Nguyen Khoi Tran

AI Agent Engineer & Researcher

GitHub: https://github.com/nguyentran0212
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nktran/

Research overview

I am an AI agent engineer and researcher focused on a single objective: making it possible for people to genuinely own and control the AI agents they run. My work targets the practical deployment, operation, and utilisation of autonomous agents on ordinary consumer hardware, which is hardware the user owns rather than hardware they rent from a cloud provider.

My current research and development focuses on an interoperable, extensible stack of technology for practical agent deployment and operation. This stack simplifies the running of AI inference on-device, then uses that inference to operate agents, with a strong emphasis on personal ownership and interoperability. The intent is a stack that keeps the user in control rather than locking them into a service.

My previous research work centred on trustworthy and resilient data management at the edge, using blockchain. I led a multi-year industry collaboration with the DSTG to explore distributed-ledger technology in edge environments, designing both the architecture and the software framework for an edge-blockchain platform. I also built a metadata-management architecture for mitigating supply-chain attacks, and designed a provenance-aware MLOps framework that extends provenance tracking across the machine-learning lifecycle, covering both the training data and the software artefacts that comprise the model.

Research interests

Key Projects and Partnerships

Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) – Edge Blockchain Platform
• Lead a multi‑year partnership to explore distributed‑ledger technology in edge environments.
• Designed an architectural knowledge base and a software framework that enables the deployment, operation and governance of edge blockchains for decentralized trust.
• Built a field‑testbed, conducted experiments on performance, scalability and resilience, and delivered seminars and technical workshops to disseminate the findings.

Cyber Security CRC – Software Supply‑Chain & MLOps Initiatives
• Developed an extensible architecture and framework for managing, distributing, and exploiting software‑supply‑chain metadata to mitigate supply‑chain attacks.
• Designed a distributed machine‑learning operations (MLOps) framework that provides security, provenance and auditability across the ML lifecycle.
• Supervised PhD student Liuyue Jiang in creating a model‑driven, AI‑aided dashboard‑generation framework to support cyber‑situational awareness in organisations.

PhD & Master Supervision

2023 - Now
PhD Supervision – Zihao Lin: Agentic approach and framework for engineering federated digital twin systems.

2021 - Now
PhD Supervision – Liuyue Jiang: Facilitating and improving cyber situational awareness in an organisation using model‑driven and AI‑aided dashboard generation.

Mar 2018 - Now
Master Project Supervision, School of Computer Science, The University of Adelaide

Dec 2020 - Mar 2021
Summer Research Project Supervision, CREST, The University of Adelaide

Teaching

Selected Publications

A full list is available online

2024
Tran, Nguyen Khoi, Samodha Pallewatta, Muhammad Ali Babar.
An Empirically Grounded Reference Architecture for Software Supply Chain Metadata Management.
EASE 2024: 38‑47

2024
Eken, Beyza, Samodha Pallewatta, Tran, Nguyen Khoi, Ayse Tosun, Muhammad Ali Babar.
A Multivocal Review of MLOps Practices, Challenges and Open Issues.
CoRR abs/2406.09737 (2024)

2023
Tran, Nguyen Khoi, Muhammad Ali Babar, Julian Thorpe, Seth Leslie, Andrew Walters.
An Experience Report on the Design and Implementation of an Ad‑hoc Blockchain Platform for Tactical Edge Applications.
ECSA 2023: 100‑116

2022
Tran, Nguyen Khoi, Muhammad Ali Babar, Andrew Walters.
A framework for automating deployment and evaluation of blockchain networks.
Journal of Network and Computer Applications 206: 103460 (2022)

2022
Liuyue Jiang, Tran, Nguyen Khoi, Muhammad Ali Babar.
Mod2Dash: A Framework for Model‑Driven Dashboards Generation.
Proceedings of ACM Human‑Computer Interaction 6(EICS): 172:1‑172:28 (2022)

2022
Tran, Nguyen Khoi, Bushra Sabir, M. Ali Babar, Nini Cui, Mehran Abolhasan, Justin Lipman.
ProML: A Decentralised Platform for Provenance Management of Machine Learning Software Systems.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.10110 (2022). Accepted as full paper in the European Conference on Software Architecture 2022.

2021
Tran, Nguyen Khoi, M. Ali Babar, Jonathan Boan.
Integrating blockchain and Internet of Things systems: A systematic review on objectives and designs.
Journal of Network and Computer Applications 173 (2021): 102844.

2020
Tran, Nguyen Khoi, and M. Ali Babar.
Anatomy, Concept, and Design Space of Blockchain Networks.
In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA), pp. 125‑134. IEEE, 2020

2019
Tran, Nguyen Khoi, M. Ali Babar, Quan Z. Sheng, John Grundy.
A Framework for Internet of Things Search Engines Engineering.
In 2019 26th Asia‑Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC), pp. 228‑235. IEEE, 2019

2018
Tran, Nguyen Khoi, Quan Z. Sheng, M. Ali Babar, Lina Yao, Wei Emma Zhang, Schahram Dustdar.
Internet of Things Search Engine: Concepts, Classification, and Open Issues.
Communications of ACM, 2018.

Professional Experience

Education

2015 - 2018
Ph.D., Computer Science, The University of Adelaide, Australia

2009 – 2013
B.Sc., Computer Science, International University – VNU‑HCMC, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Awards and Scholarship

2015
Beacon of Enlightenment PhD Scholarship, The University of Adelaide, 2015

2010 – 2013
Scholarship for Excellent Academic Performance, International University

2012
Scholarship for Excellence Academic Performance, CSC Vietnam, 2012

2009
Scholarship for Full First‑year Tuition Fee, International University, 2009

Language and Skills

Language

English (Proficient), Vietnamese (Native)

Technical Skills

Soft Skills