CAR ‘s legacy and continuing impact are lionised at celebration event

On Friday, May 30, AI practitioners, researchers, and enthusiasts converged upon the AIML building to celebrate the incredible legacy of the Centre for Augmented Reasoning (CAR) program.

CAR was established in 2021 through a $20 million investment from the Australian government’s Department of Education. The program was created to develop the high-calibre machine learning expertise Australia needs to be an active participant in the machine learning-enabled global economy.

“I'm the one who founded (CAR), set it up, and devised the research program,” said AIML Chief Scientist and CAR Director Professor Anton van den Hengel. “The most interesting thing about CAR is that after all of this time, it's amazing that we managed to pick something seven years ago that is still one of the core questions in AI, about how we're going to integrate the fantastic progress that AI's made with the things that we already know how to do.”

Building on AIML’s existing research strengths, the centre has supported high performance machine learning research, provides valuable scholarship opportunities and AI commercialisation initiatives, and has become a leading voice in Australia’s AI landscape.

“The best thing is we've been able to support fantastic researchers doing fantastic research,” said Professor van den Hengel. “There's funding out there that people can apply for to do specific projects or specific purposes to work with specific companies. But there's very little funding out there to help great people keep doing the great research they're doing.”

“We were very lucky to be able to help some amazing people do some fantastic research.”

Since its inception, the CAR program has provided financial and logistical support to 36 post-doctoral researchers and 12 PhD students. The program has also hosted over 40 events, had its members contribute to over 2000 publications, and had 22 successful grant applications leading to over $35 million in funding.

Also among its notable achievements has been the creation of the Kingston AI Group, a group of 16 of Australia's leading professors of AI who’ve come together to advocate for increased university and government investment in AI as well as more sovereign AI capability in-country.  The Kingston AI Group has submitted several Senate submissions and commissioned the ground-breaking report, “Australia’s AI Imperative,” which details AI’s immense impact on the Australian economy and the economic costs if Australia continues to fall behind in adopting the technology.

CAR has also been home to three program managers, all of whom have played a critical role in its success over the years.

Dr Angela Noack commenced as CAR Program Manager in August 2021. She is now the Institute Manager at the University of Adelaide’s Robinson Research Institute, whose mission is to advance human reproduction, improve pregnancy outcomes, and promote early childhood health.

“We launched [CAR] in November 2021,” she said. “It was a genuine team effort, shaped by Anton (van den Hengel), Kathy (Nicholson, AIML’s Institute Manager), Paul Dalby (current Chair of the Industry Advisory Forum for the National AI Centre), AIML researchers and professional staff, and the dedicated CAR team.”

“We put in place arrangements to attract and retain top talent and provided teaching relief to support CAR’s Principal Researchers. In November 2022, we delivered the first CAR Showcase – a highlight that brought together the postdocs and students who had joined the program so far.”

Noack was on-hand to watch the CAR program blossom from the ground up and says that she’s most proud of the many important milestones the program was able to achieve under her tenure.

“If CAR’s only legacy was its research output – over 2,000 publications – that would be impressive in itself,” she said. “But its real legacy is much broader.”

“CAR supported the training of postdocs and higher degree by research (HDR) students, fostered commercialisation through the CAR Innovation Fund, and enabled new collaborations,” she added. “More than that, it created a space where bold ideas could take shape. It taught us that so-called ‘crazy ideas’ can become reality and that dreaming big can lead to big rewards.”

Dr Richard Harvey was CAR Program Manager until July 2023. He is now the Chief Operating Officer of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space.

“During my time we started working on the AIML Shop and progressing some other activities of the CAR Innovation Fund,” he said. “I am proud to have been part of such an incredible program that has been able to deliver extraordinary research impact, novel approaches to innovation training, and national AI policy.”

“CAR’s legacy is its extraordinary contribution to fundamental AI research, which will no doubt shift the dial not only [in] Australia, but the world.” Dr Richard Harvey, former CAR Program Manager

“[It] has also provided a unique opportunity to try new things in training the next generation of innovators to translate their ideas into products that can have an impact in the world.”

“CAR’s role in establishing the Kingston AI group has also been important in helping highlight at the national level the importance of sovereign AI capability to Australia’s future prosperity and security.”

Dr Nisha Schwarz is the current CAR Program Manager, having commenced the role in October 2023.

“In my day-to-day activities, I do a wide variety of things which includes operations,” she said. “I also do fun things such as setting up innovation fund programs [and] making sure we have connections with startups who could use AI and machine learning.”

Schwarz notes that despite her many achievements with the CAR program, that some of the program’s most interesting ones are on the horizon.

“The successes I'm proud of for CAR have actually not happened yet and we're working towards that,” she said. “But I celebrate bringing some really cutting-edge startup companies and enabling them to use the talent that we have …to commercialise their products.”

During the 30 May celebration, AIML researchers, post-docs, and PhD students lined up to express their gratitude for the program and to talk about its impact on their areas of work. An eagerly anticipated piece of the CAR celebration event was the announcement of the winner of the CAR Catalyst program.  

The CAR Catalyst program was a dynamic initiative funded by CAR, co-led by Main Sequence Ventures, and supported by NVIDIA. The 13-week program was designed to bridge the knowledge gap between academic research and commercial acumen. At the end of the 13 weeks, participants presented their business cases to Main Sequence Ventures and other commercial partners.

Five teams competed for the CAR funded AIML Catalyst Spark prize, including AIML PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and members of the Adelaide community. After a sensational keynote presentation from Matthew Pearson of Fleet Space Technologies, Sam Hodge, AIML Senior Machine Learning Engineer, was announced as the first winner of the CAR funded AIML Catalyst Spark award.

Hodge is Chief Technology Officer of Tokgan, a growing enterprise that converts "screenplays into a blueprint video with audio so that storytellers can watch text-based script using digital actors."

With two Oscar wins already under his belt, Hodge is looking forward to taking the knowledge he's gained from the CAR Catalyst program and combining it with his extensive technical knowledge to take Tokgan to new heights.

"The CAR Catalyst course was so rich in resources, and I found out how little I actually knew about being a founder or about how venture capital works in terms of making money for both the founders and the investors," he said. "[It was] an excellent opportunity to learn about taking research and innovation and [turning] it into impact and profit."

"There is a long road to travel, but every journey starts with the first step. The [CAR] Catalyst program was a good send off on that journey."

For more information on the Centre for Augmented Reasoning (CAR), please visit https://www.adelaide.edu.au/aiml/our-key-initiatives/centre-for-augmented-reasoning

Watch ‘The Centre for Augmented Reasoning: A Journey from Research to Impact’ on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Seq2Q1W9bg