Dr Eric Howard

Dr Eric Howard is the Academic Director in Information Systems and Information and Communications Technology and a Senior Lecturer at Southern Cross Institute (SCI). He provides academic leadership across the Bachelor of Business course with Information Systems major and the Master of Information and Communications Technology (MICT). His contribution to higher education brings together academic leadership, curriculum development and teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, with a strong commitment to student engagement, professional practice and building stronger links between academia and industry.

Dr Howard holds a PhD from Macquarie University and has a multidisciplinary academic background spanning computer engineering, machine learning, data science, scientific computing, cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence. He brings extensive experience across the information technology industry, higher education and research. He has held academic, research, postdoctoral, visiting and adjunct appointments at universities and research organisations in Australia and internationally. He was awarded a CSIRO Early Research Career (CERC) Fellowship and has contributed to national and international research collaborations across software and computing, physical sciences and emerging technologies.

His research focuses on quantum neural networks, quantum machine learning, quantum information, quantum computing and physics-inspired machine learning, with particular interests in hybrid classical-quantum learning algorithms, quantum simulation, optimisation methods and emerging computational methods, including evolutionary and reservoir computing, neuromorphic computation and other advanced computational paradigms. His broader research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, computational modelling, complex systems, mathematical physics and theoretical computer science. His research brings together computational and theoretical approaches to complex problems in quantum technologies, intelligent systems, computational physics and advanced computing, with an emphasis on developing and applying advanced computational methods to interdisciplinary research problems.

Dr Howard is also a published author with an extensive record of peer-reviewed academic publications and contributes to national and international research collaborations, scholarly publishing, editorial activities and academic peer review.

Email – [email protected]