All of this started to make sure that dissemination of ideas does not stop in the time of Corona by adopting an online mode of operations for conducting seminars. While the pandemic has stopped face-to-face meetings, discussions, and departmental seminars, going online not only allows us to continue our intellectual discussions but also enables us to broaden the talks’ audience. Now potentially there will be many more people who would engage with our talks.

The main aim of STAEOnline is to have a seminar series where talks are presented by active researchers in the broad area of Systems Theory and Engineering by ensuring that interesting talks are accessible to the research community, in particular, and anyone with an interest in systems theory and engineering, in general. It is envisaged that the talks cover topics in the areas of control systems, robotics, optimisation theory and applications, computer engineering, machine learning, statistics and statistical learning theory, quantum systems, information theory, mathematical finance, computational biology, and all other related areas in applied mathematics, engineering, and theoretical computer science.

The presenters can be senior or junior academics, postdoctoral researchers or PhD students. In this way we can be sure that the broader community is aware of activities across the community and all participants are provided with learning and developmental opportunities. Moreover, it exposes the community to a diverse range of approaches and practices and thus ensuring an environment conducive to excellence, diversity of thought, and heterodoxy.

The seminars are conducted using Zoom meeting functionality. The talks are live streamed and a recorded version of the talk along with the slides will be made available online. In principle, anyone can watch the talk and participate in Q&A.

The presenters, at least initially, are mainly based in Australian institutions but the objective is to have guest speakers in +/- 4 hours-AEST-neighbouring time zones. It is hoped that STAEOnline will continue even after the COVID-19 pandemic has left our shores and augment the face-to-face departmental seminar series.