Professor Gillian Dobbie of the University of Auckland has been appointed Chair of the Marsden Fund Council by the Minister for Research, Science and Innovation

The Council comprises eminent researchers who assess funding applications for the Marsden Fund. In the 2022 year the Fund invested $77.391 million in support of 113 research projects.

Professor Dobbie has convened the Council’s Mathematical and Information Sciences panel since 2015.

She succeeds Professor David Bilkey, who has chaired the Council since 2018.

Professor Gillian Dobbie is from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland.

Although she has a broad understanding of computer science, her passion is in getting the most out of data, which includes how data can be processed efficiently, and the insights we can gain from data.

She has most recently worked in anomaly detection in data streams, which can be applied in many areas, such as detecting change in social media streams, or detecting fraud in online auctions.

Previously, she worked in the foundations of database systems, defining logical models for various kinds of database systems, and reasoning about the correctness of algorithms in that setting.

With colleagues at the National University of Singapore, she defined a data model for semistructured data (called ORA-SS), providing a language independent description of the data.

Her work ranges from theory to application, proving the correctness of algorithms through to experimental computer science.

Gillian received a PhD from the University of Melbourne in 1995.

She has published more than 130 peer-reviewed research papers, and served as a reviewer for numerous conferences and journals.

 Source:  Royal Society of New Zealand