Nick Barnes

Nick Barnes is an Interim Director of the School of Engineering and Professor at the Australian National University (ANU), affiliated with the ANU College of Systems & Society. He advises the Bandalang Studio and leads research in computer vision, prosthetic vision, and biomedical engineering. His work focuses on 3D vision, probabilistic methods, and saliency detection, with clinical applications in retinal prosthesis development and bushfire detection systems.

Research interests include biological vision replication, prosthetic vision systems (e.g., Bionic Vision Technologies), and computer vision algorithms for medical devices. Collaborative projects involve partners like Optus Bushfire Research Centre, Bionic Vision Technologies, and CSIRO Health.

His team’s recent work includes advancements in retinal prosthesis functionality (face/chair detection, obstacle avoidance), clinical trials, and AI-driven medical imaging (polyp segmentation, colonoscopy automation). Notable student achievements include Sahir Shrestha’s DICTA 2021 Best Paper Award and Cedric Scheerlinck’s JG Crawford Prize for PhD Thesis.

Advising spans over 20 students across PhD and Master’s programs, with active collaborations on weakly supervised learning, point cloud analysis, and generative models. Key projects include ANU-Optus Bushfire Research and clinical trials for suprachoroidal retinal prostheses.

Research outputs emphasize multimodal systems, uncertainty-aware algorithms, and biomedical applications, bridging computer vision theory with clinical and real-world deployment.