Vertical Applications

'Working at the boundaries' has proved an effective strategy in discovering research topics that extend knowledge in core disciplinary areas while also identifying areas of high-impact application for existing knowledge. In the EII Network, there are two types of boundaries that will be explored:

1. Boundaries between the specialisations within Networked Information Systems
   The nature of Information Systems makes these boundaries somewhat arbitrary. Using vertical applications as a mechanism to bring together Information Systems researchers will stimulate the flow of ideas and research results within the Networked Information Systems community. As an example, a researcher specialising in integrating data across multiple distributed databases might realise that new approaches to resource sharing developed by Infrastructures resources may enable new approaches that would be highly significant, if only satisfactory cost-sharing models can be devised.

2. Boundaries between researchers and technology receptors
   Interaction between the EII Network participants and leading-edge users and providers of Networked Information Systems technology and methodology will be productive from many perspectives. Considering challenging problems will allow EII Network participants to discover the limits of currently-available technology and methodology, and to encounter previously unrecognised research opportunities. For enterprises from industry and government to expose their strategic challenges to Australia's leading researchers will provide foresight into emerging technologies and widened options through ideas based on deeper knowledge of the new technology and methodology.

The following are vertical application domains that will impact on the shape of EII research collaboration between research programs; e-learning, e-research, e-astronomy, e-health, e-commerce and large enterprise information systems.

Program Coordinator

Dr. Kerry Taylor is Principal Research Scientist at the CSIRO ICT Centre, Canberra, as well as Visiting Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the Australian National University. Her research interests are in the areas of Bioinformatics and Biodiversity Informatics, Spatial Information Systems, Relational and Deductive Database Systems, Interoperability, Decision Support Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and Inductive Logic Programming.