Professor Michael Milford

Biography

I conduct interdisciplinary research at the boundary between robotics, neuroscience and computer vision and am a multi-award winning educational entrepreneur. My research models the neural mechanisms in the brain underlying tasks like navigation and perception to develop new technologies in challenging application domains such as all-weather, anytime positioning for autonomous vehicles. I am also passionate about engaging and educating all sectors of society around new opportunities and impacts from technology including robotics, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence. I currently hold the positions of Director of the QUT Centre for Robotics (acting), Professor at the Queensland University of Technology. I have or am leading or co-leading projects totalling more than 48 million dollars in research and industry funding for fellowships and team grants from funding bodies and industry. My papers have won (6) or been finalists (9) for 15 best paper awards including the 2012 ICRA Best Vision paper. My citation h-index is 39, with 8289 citations as of July 2021. I've won multiple awards including being one of only two Australians to ever win a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship, the ATSE Batterham Medal (2019) and the Queensland Young Tall Poppy of the Year (2015). I was named the top robotics researcher in Australia by citation impact by The Australian Research Magazine (2019) and was a top 3 finalist for the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher (2016), the APEC ASPIRE Prize Finalist (2018) and was a finalist in the Reimagine Education Awards Finalist K12 Category. I have dual Australian-US citizenship and have lived and worked in locations including Boston, Edinburgh and London. I have collaborated with organizations including Harvard University, Boston University, Oxford University, MIT, Google Deepmind, Amazon, Ford, Intel, NVIDIA, Caterpillar, the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As a lifelong educational entrepreneur, I have created innovative educational resources for students for 20 years, with customers across 35 countries. My company Math Thrills combines mass market entertainment and STEM education to create math-filled young adult fiction and movie-inspired education. Math Thrills has received funding from Kickstarter, QUTBluebox and the AMP Foundation, honours including being a finalist at the Reimagine Education awards, a TedXQUT talk and a World Science Festival event. We have over 20 titles including The Complete Guide to AI for Kids, the STEM Storybook and Rachel Rocketeer.