Associate Professor Mitchell Welch

Biography

Mitchell Welch is currently working as an Associate Professor at the University of New England after completing his postgraduate research and undergraduate studies in Computer and Data science.  Previously, Mitchell worked as a software engineer, focusing on the development and customisation of cloud-hosted software, database systems and the integration platforms that connect enterprise information systems together.

Since 2014 Mitchell has worked on a range of research projects focusing on data science, machine learning and high-performance computing. His PhD project focused on the development of an Agent-Based Models for the establishment and spread of invasive insects and their situated effects on Australia’s agricultural industries. This research has included the application of parallel processing technologies (including NVidia CUDA), data compression techniques and the integration of Geographical Information systems (GIS) to produce highly detailed agent-base simulations.

Since then, Mitchell has carried out research on the application of machine learning and analytical techniques to agricultural applications. Some of these projects have included the development of approaches for livestock monitoring system using inertial sensors, the development of virtual herding/fencing technologies in sheep and the implementation of RFID tag-based tracking systems for monitoring layer hens in industrial poultry production.

More recently, Mitchell’s research has focused on the application of algorithms and approaches to the analysis collective behaviour and performance in team-based sport. He is currently working on a range of projects that aim to quantify the movement/collective behaviours of sports players within field-based sports and how this relates to the patterns of collective movement in nature. These multi-faceted projects incorporate the analysis of data from GPS-based tracking systems, the development of object tracking approaches for extracting player and animal positions from video data and the use of HPC platforms to analyse the resulting large datasets. The over-arching goal of these projects is to develop simulations that allow for the experimentation on the rules of interaction that govern the movement of teams and groups of animals.

Since 2015, Mitchell has served as the Postgraduate Coordinator for the computational science discipline. In 2016, he was responsible for the re-development of the course plans and curriculums for the Master of Computer Science, Master of Data Science, Master of Information Technology and their corresponding graduate diplomas/certificates.