Christian M Jones

Biography

Professor Christian Jones is both an academic and commercial entrepreneur. He has a successful track record of managing large-scale academic research projects and spinning out Intellectual Property for industrial commercialisation.

Christian is the leader of the Engage Research Lab — where technologies for social good are designed. His background is in Psychology and Technology.

He joined USC in November 2006 to build collaborative research projects across the University and with local, national and international industry and government. Immediately prior to this he had an academic position in computer science at Heriot–Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, as well as founder and CEO of a UK-based emotion engineering company, Affective Media.

He heads up large scale collaborative projects in mental health and wellbeing, physical health and fitness, sports analytics, medical training, abuse prevention, road safety, augmented and virtual reality, affective computing (emotion), human computer interaction, and videogaming and serious games.

His research into affective computing considers how to develop systems that can automatically recognise human emotion and respond appropriately. He has developed systems that recognise human emotion from speech and from biometric sensors, and has applied these systems to create emotionally intelligent cars, robotics, mobile communications, customer relationship management, audio players and computer games.

Christian's PhD (conferred 1998) developed a talking-head animation systems capable of automatically lip synching to speech and he has worked with a wide range of speech-enabled technologies, including video compression, immersive virtual reality, entertainment, e-business and interactive digital television. This work enveloped many technical disciplines including speech physiology, communicative psychology and sociology, together with acoustic analysis, speech recognition and computer-based facial modelling and animation.

Christian is recognised by academia, industry and government as an international expert in interactive media, and have achieved awards and commercial success. His video games research has won industry awards (gold award for excellent in crime prevention, Games for Change ‘Most Significant Impact’ nomination, and keynotes at industry events: PAX, G4C), academic recognition (from the Young and Well CRC, and best paper awards at International conferences: INTERACT and BHCI), and government recognition (invited presentations to Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia governments and Intellectual Property being used in projects across Asia, Africa and US of significant social, environment, cultural and commercial benefit). He led the videogame and wellbeing project in the $35m, 75 partner, Young and Well CRC and led the acoustic emotion recognition program in the EU Humaine network of excellence (5m Euro, European Union funded, 33 partners from 14 countries) now the AAAC (Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing).

Christian researches how technologies can improve lives. Transforming lives across multiple domains and disciplines, he operates within five main themes: Health and Wellbeing, Environment and Place, Safety and Protection, Communications and Education, and Sports Performance and Analytics.

• Health and Wellbeing projects encompass mental health (ConNetica, Queensland Mental Health Commission, the Young and Well CRC), physical health (Champion Life), rapid virus diagnosis (Gates Foundation and Department of Health), alcohol misuse (Queensland Health, DRUG ARM Australasia, Drink Safe Coalition and auDA Foundation), Dementia (Churches of Christ, National Medical and Scientific Research, Wicking Trust and Mason Foundation), Autism (Autism Centre of Excellence), Indigenous health (communities in Queensland and NT), and Health promotion (Arts Queensland).
• In Environment and Place, research projects include community engagement (the NSF funded National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center), environment management (Smart State funding), water management (Queensland Water Infrastructure), and environmental education (Marecet and local councils).
• In Safety and Projection, research projects include child projection (Australian Institute of Criminology, Queensland Police Service, Daniel Morcombe Foundation and Telstra), abuse prevention (Coventry University, AIC), and road safety (Transport and Main Roads, RACQ and Queensland Police Service).
• In Communication and Education, research projects include medical training and simulation (Laerdal), teacher training (State Education), interactive mapping (NSF), and augmented reality information (Real Estate and local councils).
• In Sports Performance and Analytics, research projects include real-time athlete performance tracking and analysis (Lightning netball), and player performance data analysis for recruitment and training (Melbourne Storm NRL).

Since joining USC at the end of 2006, Christian has brought in over $2.5m of external grant income as Chief Investigator ($3.5m in total research projects dollars to USC). He has been leader of the Engage Research Lab since its conception in 2012 and the Associate Dean of Research for FABL between 2011 and 2018. He is also a founding member of the Sexual Violence Research and Prevention Unit.

His work has been published as over 100 international peer-reviewed journal and conference articles, and also covered in the New Scientist, Newsweek International, Beyond Tomorrow, and the ABC and BBC.

Awards

• Vice-Chancellor's Medal for Engagement (2010), University of the Sunshine Coast
• University Medal for Excellence in Teaching (2001), Heriot–Watt University

Roles

• Associate Dean of Research (2011-2018), University of the Sunshine Coast
• CEO and CTO of Affective Media Ltd (2001-2017)

Professional qualifications

• Chartered Engineer from the Engineering Council, UK
• Chartered IT Professional, from the British Computer Society
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Member of the Institute of Learning and Teaching
• Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (formerly IEE)
• Honorary Fellow of the Human Communications Research Centre, UK
• Honorary Fellow of the College of Science and Engineering at Edinburgh University

Expert media commentary

Professor Christian Jones' specialist areas of knowledge include augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, computer games, emotion, affective computing, speech, interactive media, visualisation, simulation, human-computer interaction, positive psychology, child protection, mental and physical health and wellbeing, sports performance, data analytics, biometric sensors, medical training, autonomous vehicles, and road safety.