Established in 1997 at the University of Sydney, the Biomedical Multimedia Information Technology (BMIT) Research Group is one of the world’s first teams to pioneer core computer science and information technology research to address critical challenges in biomedicine. Since its inception, BMIT has made a number of landmark contributions that continue to have a strong impact on biomedical and healthcare services, and industry. Many of the research outcomes have been translated into real life solutions.
BMIT comprises some of the brightest minds in the field, across all career stages. Our senior professors are Fellows of several learned academies, both in Australia and abroad; they are at the forefront of shaping research at the convergence of computing technology and healthcare, from both engineering and clinical perspectives. Our mid-career researchers are pushing the boundaries in emerging fields, engaging directly with hospital initiatives and international collaborations. Our postdoctoral fellows have gone on to receive nationally competitive grants to fund their own independent research directions; they are the future stars who are paving the way to new discoveries. Our students come from all walks of life across the globe to undertake cutting edge research that is published in top venues and garners accolades, fellowships, and awards from all around the world; they have gone on to join Faculty or pursue further studies at top international institutions including Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Yale, University of Geneva, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Macquarie University and UNSW, and in industry including leading hospitals e.g., Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA, Australia) and technology companies e.g., Alibaba, Baidu, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, Paige AI, Siemens, Tencent, and Toshiba.
BMIT excels at addressing bio-inspired and other real-world challenges with core computing and information technology research in image processing and informatics, computer vision, big data fusion and analysis, visualization and visual analytics, multimedia technology and intelligent algorithms etc. Our research has numerous applications, including in the biomedical and health domains where we have reshaped the biomedical research and digital healthcare practice landscape in several ways.
BMIT’s research contributions has been widely recognized around the world. We have published extensively in world top journals; according to Google Scholar, our researchers are the most cited in a number of areas. Our team members have a consistent history of attracting competitive research funding for their innovative research, including prestigious Australian grants such as the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery, ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), ARC Mid-Career Industry Fellowship, ARC Linkage, ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants, as well as industry grants. As a consequence, BMIT’s work is recognized as one of the University of Sydney’s areas of research strength and the team has received significant strategic funding to develop our research and engagement program.
With this support, BMIT has played a key role in numerous biomedical and healthcare initiatives. Our team members provide technical leadership to the NSW government’s Telehealth initiatives contributing to the establishment permanent tele-health departments at major public hospital (Nepean Hospital, Australia). We were a key part of the ARC Training Centre in Innovative BioEngineering and provided training to the next-generation of research leaders. BMIT was a key member of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology providing expertise on imaging, visualization, and information technology. BMIT led a Sydney University Research Network Scheme (SyReNS) project on assisted living, bringing together a team of researchers from multiple disciplines. Our team is heavily engaged in building long-term international partnerships, which has contributed to founding the University of Sydney and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (USYD-SJTU) Joint Research Alliance. BMIT members are also playing key roles in several national and international professional organizations, societies and prestigious journals within our research field.
BMIT is located in the state-of-the-art modern School of Computer Science building at the University of Sydney. We provide a world-class, internationally inspiring and stimulating research environment to train the next generation of research stars and leaders. BMIT has hosted many outstanding visiting research students, scholars and clinicians; our staff and students have received fellowships, internships, and visiting positions at top universities and in industry, such as Harvard, IBM. Microsoft, and Siemens. BMIT has developed many leaders for the future, including at the Dean and Senior Executives levels in academia and President and CEO levels in industry.
BMIT currently has multiple funded research projects on offer under nationally funded grants. Students will join a strong research team and closely work with a multi-disciplinary supervisory team. They will be able to contribute to other related projects and build networks with other students, postdocs, clinicians and scientists. Our projects involve close collaboration with both hospitals (e.g., Royal Prince Alfred, Westmead, Nepean) and industry partners (e.g., Microsoft) in both Australia and abroad to translate algorithms into clinical trials and commercial applications; there will be opportunities for internships with our partner organisations. There are multiple scholarship opportunities within the group and through the Faculty and the University.