Susannah is a research and teaching academic in the School of Electrical Engineering, Computing, and Mathematical Sciences. As a Computer Scientist and Software Engineer, she specialises in Generative Artificial Intelligence, product development, and human-centred computing. Susannah focusses on demand-driven research in health and social impact. 

 

In teaching, Susannah brings a wealth of experience in leading and designing sector-leading student experiences winning multiple teaching awards. Currently, she teaches New Product Development and innovation to Masters of Engineering students.

 

Susannah is involved in two major research projects: she is project lead of the multi award-winning Healthy Connections project developing the mobile Medi-Kit for remote Indigenous health; and Curtin lead on the SoundSmiles tool for children's hearing and mental health. 

 

Her other research projects focus on digital health, clinical decision support and socially assistive robotics. Susannah supervises an extensive number of  AI projects at postgraduate and undergraduate level and collaborates extensively with many industry partners.

 

Susannah was previously manager of the Curtin-Optus 5G Lab and Academic Lead of Curtin-Cisco Innovation Central Perth.

 

Grants

 

1. Dwivedi, G., Forrest, A., Lister, R., et al., Transforming Medical Discovery: Next-Generation High-Performance Computing Infrastructure for Accelerated Translational Research, FHRI Fund Enabling Scheme 2024-25, $536,153 + matched funding.
2. Barnard, S., Xu, D., Hendrie, D., et al., Rural and Remote Health Outcomes Monitoring Platform GA414055, 2025, Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), role: AI, $3.6M+.
3. A novel bone conductance  hearing aid, with Ear Science Insitute Australia, Telethon 2025.
4. Synergistic explainable AI and generative models to improve ECG diagnostic accuracy and confidence in diagnosis, with Prof Girish Dwivedi, 2025. FHRI Innovation Challenge – Generative Artificial Intelligence Applications Stage 2 program $481,105
5. Lawrence, C., Eikelboom, R., Soon, S., Myers-Franchi B., Krishna, A., 2023 – 2025, SoundSmiles: an innovative digital solution to help close the gap on Aboriginal child and youth mental health through co-design. Innovation Challenge 2021: Child and Youth Mental Health Stage 2 Innovation Development and Implementation. FHRI fund ~$1.5M. See SoundSmiles project here.
6. Healthy Connections, 2023, The Challenge: Reimagining regional and remote health care, WA Health Department, $200K + additional funding.
7. Hossain, Z., Gupta, A., Soon, S., Ghosh, S., Gedeon, T., Generating ultrasound images, FHRI Fund Innovation Challenge 2023, $50K.
8. Soon, S., Reiners, T., Muninno, R., 2021, Combining digital twin mapping of IoT sensors and location data to understand residential energy consumption, SPUR Landgate grant, $25K.

 

 

Teaching Awards

 

• Citations for Outstanding Contribution to StudentLearning, Curtin Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Awards, 2025.
• 2022 Faculty Science and Engineering Learning and Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning

 

 

Awards and Recognition

 

• National  Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) iAwards Finalist 2025 - Not-for-Profit & Community – Kawu Balya
• WAITTA INCITE Award Winner 2025 - Social Impact category – Kawu Balya: Your Health. Your Story
• National Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) iAwards Finalist 2024 - Not-for-Profit & Community
• WAITTA INCITE Award Winner 2024 - Social Impact category
• WAITTA INCITE Award Finalist 2024 - Research and Innovation category
• Curtinnovation Finalist 2024

 

Innovation and Entreprenuership

 

• Curtin Ignition scholarship 2024 for Healthy Connections
• Curtin Accelerate scholarship 2022
• Curtin Ignition Scholarship 2021
• Dept. of Defence/CSIRO D.Start Ignite participant 2021 

 

Appointments and Memberships Appointments

 

• 2025 - 2027 - Honorary Treasurer, WA BEC, Australian Computer Society
• 2022 onwards - Honorary Research Fellow at Ear Science Institute Australia
• 2026 onwards - AITAI Fellow (Australian Institute of Transformation and AI)
• 2025 onwards - Research Integrity Advisor, EECMS

 

Memberships

 

• 2025 MACS, Australian Computer Society
• 2024 Alumni, LeadershipWA

 

Innovation Central Perth

 

In 2024, Susannah was Academic Lead at the Curtin-Cisco Innovation Central Perth. ICP runs industry supported student internships in engineering, mining and computing. More information on ICP can be found here.

 

 

PhD student supervision

 

Kasun Wijayamanna (MPhil Computing 2025 - ) co-supervised with Victor Calo and Venisha Peiris — A Trust-Aware Mediation Layer for Detecting and Communicating Failure States in Retrieval-Augmented Generation for High-Stakes Domains. Designing a mediation layer that detects when RAG evidence is incomplete, outdated, conflicting, or jurisdictionally inappropriate, and then communicates this to users via warnings, limited answers, or escalation. Contributes a failure-state taxonomy and an evaluation framework that measures both answer quality and governance quality in high-stakes settings.

 

Pravin Kumar Shaw (PhD, 2nd year 2026; with Ramesh Narayanaswamy; collaboration with IIT Kharagpur) — Digital Technology for Vocational Education & Training (VET). Exploring how digital technologies (e.g., virtual labs, simulations, mobile applications, and AI-driven tools) can improve vocational learning outcomes and make training more accessible. The project also examines inclusion and equity, focusing on what works across socioeconomic groups and what institutional/pedagogical frameworks enable effective digital transformation in VET.

 

Robert Andriambololonaharisoamalala (Spatial Science, PhD) 2021 - 2026 with Petra Helmholz (primary supervisor) and Ivana Ivanova — Integration of ground- and satellite-based data to map the Urban Heat Island Effect. Integrating ground-based observations with satellite data to map and analyse the Urban Heat Island effect. The project focuses on improving spatial monitoring and evidence to support urban planning and heat-mitigation decisions.

 

Honours students 2026

 

Michael Hobday (Mechatronics Engineering Honours) — Socially Assistive Robot to support children on the spectrum with their progress in between counselling sessions. Developing a socially assistive robot using Reachy Mini and a generative AI interaction model to help children practise communication and social skills between therapy sessions. The system is designed to reinforce counsellor-led lessons through personalised, adaptive interactions without replacing clinical care.

 

Madeleine Kamba (Mechatronics Engineering Honours) — Socially-Assisted Robot (SAR) for social engagement in residential aged care. Designing and evaluating a Reachy Mini-based socially assistive robot to reduce loneliness and promote engagement among older adults in residential aged care. Delivers short, repeatable sessions (greetings, reminders, simple games) plus light routine-aligned assistant functions to complement staff care.

 

Masters by Coursework 2026

 

Richard Yang, Qingqing Hu, Xu Chen (COMP6015/6016 Masters of Computing - AI major)  — Clinical Context-Aware Consultation Assistant (C3A). Building an LLM-powered clinical decision support system that stays aware of patient history, current consultation context, guidelines, and institutional protocols. Integrates EHR data, imaging, lab results, and voice notes to provide context-grounded recommendations with an emphasis on safety and clinical workflow fit.

 

Current undergraduate student supervision

 

Some projects co-supervised with Sonny Pham, Kit Yan Chan, Her Mann Tsai or otherwise noted.

 

2026

 

Chao Cherng Lee (EECMS Computing summer internship, 2025/2026) — Design and Evaluation of a Multimodal LLM-Based Clinical Decision Support Assistant for Maternal Health in Community Care Settings. Designing and implementing a multimodal AI decision-support tool for postpartum maternal care in hospital and community contexts. The system aims to help time-constrained nurses interpret clinical materials and support structured monitoring and decision-making while keeping human oversight central.

 

 

Junshen Ho (Intern) — AI Speech Recognition and Pronunciation Analysis Engine. Building a backend AI engine that records spoken English, transcribes it, and evaluates pronunciation accuracy against a reference speaker. Produces measurable scores and word-level feedback using speech recognition and audio analysis tools (e.g., Whisper, Praat, or Speech-to-Text APIs).

 

Evangeline Tanoto (Intern) — “Social Compass” — A Wearable Assistive Interaction Device. Designing a simple wearable assistive device that provides gentle, non-judgmental suggestions during social interactions based on observable verbal and visual cues. Focuses on supporting autistic users in noticing and interpreting implicit social cues while preserving autonomy and confidence.

 

Joe Shen (MPhil Computing) — Enhancing Interpretability and Performance in Clinical ECG Diagnosis of Rare Conditions Using Novel Deep Learning Techniques. Improving explainability and performance of prototype-based deep learning for ECG diagnosis, especially for underrepresented rare conditions. Compares datasets with different label quality and explores adding clinically interpretable features to strengthen trust and diagnostic accuracy.

 

Jiwon Han (COMM6003 Commerce) - Generative AI Literacy and Workforce Readiness in WA SMEs

 

Hansani Maheshika Rajapakse - Identifying and prioritising high-vallue generative AI opportunities for management consulting SMEs in WA

 

Angla Li, Haicheng Huang, Nayna Afroz (MGMT6052) - Wellbeing Impacts of Generative AI on Knowledge Workers and Software Developers

 

Leying Mao, Chuanzhou Zhao, Nigar Sultana, Amor Lu (MGMT6052) - Open vs Closed Models

 

 

 

2025

 

Zaki Hasan Rizvi (Advanced Science, 2nd year) — AI Alignment in Healthcare: Designing a Safe and Culturally Sensitive Virtual Assistant. Developing a diabetes-focused virtual health assistant for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities using Retrieval-Augmented Generation and Constitutional AI. Evaluating accuracy, safety, and cultural sensitivity using automated metrics, AI-based rating, and bilingual community feedback.

 

Junshen Ho (Masters of Predictive Analytics; COMP6019) with Jun Chih and Wenbin Liang — AI Companion Chatbot with Emotion Detection for Chronic Diseases Post-Discharge Patient Support. Developing and evaluating a predictive analytics framework that stratifies post-discharge chronic-disease patients into outcome risk categories (e.g., recovery, readmission, deterioration) using PROMs (EQ-5D-5L) and demographic data. The work is intended to underpin a GPT-powered companion chatbot with emotion detection to support more proactive, personalised follow-up care.

 

2024

 

Alastair Kho (Advanced Science (Computing) Honours) — Towards the Preservation of Low-Resource Languages with Machine Translation: A Case Study with Endangered Languages. Exploring machine translation approaches for severely low-resource and primarily oral endangered languages, with attention to ethical considerations around Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property. Investigates few-shot LLM prompting and data imputation techniques to improve translation quality where training data is scarce.

 

Stefan Hofmann (Advanced Science (Computing) Honours) — Usability and Acceptability of mHealth Patient Companion App for Aboriginal Australians. Designing and evaluating a mobile health companion app to support Aboriginal patients—particularly in remote contexts—through their interactions with the health system. Uses user-centred design and community consultation to refine a prototype and assess usability and acceptability.

 

Chai Ping Ha (Bachelor of Computing Honours) — Automating LVEF prediction from echocardiography using ML/DL. Applying machine learning/deep learning to predict left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) from echocardiography data. The aim is to automate and standardise LVEF estimation to support clinical assessment workflows.

 

Prasanna Asokan (Advanced Science (Computing) Honours) — The role of AI in remote Indigenous healthcare: detection and annotation of strep throat. Exploring how AI can support remote Indigenous healthcare by detecting and annotating strep throat. The project focuses on building or evaluating tools that can assist screening and clinical documentation in resource-constrained settings.

 

Student success

• Alastair Kho, finalist, 2025 1962 Prize (best graduating ICT student from a WA university) awarded at The Annual Dennis Moore Oration.
• Susannah mentored five HCI students to win scholarships for Curtin Ignition 2022; and two in 2023
• Susannah's students won 1st, 2nd, 3rd place Peter Fillery Undergraduate Tertiary Student Project Award at the 2023 WAITTA awards.

 

Qualifications

Susannah's PhD at the University of Melbourne was in Intelligent Agents in Artificial Intelligence on Multi-agent Systems for defence decision support systems. Susannah has a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) from UWA.

 

Employment History

Susannah joined Curtin and Curtin College in 2013, where she has many years experience lecturing Computing to the next generation of Computer Scientists and Engineers; she was also a staff member of the Curtin HIVE visualisation facility; and has led several research projects, and supervised many Computing, Engineering and Maths students. Susannah's formative career was spent many years as a Software Engineer in the defence industry.