding Approach · IEEE SMC · 2024
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Joseph Thomas
Effect of Inter-Agent Communication on Reinforcement Learning Pathfinding in Partially Observable Environments
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Rana U. Riaz
Curriculum-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous AlphaDogFight Air-to-Air Combat
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Rana M. Hasan
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Robot Navigation in Unknown Environments
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David King
Autonomous Learning of Swarm Countermeasures: An Evolutionary Neural Network Approach
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Simon Halabi
Conversational AI Approach for Conversing Sheep States from Simulated Data
Undergraduate (CDF) engineering research projects
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Chris Wise
Developing Decentralised Resilience to Malicious Influence in the Collective Perception Problem
OutputDeveloping Decentralised Resilience to Malicious Influence in Collective Perception Problem · arXiv:2211.03063 · 2021
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Viet Hoang Le
Object Detection and Tracking on Limited-Hardware Robots
OutputDeep Learning Based Detection of High Similarity Objects on Limited Hardware Robots · IEEE SSCI · 2022
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Rana Usama Riaz
Humanoid Navigation with DRL-Based Visual SLAM; Reinforcement-Learning Shepherding on a Diddyborg UGV
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Brandon Colelough
Shepherd’s Eye Project
Join the group
A PhD with me at UNSW Canberra
I take a small number of new higher degree research candidates each year, and I recruit deliberately: a PhD is a three-to-four-year research partnership, and I would rather supervise a few candidates properly than many candidates thinly. If the standards below read as demanding, that is intentional; they are also exactly what makes the degree worth having.
Why here
The case for UNSW Canberra
UNSW is ranked 20th in the world and first in Australia in the QS World University Rankings 2026. UNSW Canberra adds something the ranking cannot capture: the campus sits inside Australia’s defence and national-security ecosystem, so research on autonomy, swarms, and trusted AI here is connected to the people who will actually field it. My group works with dedicated swarm and distributed-intelligence infrastructure, and my candidates publish in venues such as IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics and IEEE SMC while they train.
Topics
What I am recruiting for
- Pillar 1 · CoordinationSwarm guidance and shepherding, human-swarm teaming, and defence-relevant autonomy, including maritime and aerial uncrewed systems.
- Pillar 2 · Gated learningRobust representation learning, recovery from missing or degraded sensor channels, and decentralised or federated learning.
If your idea does not fit these exactly but you can argue the connection, argue it; a well-reasoned stretch is more interesting than a safe fit.
Standards
What I expect before you write to me
Competitive candidates typically bring first-class honours or a masters by research (or clear equivalents), strong mathematical foundations, and real programming ability, ideally in Python with a machine learning stack. Evidence that you can finish something hard matters more to me than grades alone: a thesis, a publication, a substantial open-source contribution. Once here, my expectation is simple and high: we aim your work at quality venues from day one, and you own your project the way my current candidates own theirs.
The money
Scholarships and stipends
Funded candidates at UNSW Canberra receive a tax-free living stipend of $38,438 per year (2025 flat rate, indexed) for 3.5 years of a PhD, alongside a tuition fee scholarship; the general UNSW rate for 2026 is $39,206 per year. Details and current rates are on the UNSW Canberra research scholarships page.
How to approach me
Write once, write well
Email me at h.el-fiqi@unsw.edu.au with the subject line “PhD enquiry” and your topic. Include your CV, your transcripts, and at most one page on what you want to research, which of my pillars it belongs to, and why with me specifically. I read every tailored enquiry and reply to the promising ones. Mass emails that could have been sent to any supervisor do not receive replies.