A message from the Director Research Infrastructure (AI and Informatics)
AI can have a transformative impact on healthcare, improving patient outcomes, process efficiencies and research innovations.
The initiatives I am leading are aimed at helping the Faculty, and University, move from isolated experimentation with generative AI toward a coherent, research-focused capability.
The immediate priority is the delivery of a Research AI Sandbox: a governed environment in which researchers can safely test leading AI models, understand their strengths and limitations, and explore how they can support real research workflows. The Sandbox is also an institutional learning mechanism. It will generate evidence about demand, cost, security, researcher capability and the kinds of support needed to move promising uses from pilot to sustained service.
Alongside this, I am developing a broader vision for research in an age of computational collaboration. The central question is not simply how researchers use chatbots, but how research changes when computational systems can maintain project context, work with data and software, contribute to analysis, and support discovery under human direction. This work will inform future strategy, workforce development, governance and infrastructure planning.
A further focus is the Melbourne Biomedical Precinct. Through the emerging Melbourne Biomedical AI Consortium and discussions with industry and research partners, we are exploring how Parkville’s hospitals, institutes, laboratories, data assets and clinical environments could operate as a connected discovery and validation ecosystem.
Across all of this work, the objective is the same: to build trusted, shared capability that expands what researchers can do while preserving scientific judgement, institutional responsibility, research integrity and public trust.
Prof Andrew Lonie
Director, Research Infrastructure (AI and Informatics)
Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne