Dr. Cameron Foale
Head of Information Technology
Campus
Biography
Associate Professor Cameron Foale is Head of Information Technology within the Institute of Innovation, Science and Sustainability (IISS) at Federation University Australia, where he oversees the delivery of IT courses spanning software and web development, artificial intelligence and innovation and entrepreneurship.
Cameron's primary research focus is multi-objective reinforcement learning, with broader interests in safe and explainable AI, digital interventions to support mental health and digital literacy and biopsychosocial health data. He's an active member of the Australian Responsible Autonomous Agents Collective (ARAAC), a cross-institutional group working on AI alignment and explainability, and contributes to Federation University's Health Innovation and Transformation Centre (HITC), Centre for Smart Analytics (CSA), and the Internet Commerce Security Laboratory (ICSL). He is currently involved in two Government-supported multi-institutional projects focused on mental health outcomes for older Australians and the workforce that supports them.
Industry engagement is a key focus. Cameron led the IT discipline's cooperative transformation project to integrate work placement and industry co-design, co-development and co-delivery into Federation's IT course offerings. He brings significant hands-on experience to his role, having worked as a systems administrator, embedded systems developer, software engineer, UX designer and technical lead prior to joining academia. He is also an experienced PhD supervisor.
Cameron completed his PhD at the University of Ballarat in 2010 in acoustics for virtual environments. He returned to teaching and research at Federation University in 2014.
Fields of research
- Reinforcement learning
- Digital health
More about Cameron
Qualifications
- PhD, University of Ballarat
Areas of interest
- Multi-objective reinforcement learning
- Safe and explainable artificial intelligence
- Digital interventions for mental health and digital literacy
- Biopsychosocial health data
- Signal processing for musical applications
Areas of expertise
Cameron has expertise in artificial intelligence, particularly reinforcement learning, and digital health and wellness. He brings significant industry experience to his academic role, having worked as a systems administrator, embedded systems developer, software engineer, UX designer and technical lead.
Grants
- Vamplew, P., Foale, C., 2024 “Support of ARAAC – AI Safety”, Founders Pledge ($127,000)
- Klein, B., Browning, C., Foale, C., Van Doorn, G., et al (2024-2028) “ARC ITTC for Optimal Ageing - Digital integration within ageing health workforces and workforces supporting older people ecosystem”, ARC, Flourish Australia, WellAware ($1,092,577)
- Klein, B., Foale, C., et al (2024-2028) “ON-TRAC: Improving the mental health of Older Australians Navigating the Transition to Residential Aged Care.”, The Ian Potter Foundation Ltd ($600,000)
Current
- PhD student, Federation University, ON-TRAC project, supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, ON-TRAC project, associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, ON-TRAC project, associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, ON-TRAC project, associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, 'Adversarial Machine Learning in the context of Safety-Critical AI Systems', associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, 'Techniques for Analysis of Multi-omics Data', associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, 'Online Digital Support Platform for People with Avascular Necrosis (AVN)', supervisor.
Past
- PhD student, Federation University, ‘Evaluating Explanations of Artificial Intelligence Decisions: the Explanation Quality Rubric and Survey’, associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, ‘Statistical assessment of Australian bushfire conditions : long-term changes and variability’, associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, ‘Adventures in software engineering : plugging HCI & acessibility gaps with open source solutions’, associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, ‘Investigating the Configuration of a Flight Training Device for Visual Flight Rules Navigation’, associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, ‘Biopsychosocial Data Analytics and Modeling’, associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, ‘Single- and multiobjective reinforcement learning in dynamic adversarial games’, associate supervisor.
- PhD student, Federation University, ‘Rule-based interactive assisted reinforcement learning', associate supervisor.
- Software and web development
- Software engineering and mobile development
- Artificial intelligence and cognitive systems
- Work-integrated and experiential learning
Specialist roles
- Head of Information Technology
Professional association memberships
- Australian Computer Society (ACS)
- Publications
An empirical investigation of value-based multi-objective reinforcement learning for stochastic environments
- Journals
- DOI reference: 10.1017/S0269888925100052