Lina Yao

I am a Professor UNSW and will commence ARC Future Fellowship in 2026, and a Senior Member of both ACM and IEEE. I have been listed among the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers since 2024. I am also the Co Theme Leader of Theme 4 Causal AI for Responsible AI Research Centre RAIR.

I am serving as the Leading Associate Editor for Tsinghua Science and Technology (TST), Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Information Systems (ACM TOIS), ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (ACM TOSN), Knowledge-based Systems (KNOSYS)， ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing (ACM TALLIP)，ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems (ACM TORS), IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence ( TAI ), and Editorial Board for Nature Scientific Reports (Scientific Reports).

I strive for developing generalizable and explainable data-efficient data mining, machine learning and deep learning algorithms—as well as designing systems and interfaces—to enable novel ways of human-machine interactions, including an improved understanding of challenges such as robustness, trust, explainability and resilience that improve human-autonomy partnership.

My research interest includes Few-Shot Learning, Zero-Shot Learning, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Self-supervised Learning, Deep Generative Modelling and their applications in a broad range of applications in Recommender Systems, Computer Vision, Brain Computer Interface, Intelligent Transportation System, and Internet of Things.

My research is motivated by, and contributes to, various applications in Healthcare Informatics, Cyber Security, Transportation, Defence, Industry 4.0 and FinTech. Details can be found here

Visit our Youtube Channel for taking a closer look at our research. Our research has also been attracting media coverage, such as COSMOS Magazine, EdexLive, Australian Financial Review , Create Digital , SBS1, SBS 2, SBS 3, Engineers Australia magazine, New South Wales government , Australia FinTech and Defence and featured in UNSW News 1 and UNSW News 2. Find out more about my road to research Joining forces: humans and AI systems.

Before I joined CSIRO's Data in Oct 2022, I was a Scientia Associate Professor at The University of New South Wales (UNSW). I was a lecturer and an ARC reseach associate at The University of Adelaide (UoA). I received my PhD degree and Master degrees both from UoA in September 2014 and July 2010, respectively. Prior to that, I obtained my Bachelor degree from Shandong University (SDU). I worked at China Unicom as an engineer and studied a Master's degree at Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (NUPT).