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Liaquat Hossain

Liaquat Hossain photo

BBA, MSc (Assumption) PhD (Wollongong), Postdoc (MIT)
Professor
Associate Dean Postgraduate Coursework, Faculty of Engineering & IT
Director, Project Management Programme




School of Civil Engineering, Room PNR 335
Phone: +61 2 9036 9110
Fax: +61 2 9351 3343
Email:

About Liaquat

I worked as a Postdoc in Information Economics, MIT Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA during 1997-1998. During 1995-1997, I was a PhD student in Information and Communications Technology, School of Information Technology and Computer Science, The University of Wollongong, NSW Australia. I completed MSc in Computer and Engineering Management with a specialisation in systems management and operations research and Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) from Assumption University during 1994 and 1993.

I am interested in understanding the formation and adaptation of hierarchical, non hierarchical, emerging and self organized structures in social, biological, living and organizational systems. I have been investigating the functioning and robustness of hierarchical structures and potential problem leading to disruption or delay in the adaptation of behaviors for optimal functioning. I consider the examination of feedback systems leading to effectiveness and efficiency in learning, correcting or intervention to changed behavior an important step towards understanding performance outcome of different networks in social, biological, living and organizational systems. I am fascinated by the complexity of interactions of different macro and micro structures which could lead to positive, negative or improved outcome in different types of systems and sub systems.

I have significant working relationships with Banks, Insurance Companies such as HCF, CRC Financial Markets, CRC Bushfire, NSW Fire, NSW Ambulance, Department of Environment and Sustainability, Australian Federal Police, NSW Health and Hunter NewEngland Area Health Services, State Emergency Services, Emergency Management Australia. Within the University of Sydney, I have been able to link my research activities with Institute for Sustainable Solutions, Sydney Institute for Emerging Infectious Disease, Centre for Obesity Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease, Centre for Mathematical Biology and Centre for International Security.

Grants Awarded

  • 2011-2013 - ARC Discovery Grant $499,000 over 3 years, A/Prof Jennifer A O'Dea, A/Prof Michael J Dibley, Prof Liaquat Hossain
    An investigation of ethnicity, socio-economic status and social networks as drivers of childhood obesity and body image among children
  • 2010-2013 - $274K from CRC Bushfire for Incident Management and Coordination Research
  • 2010 - $530K for AusAid Africa Fellowships program (with Geoff Gallop and Lee Burns)
  • 2009-2011 - $320K for leading the following research program on Social Networks for Australian CMCRC (Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre) http://www.cmcrc.com and HCF Australia (Hospital Contribution Funds).
  • 2002-2005 - $1.2m from US Department of Defense Award for CRC (Context, Role and Semantic) approach in early detection of insider threats (US$1.2m for 3 years, with Prof. Liz Liddy and A/Prof. Joon Park).

Current Collaborative Research Projects

Exploring Childhood Obesity through Social Networks (Jennifer O’Dea, Faculty of Education; Michael Dibley, Sydney School of Public Health and Liaquat Hossain, Faculty of Engineering & IT) This project is funded by ARC Discovery Grant 2011 ($499K for 3 years)

We aim to apply multi method approaches to deliver a comprehensive and longitudinal understanding of the complexity of Australia’s obesity trends among children and adolescents by identifying the social drivers of childhood obesity and related weight issues. With a focus on attitudinal and culturally informed factors, and the cross-cutting influence of social networks, the research will highlight opportunities for education, health promotion and social policy to affect obesity prevention strategies and outcomes. The major research question is - How are childhood obesity and body image interrelated with ethnicity, socio-economic status and social networks and how are these issues understood among various groups and networks of students and their families?

Dynamic Modeling of Organizational Colony Networks for Coordinated Response to Influenza (Liaquat Hossain, Faculty of Engineering & IT; Tania Sorrell, Sydney Institute for Emerging Infectious Disease and Biosecurity; and John Crawford Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources)

We propose to develop biologically inspired dynamic social network algorithm for developing robust monitoring, prediction and evaluation of the spread of infections as well as the robustness in coordinated response to infections. In our proposed study, new bio inspired dynamic network algorithms would be developed to perform the real time monitoring of spread of infections which would be used to perform optimized link prediction in a distributed spread of infections network. The outcome of our study would lead to the development of not only new optimized approach to monitor and link prediction of the spread dynamics of the bacterial colony, but also to explore the robustness of organizational colony of Area Health Networks in responding to the infections optimally.

BISoN: A Biologically-Inspired Social Network Framework for Coordinated and Adaptive Emergency Response (Liaquat Hossain, Faculty of Engineering & IT; John Crawford, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, and State Emergency Services SES as partner organisation)

We propose to explore complex adaptive coordination structures from social, biological and life networks perspective. Traditionally, within studies of coordination, there has been a discounting or neglect of social networks as a source of exploring the inherent relationships among actors, their activities, shared goals and interdependencies. Coordinating operations requiring more ‘collaborative problem solving’ involving officials and local communities is underscored in recent studies. Our aim is to create more effective, efficient and robust information network systems for decision making during crisis events and for post-crisis analysis.

Adaptive multi-agency response coordination for managing distributed disease outbreaks (Liaquat Hossain, Faculty of Engineering & IT; John Crawford, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, and Hunter NewEngland Area Health Networks as partner organisation)

This will be an ambitious project to combine knowledge and theory from sociology, biology, information systems, and mathematical and economic sociology to analyze disease outbreak coordination dynamics involving Australian multi-organizational disease-outbreak responses from a self-organization perspective. To achieve this, we will draw on the strengths of strong- and weak-tie theories, and structural holes theory, with theoretical analyses from the study of adaptive and self-healing biological network dynamics. The outcomes will position Australian and overseas authorities to mount significantly more effective responses to sudden, unpredictable disease outbreaks, whether arising accidentally or through bioterrorism.

Dynamics of Peer Counselling, Mothers and Family Social Networks for infant and young child feeding (Liaquat Hossain, Faculty of Engineering & IT; Michael Dibley, Sydney School of Public Health and Cynthia Hunter, Sydney School of Public Health)

Poor nutritional status of children is a major public health problem throughout the developing world and is the underlying cause for 35% of child deaths and 11% of the total global disease burden. (Black 2008) Inappropriate infant and young child feeding (IYCF) is an important predictor of poor growth, illness and death in infants and young children (Black 2008). Developing effective and sustainable interventions to improve IYCF will be integral components of efforts to reach the child survival and malnutrition Millennium Development Goals of developing countries. Our aim is to understand the influence of dynamics of social networks on the infant feeding decisions of women and their families in urban and rural and the extent to which the social networks of peer counsellors, who are promoting appropriate IYCF, impact on their effectiveness in changing feeding behaviours in developing economies.

Child parents: social networks effects on teenage pregnancy and parenthood (Elias Mpofu, Susan Skinner from the Faculty of Health Sciences, Liaquat Hossain from the Faculty of Engineering and IT and Zakia Hossain from the Faculty of Health Sciences; Family Planning Tasmania as partner organization)

Teenage pregnancy and parenthood in Australia exceeds prevalence in many OECD countries. Family planning interventions with teenagers ignores the social interaction effects on fertility control and early parenthood. The project will deliver social network maps important for family planning and early parenthood support programmes with teenagers. The project aims to profile the structure of social networks that influence fertility control and early parenthood among Tasmanian teenagers. It has critical significance for national initiatives to provide the evidence important for fertility control and parenthood interventions with teenagers. Decisions by teenagers to be become parents have significant socio-economic consequences for the teenagers themselves, their children, families and communities. Costs to the national economy from teenage pregnancy and parenthood are in excess of 9 million dollars per annum (Aruda, McCabe, Burke & Litty, 2008). The social influence maps to be delivered will benefit family planning programmes for teenagers across the nation.

Selected Key Journal Publications

  • Hossain, L., Kim, D., Uddin, S. (2011) Situated Response and Learning of Distributed Bushfire Coordinating Teams, Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, to appear in 2011 (Impact Factor: 0.667).
  • Abbasi, A., Altmann, L., and Hossain, L (2011) Scientific Collaboration (co-authorship) impact on Scholars’ Performance, Journal of Informetrics (JOI), accepted on 9/03/2011 (Impact Factor: 3.379).
  • Abbasi, A., Uddin, S., and Hossain, L. (2011) Socioeconomic analysis of patientcentric networks: effects of patients and hospitals’ characteristics and network structure on hospitalization costs, The European Journal of Health Economics, DOI 10.1007/s10198-011-0303-5 (Impact Factor: 1.337).
  • S. Uddin, S.T.H. Murshed, and Hossain, L (2011) Power-law behaviour in complex organizational communication network during crisis, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, doi:10.1016/j.physa.2011.03.028 (Impact Factor: 1.562).
  • Uddin, S., Hossain, L., Murshed, S. T. and Crawford, J. W. (2011) Static versus dynamic topology of complex communications network during organizational crisis, Complexity, 16: n/a. doi: 10.1002/cplx.20349 (Impact Factor: 0.948).
  • Uddin, M. S. and Hossain, L. (2011) Social Networks Enabled Coordination Model for Cost Management of Patient Hospital Admissions, Journal for Healthcare Quality, 33: no. doi: 10.1111/j.1945-1474.2010.00118.x.
  • Uddin, S. and Hossain, L. (2011) Disaster coordination preparedness of soft-target organisations, Disasters, 35: no. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7717.2011.01229.x (Impact Factor: 0.781).
  • Chung, K. S. K and Hossain, L. (2010) Towards a social network model for understanding information and communication technology use for general practitioners in rural Australia, Computers in Human Behaviour, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2009.12.008, pp. 562–571 (Impact Factor: 1.677).
  • Hossain, L. and Kuti, M. (2010), Disaster response preparedness coordination through social networks, Disasters, 34: 755–786. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7717.2010.01168.x (Impact Factor: 0.781).
  • Hossain, L. (2009) Communications and Coordination in Construction Projects, Journal of Construction Management and Economics, January, 27, pp. 25–39.
  • Chung, K., Hossain, L. (2009) Measuring Performance of Knowledge Intensive Work Groups through Social Networks, Project Management Journal, Vol. 40, Issue 2, pp. 34-58.
  • Hossain, L. (2009) Social Networks on Dynamic and Complex Project Coordination, Editorial for International Journal of Project Management Special Issue on Social Networks and Dynamic Project Coordination, Vol. 27, pp. 433-434.
  • Hossain L. (2009) Effect of organisational position and network centrality, International Journal of Project Management (2008), Vol. 27, pp. 680-689.
  • Hossain, L., Wu, A. (2009) Communications Network Centrality Correlates to Organizational Coordination, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 27, pp. 795-811.
  • Hossain, L., Kuti, M. (2008) CORDNET: Towards a Distributed Behavioural Model for Emergency Response Coordination, Project Management Journal, Vol. 39, Issue 4, pp. 68–94.
  • Hossain, L., and Wigand, R. T. (2004) ICT Enabled Virtual Collaboration through Trust, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, JCMC 10 (1) November 2004, pp.22-31 (Impact Factor: 3.639).
  • Hossain, L (2003) Is Formalised Structure a necessary prerequisite for implementation a national telecommunications plan in both Developed and Developing Economies? Technovation, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 39-49 (Impact Factor: 2.466).
  • Hossain, L. (2001) The Management Challenges for the Thai Telecom Operators: A Framework for Understanding the Telecommunications Strategic Planning Process for the Case of the Telephone Organization of Thailand (1954-1996), Technovation, Vol. 21, No. 7, pp.449-461 (Impact Factor: 2.466).
  • Hossain, L (2000) Infrastructure Development Planning in SEA: An Analysis of the National Telecommunications Planning Practice in Thailand, Technovation, 20, 275-285 (Impact Factor: 2.466).
  • Hossain, L (1999) Fostering Economic Development through Telecommunications in SEA: Challenges facing the Thai telecommunications regulators, Technovation, 19, 681-689, (Impact Factor: 2.466).

School & University Service

  • Associate Dean Postgraduate Coursework, Faculty of Engineering & IT
  • Member, Graduate Studies Committee of the Academic Board
  • Member, Academic Board