Homepage of Nik Nailah Binti Abdullah

Background

I am a computer scientist (specializing in applying cognitive science theories to develop multi-agent systems), industry engagement coordinator and lecturer attached to the School of Information Technology at Monash University Malaysia. Visit my university homepage here.

I collaborate with cardiologists at the Ministry of Health Malaysia cardiac center(s), oncologist, Dr. Nik Aslan Abdullah, Cancer Center, Sunway Medical Center, Malaysia together with Dr. William J. Clancey and Dr. Anil Raj, (Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, IHMC, USA) on developing cost-effective AI applications for the undeserved, rural patients diagnosed with heart failure and cancer disease, including in rural areas in India.

I received my DEA (French Masters Degree equivalent) and Doctor in Philosophy degree with Distinction in Informatics from Université Montpellier II Sciences et Techniques du Languedoc, France in 2002 and 2006 respectively.

Impact and engagement

I was recently invited as a TedX speaker at Sunway University in 2017 to speak about my recent work with our hospitals in Malaysia in the area of multi-agent systems.

In 2014, I organised the 1st International Frontiers in Intelligent Medicine Symposium together with the Institut Jantung Negara (National Heart Institute of Malaysia), Agensi Inovasi Malaysia with the support of the Ministry of Health Malaysia. The symposium brought together international scientists in their field such as Dr. William J.Clancey, Prof. Ted Shortliffe (Arizona State University and Columbia University), Prof. Vimla Patel(New York Academy of Medicine and Columbia University) together with eminent clinicians such as Dr. Razali Omar (electrophysiologist at the CVSKL hospital, Kuala Lumpur) and Dr. David Steinhaus from Medtronic plc in tackling future healthcare challenges.

(Listen to my interview on the Intelligent Medicine on the BFM radio podcast)

In 2015, I received the Pro Vice Chancellor Award for Excellence in Education (Open Category) in my contribution to establishing project based learning in the industry for our undergraduate course.

In 2012, I organized a series of ten lectures talk on “Work Systems Design: Knowledge Representation and Software Engineering Methods” in collaboration with the former Chief Scientist of Human Computing at NASA Ames, California, Dr William J. Clancey as an official NASA scientist visit to Malaysia to give the lecture talks at Mimos Berhad (National R&D institute) and at the Islamic Int. University of Malaysia (IIUM).

In 2009, I was invited as a speaker at the ‘Technovisionaire’ for the opening of the Year of Creativity Milano officiated by President Filippo Penati as a recognition as being one of the three finalists for the "The Technovisionarie" BlackBerry¨ “Women and Technology Award” associated by IFIP in 2008.

In 2008, I was invited as a Google Tech Talk speaker at Google Mountain View, California in 2008 to speak on the theoretical framework that I had developed 'The Activity States Framework' for human-agent communication.

My research in the News:

Newspaper interviews on my research projects below:

Brief background on the patient safety project at the Intensive Care Unit, Institut Jantung Negara, published in the Star newspaper here
My undergraduate students projects interview in the Star newpaper here.

Our first empirical findings on the patient safety project co-authored with Dr. Sharil Ariffin was recently published as a technical paper titled "The Communication Patterns in the Context of Error in an Intensive Care Unit in a Malaysian hospital' at the Context2015 conference. The published paper is available here.

Other exciting efforts:

I work with our local start-up company together with students, cardiologists, and oncologist in public and private hospitals in finding a cost-effective, sustainable AI systems for the undeserved rural patients.

In the past I had supervised Dr. Maxim Makatchev, former PhD student in Robotics at the Carnegie Mellon University on the Activity States Framework project at the National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan.

In the past I had also organised the Cognition & AI Special Track at The 25th Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS-25) together with Dr. William J. Clancey.

My research interests

My research interest is in the development of an empirical user requirements method in healthcare settings. I am interested in modeling the user requirements based on the analysis of human activities (considering the tools, and dynamics of their interactions). The activities are modeled using communication and cognition theories, such as activity theory and situated cognition. The modeling of cognition as a method for user requirements becomes critical when the systems that we develop are for the healthcare users and where belief-system plays a great influence in how users perceive the system's usefulness in the use of their context.

Thus, I specifically look into the new ways that the method can inform system designers on how to create and improve seamless system interaction between users and systems ( i.e., clinician team and patients in critical care settings, outpatient with physicians/ hospital system interaction) in everyday setting enabling the users to learn and adapt in settings.

My method in using the notion of activity to model human cognition for deriving user requirements was based on my PhD work. If you want to understand more about my fundamental research interest and motivations, watch my Google Tech Talk here on the 'Activity States Framework' . Also click here to find out the basic ideas of Activity States Framework.

My curriculum vitae here (html format)

For correspondence:

email: nik.nailah@monash.edu