Fulbright scholarship for Business School alum

Dr Kim Kwang (Raymond) Choo is a 2009 Fulbright professional scholar as well as a cybercrime expert and business administration alumnus. Dr Choo was awarded the prestigious award early this year - the 2009 Fulbright Professional Australia/U.S. Alliance Studies Scholarship sponsored by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade- and will undertake research into the current and future trends in cybercrime at Rutgers University's School of Criminal Justice in New Jersey, and the Palo Alto Research Centre in California. Dr Choo said, "In our increasingly interconnected world, threats to national security can come from unexpected sources and directions." "It is important to remember that cyberspace has no geographic boundaries. "Criminals and other actors with malicious intent have, undeniably, recognized the value of leveraging information and communications technologies (ICT) to facilitate or enhance the commission of crimes and are dynamic in identifying new opportunities and ways to overcome counter-measures," he said. Dr Choo works for the Australian Institute of Criminology, Australia's pre-eminent national crime and criminal justice research agency. His research for the Institute encompasses the criminological aspects of technology-enabled crime as well as money laundering and terrorist financing in regulated and non-regulated (or under-regulated) sectors through exploitation. While undertaking his PhD in Information Technology with QUT, Dr Choo started to study the MBA program part-time at UQ Business School in July 2004. "I decided to undertake part-time studies with UQ mainly due to UQ's reputation in delivering quality education and also UQ has a focused and targeted MBA degree with a flexible structure. "This flexibility was very important to me as I needed a program that could be adapted around my full-time Ph.D. and part-time tutoring commitments at QUT at the time. "I had firm support from and made lasting friendship with the lecturers, staff and fellow students at UQ Business School. "I would also not have submitted one of my assignments to a journal for peer-review if not for the encouragement from my lecturer, Dr. Peter Clutterbuck", he said. The article was later published in the Information Management & Computer Security journal. Along with the 2009 Fulbright scholarship, Dr Choo is also the recipient of several awards including the Australian Public Service 2008 Australia Day Achievement Medallion, the Wilkes Award for the best paper published in the 2007 volume of The Computer Journal (Oxford University Press), the 2007 Queensland University of Technology Faculty of IT Executive Dean's outstanding PhD thesis commendation, and the Best Student Paper Award at the 10th Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 2005). Dr Choo relocated to Sydney for family commitments in early 2006, graduating from UQ with a Graduate Diploma in Business Administration in December 2005, and a PhD from QUT in 2006. For further insight into Dr Choo's research, Dahna McConnachie interviewed him for the magazine, Technology & Business, 2 April