Rate My Professor Essam Debie

Dr. Essam Debie is a Lecturer and Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Systems & Computing at UNSW Canberra, University of New South Wales. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2014, Master of Science degree in Information Systems in 2010, and Bachelor of Science in Information Systems and Technology in 2003. Throughout his career at UNSW Canberra, Debie has focused on advancing research in human-machine systems and artificial intelligence applications.

Debie's research specializations encompass Human-Autonomy Interaction and Swarm Intelligence. His contributions include developing adaptive AI for modulating assistance based on cognitive workload using EEG and physiological signals, shepherding and coordination of UAV/UGV swarms, and trust architectures for human-swarm teaming. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, including journal articles such as 'Task-focused robotic swarming: Maximising effectiveness via specialised roles' (2025, Robotics and Autonomous Systems), 'Why Autonomous Vehicles Are Not Ready Yet: A Multi-Disciplinary Review of Problems, Attempted Solutions, and Future Directions' (2025, Journal of Field Robotics), 'Swarm Robotics: A Survey from a Multi-Tasking Perspective' (2024, ACM Computing Surveys), 'Session Invariant EEG Signatures using Elicitation Protocol Fusion and Convolutional Neural Network' (2022, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing), 'Human-Swarm-Teaming Transparency and Trust Architecture' (2021, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica), and 'Multi-Modal Fusion for Objective Assessment of Cognitive Workload: A Review' (2019, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics). Additional key works feature 'Electroencephalographic Workload Indicators During Teleoperation of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Shepherding a Swarm of Unmanned Ground Vehicles in Contested Environments' (2020, Frontiers in Neuroscience), 'Path Planning for Shepherding a Swarm in a Cluttered Environment using Differential Evolution' (2020, IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence), and book chapters like 'Transparent Shepherding: A Rule-Based Learning Shepherd for Human Swarm Teaming' (2021). Debie has also presented at conferences, including 'From Single-tasking Swarming to Multi-tasking Heterogeneous Swarming for Solving Non-uniform Area Coverage Problems' (2025, International Conference on Swarm Intelligence).