Phd Scholarship in Csiro Next Generation Graduate

**The Opportunity**

This opportunity is limited to Australian citizens, Australian Permanent Residents, NZ Citizens and any person entitled to stay in Australia, or to enter and stay in Australia, without any time limitations.

Almost half of Australians will experience mental ill health. But nearly 70% of those with a known mental health condition don’t seek professional help due to stigma, high costs, limited access, fear, and other factors.

**The problem**

Most mental health problems are established between the ages of 14 to 24, highlighting the importance of early detection and intervention. From an economic perspective, $10.6 billion is spent on Australian mental health services annually, and productivity losses caused by mental ill-health are as high as $39 billion per year.

From facilitating data-supported decision-making to enabling self-directed intervention via everyday technologies, there are ways that AI can be used to respond to this national and global challenge.

**The goal**

**Outcomes you’ll drive**

We will achieve our goal through:

- New models of care and technologies to support the mental health of Australians
- A model of research training that has been co-designed with industry and service delivery partners to deliver maximum impact
- A problem-driven research program grounded in the strategic priorities of our partners
- Sustainable collaborations between academia, industry and service providers supported by an AI in Mental Health network
- Opportunities for networking and professional development in the forms of regular events including talks, workshops and annual ‘all hands’ conferences.

**Your study experience**

As one of our graduate researchers, you will:

- Develop an understanding of both clinical mental health and applied AI methods, as well as expertise in your chosen area of interest
- Undertake industry placements that are directly related to your research, giving you first-hand experience of digital mental health care service design, development and delivery
- Have support from industry and service delivery partners, as well as academic researchers with clinical and technical expertise
- Contribute to solving real-world problems that are co-designed with industry partners and clinical services - providing a direct pathway from research to impact
- Take part in a dedicated nine-week training program delivered by CSIRO’s Data61
- Engage with a national cohort of Next Generation Graduate Program research students and industry partners through expert seminars, networking activities and student-led grassroots events.

**The specific project -** **AI-augmented coaching, reporting and its assessment**

This PhD Scholarship is offered as part of the NextGen AI in Mental Health Program which is training future leaders working at the intersection of AI and mental health. Within this project position you will develop general cutting edge generative AI and natural language processing methods to advance AI-augmented human-in-the-loop coaching and associated training planning and outcome reporting.

The research will be completed specifically in the context of novel AI-augmented gaming coaching and National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) reporting methods for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), psychosocial and other barriers. Moreover, the quality of these methods will be assessed in the context of improved coaching, NDIS reporting efficiencies and participant outcomes. This will be achieved in a real world setting through collaboration with Crank Group Pty Ltd.

Crank Group will provide re-identifiable, de-identified demographic information, NDIS plans, coaching transcripts and other datasets from their Crew members to enable the development of AI-augmented gaming coaching and reporting tools that will lead to improved outcomes for ASD participants. This will be achieved through three main projects. (1) The recruited PhD student will perform natural language processing and machine learning research into AI-augmented coaching to provide a pre-coaching session AI-based question and answer tool for Crank crew members to prepare for coaching sessions around specific video gaming topics. (2) Moreover, the PhD student will complete natural language processing and machine learning research into AI-based activity planning and National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) report generating based on demographic information, NDIS plans, coaching transcripts and other datasets of Crew members. This will lead to a tool that generates coaching plans, coaching activities and NDIS reports for Crank Crew members. (3) Finally, the PhD student will assess the utility of the tools and methods described above for the purposes of supporting Crank Crew and demonstrating increased efficiencies in NDIS reporting and improved coaching and outcomes for Crank Crew members The AI-based approach will be benchmarked against standard manual approaches.

Skills in graph databases (Neo4J)