| industry leaders

Bill Bartee | Managing Director, Southern Cross Ventures Partners

Bill is a founding partner of Southern Cross Venture Partners and has co-founded three successful companies. At Southern Cross he focuses on early stage software, telecommunications, and internet services companies. From 1997 to 2001, he helped build and lead the early stage investing for Macquarie Technology Ventures (MTV), a balanced venture fund focused on software, telecommunications, internet and life sciences. At MTV, Bill led investments in several market leaders including Altium (ASX: ALU), LookSmart (NASDAQ: LOOK), Seek (ASX: SEK), Telera (acquired by Alcatel), Thrombogenix, ePredix, and onebox (NASDAQ: OPWV).

Before founding Southern Cross, Bill was the CEO of Mantara, a company that makes high performance, content based message routing systems. Prior to moving to Australia, Bill had 12 years of research, operational, and entrepreneurial experience in the United States.

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Doron Ben-Meir | Chief Executive Officer, Commercialisation Australia

Doron Ben-Meir has extensive experience in the venture capital industry and commercialisation more generally. Over the past twenty years, he has been involved in numerous venture capital organisations, and has been a founder or co-founder of six start-up companies, as well as an investor, investment manager, and advisor to several other businesses. Through these activities, he has built a substantial network both domestically and internationally.

Mr Ben-Meir has wide-ranging experience in innovation, commercialisation and technology across various industry sectors. Having founded and supported startup companies, he has an intimate understanding of the practical challenges they face, as well as of what is required to make a company successful. Through his investments and advisory work, he has been involved in identifying and assisting innovative companies to commercialise their intellectual property and transition through various stages of business development.

Mr Ben-Meir is the Founder and CEO of Prescient Venture Capital, and has also held the positions of Principal, Private Equity and Venture Capital at Jagen Pty Ltd; General Manager, IT&T Investments at Escor Pty Ltd; and Investment Director at Momentum Funds Management. Mr Ben-Meir also co-founded several companies, including EneSolve Pty Ltd (energy efficiency); Centricom Pty Ltd (on-line payments); Giesecke & Devrient Australasia Pty Ltd (smart card manufacturing), and Security Magnetics Pty Ltd (identification security).

Mr Ben-Meir was appointed CEO of Commercialisation Australia in April 2010. Commercialisation Australia has funding of $278 million through to 2014 ($82million per year thereafter) which provides Australian businesses with access to a range of measures tailored to help them bring their intellectual property to market (www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au)

Mr Ben-Meir's qualifications include a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering (Hons) from Monash University, Melbourne. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the ANZA Technology Network, and a former member of the Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association Ltd (AVCAL).

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Mike Cannon-Brookes | Director, Tyro and CEO / Co-Founder, Atlassian

Mike Cannon-Brookes is a Director of Tyro, the first new entrant into the EFTPOS business in over 15 years. As Australia's first and only fully independent acquirer, Tyro offers an EFTPOS facility processing credit, debit, gift, loyalty and Medicare cards.

Mike Cannon-Brookes is also the Co-Founder/CEO of Atlassian, an innovative, award-winning enterprise software company producing tools that help technical and business teams collaborate, plan projects and build software. Based in Australia, Atlassian currently has over 20,000 enterprise customers around the globe and has been named one of the "Fastest Growing Companies" by both Deloitte and BRW Magazine, as well as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.

Mike has received international recognition for his work including the Australian IT Professional of the Year in 2004 and being named Australian Entrepreneur Of The Year in 2006. Mike was honoured by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2009. Mike is a Member of The Forum of Young Global Leaders.

His blog is entitled rebelutionary - http://blogs.atlassian.com/rebelutionary

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Dr Michelle Deaker | Managing Partner, OneVentures

Michelle Deaker established OneVentures in 2006, coming into the venture capital industry as a successful IT industry business owner and entrepreneur. OneVentures current fund is a $40 million Innovation Investment Fund backing innovative companies with global relevance in CleanTech, IT&T /New Media and Life Sciences. Michelle founded E Com Industries which became the leader in prepaid card and electronic voucher technologies in Australia and was acquired by a UK publicly listed company returning $30m cash and an excellent return to investors. For three years prior to establishing E Com, Michelle was the Managing Director of Sydney-based computer and web design firm, Networks Beyond 2000.

Through her interest in high growth companies, Michelle has provided advice for, invested in and raised capital for emerging technology companies. She has extensive experience in the development of early stage companies, a strong background in Australian R&D and expertise in international business expansion. Michelle serves on the Board of NICTA, Australia's National ICT centre of excellence. She also has a number of active board and advisory positions with OneVentures investee companies including Datacastle (Seattle) and AdGent 007 (San Francisco) and an interest in Sydney-based BuzzNumbers. Michelle has over 10 years experience in research and development with leading Australian Universities and CSIRO. She holds a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours), and with both a Commonwealth and the CSIRO Postgraduate Research Scholarships, was awarded a Masters of Science and a PHD in Applied Science.

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Hugh Durrant-Whyte | CEO, NICTA

Hugh Durrant-Whyte received the B.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of London, U.K., in 1983, and the M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees, both in Systems Engineering, from the University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A., in 1985 and 1986, respectively. From 1987 to 1995, he was a University Lecturer in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of Oriel College Oxford. From 1995-2010 he was Professor of Mechatronic Engineering at University of Sydney where he led the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems (CAS). In December 2010 Hugh took up the role of CEO of NICTA (National Information and Communications Technology Australia).

Hugh has been awarded two Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellowships; in 2002 and in 2007. His research work focuses on robotics and distributed sensor networks and he has published over 350 papers. His work with industry includes major robotics and automation projects in cargo handling, surface and underground mining, defence, unmanned flight vehicles and autonomous sub-sea vehicles. He has also co-founded three successful start-up companies.

Hugh has won numerous awards and prizes for his work including the ATSE Clunies Ross Award, IFR/IEEE Invention and Entrepreneurship Award, the NSW Pearcey Award, and four IEEE Best Paper prizes. He was named Professional Engineer of the year (2008) by the Institute of Engineers Australia Sydney Division and NSW Scientist of the Year (2010). He is an IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Distinguished Lecturer (2006-10). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE), a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (FIEEE), a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA), and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

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Todd Forest | Director, Content & Audience Experience, ninemsn

Todd Forest was appointed ninemsn's Director, Content & Audience Experience in August 2009. In his role, Todd manages ninemsn's entire content team in their development of innovative and engaging digital content.

Todd has almost 20 years experience within content development and delivery, audience insights, marketing and brand building. He joins ninemsn after seven years at AOL in the US, most recently as VP of AOL's Media Networks. Todd has also held the positions of General Manager (APAC) with Jobfox and Strategic Planner with Nike Inc. in the US.

Todd began his career as a strategy consultant for The Windsor Group, Inc. in the US before working for Sara Lee in brand marketing. He studied in the US and abroad and even interned under British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown while in London. Todd lives on Sydney's northern beaches with his wife and young family.

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Anthony Glenning | Investment Director, Starfish Ventures

Anthony Glenning joined Starfish Ventures in January 2010 focusing on information technology investments. His responsibilities include evaluating investment opportunities, performing due diligence, negotiating terms, execution of new portfolio investments and managing portfolio companies.

From 1999 to 2009, Anthony was an entrepreneur involved in a number of companies. Anthony was founder and CEO of Tonic Systems, a company that developed software for creating and managing presentations online. Tonic Systems was acquired by Google in 2007, where Anthony worked for the next 2 years within the Google Docs team. Anthony was also a founding, non-executive director of Cameron Systems, a company providing FIX protocol, software solutions to financial businesses, until it was acquired by Orc Software in 2006.

Prior to 1999, Anthony worked at Strategic Decisions Group as a management consultant specializing in high-risk, high reward decision analysis. Before that, Anthony was a staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, working on a range of projects including Energy Star power management compliance and the Java workstation. Overall, Anthony has spent a total of 14 years living in Silicon Valley and breathing entrepreneurship.

Anthony holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) (Hons) and a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) from the University of Melbourne, and a Master's of Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Anthony is currently a director for MetaCDN and Sokono. He is also Starfish's representative for NitroPDF.

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Edgar Hardless | Managing Director, SingTel Innov8

Edgar is the Managing Director for SingTel Innov8. Based in Singapore, he has over 17 years of telecommunications experience. Prior to SingTel Innov8, Edgar was VP of Strategic Investments responsible for coordinating and executing all M&A activities undertaken by SingTel. He has been with SingTel for almost 10 years, having joined the company's International Group in 2001 as Director of International Finance and Operations. During his tenure at SingTel, Edgar has also set up and headed SingTel's first ever Group Innovations unit, which was tasked with identifying new technologies and innovations that had the potential to have an impact on the telco industry and SingTel Group. Prior to SingTel, Edgar spent almost seven years with British Telecommunications (BT), the UK's largest telecommunications service provider, working in a number of strategy and corporate finance roles across the BT Group both in the UK and Asia Pacific.

Edgar is an associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and holds a BSc (Hons) in Business Administration from the University of Bath in the UK.

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Chris Hitchen | Executive Director - Local & Commerce, News Digital Media & CEO, Getprice.com.au

Chris Hitchen is the chief executive officer of comparison shopping site Getprice, with staff across offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Tel Aviv. Having launched the business in 2005 with his co-founders, Chris secured investment from News Ltd in 2007 who acquired the remainder of the business in 2010.

In addition to his role as chief executive officer at Getprice, Chris was appointed News Digital Media's executive director - local and commerce in June 2011. This appointment saw Chris' role expanded to oversee the operations of online business directory Truelocal.com.au with additional responsibility over News Digital Media's direction in the broader local and commerce space, including as a director of Ourdeal.com.au, a joint venture with Channel 10.

Prior to Getprice, Chris worked for Lycos Europe (part of the Bertelsmann media group) in Munich, Germany where he was responsible for the expansion of their ecommerce business Pangora into the UK.

Chris is involved in a number of digital businesses as an investor and director, including Hiro Media, Mogeneration, Sellmycastle, Compare Broadband, Pollenizer Ventures and Startmate, Australia's foremost seed financing vehicle for start-ups. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Directors.

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Ryan Junee | CEO & Co-Founder, Inporia

Ryan Junee is a serial entrepreneur, start-up advisor, investor and technophile. He is currently CEO and Co-Founder of Inporia, and is a mentor at 500 Startups and StartMate. His previous startup, Omnisio, developed innovative ways to edit and enhance online videos and was acquired by Google in 2008.

Ryan joined YouTube as a Product Manager as part of the Google acquisition. At YouTube he lead the development of many consumer facing features including a video player redesign, video quality improvements, video annotations, YouTube RealTime and YouTube Rentals.

As CEO and Co-Founder of Omnisio (a Y Combinator funded company), Ryan was responsible for developing the initial product, driving the company's strategic direction and ultimately negotiating the sale to Google. Prior to Omnisio, Ryan was Director of Strategic Partnerships for venture-backed start-up Sensory Networks. As the first employee he helped guide the company through its first four years of growth.

Ryan dropped out of the PhD program in Electrical Engineering at Stanford to pursue his passion for high technology startups. He holds a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford, as well as Bachelor's degrees in Computer Engineering, Finance and Commercial Law from the University of Sydney. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, Ryan now calls San Francisco home and in his spare time Ryan is a private pilot, enjoys snowboarding and playing music.

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Richard Mathews | Managing Partner, MHB Holdings

Prior to establishing MHB in 2007, Richard was CEO of Mincom, Australia's largest enterprise software company, increasing the share price from $2.50 to $8.77 in a two-year period. He drove the 2007 sale of the company to U.S. private equity group Francisco Partners, achieving liquidity for longstanding shareholders and a return of 351%.

In 2002 Richard held the position of Senior Vice President, International for J D Edwards and was involved in the US$2 billion sale of J D Edwards to PeopleSoft in 2003 following which he left as planned.

During 2009 he brought into and became the CEO of eServGlobal the largest Australian software provider to the Telecommunications industry which is listed in both Australia and the UK. In 2010 he sold 50% of that business to Oracle Corporation for 130% of the capitalisation of the entire company.

Richard has lived and worked in New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the United States. He has established businesses, turned around businesses and acquired companies in countries across the globe including India, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Africa, UAE, Spain, Chile, Japan, UK, Romania, Brazil, Germany and USA. To date he has been directly involved in either buying or selling over 30 technology companies.

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Daniel Petre | Chairman, netus

Daniel Petre has been a leading player in Australia's technology industry for more than 25 years, and has held leadership positions in technology-based businesses in Australia and the United States. Daniel's experience includes the past five years as Chairman of netus (technology investment firm), six years as Chairman of Ecorp, five years on the PBL Board and nine years with Microsoft Corporation, where he served as Vice President of the Workgroup Division, Director of Advanced Technology and Director of the Asia Pacific Region.

Both netus and Ecorp were founded on the basis of exploring new online business models in the US and Europe and bringing leading businesses to Australia (joint venture or through licence) and by establishing startups to address emerging online opportunities. Netus is a 50/50 joint venture between NEWS Ltd and the netus management team, and has undertaken nine investments since 2007, exiting five (Travel.com.au, ReachLocal, Switchwise, Tantalus and Our Deal), with an average internal rate of return on each deal of between 40% and 80%. The current netus portfolio includes Downstream, Allure publishing, Buyser and TVN.

Previously Daniel founded ecorp as a subsidiary of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL), and developed it to become Australia's leading technology-focused investment company. Ecorp founded ebay Australia (joint venture with Ebay), Ninemsn (joint venture with Microsoft) as well as developing Ticketek into the leading online ticketing company in Australia. Ecorp also made investments in a range of other businesses including Wizard Financial Services and ePredix.

Outside of the netus company boards Daniel currently is on the Board of Nine Entertainment Co, Board of The Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, Research Committee of the Kerry Packer Institute at The Children's Hospital Westmead, CSI (Centre for Social Impact) Sydney Advisory Council, SVA (Social Ventures Australia) PAF Advisory Council, Board of HRX Limited (privately held HR outsourcing business), and Advisory Board for Business Spectator

Daniel has a Bachelor of Science from the University of New South Wales and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Sydney. He also holds a Graduate Diploma in Counseling, and has written several books on the information revolution, father-child relationships, and the work-life balance.

He was made an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO), for distinguished service to Australia.

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Lars Rasmussen | Engineer, Facebook

Lars Rasmussen is an engineer at Facebook. Formerly, he was a member of Google's technical staff, based in the Sydney office, and with his brother Jens is co-founder of the Google Wave effort. In early 2003, the brothers co-founded a mapping start-up, Where 2 Technologies, which was acquired by Google in October of 2004. Lars joined Google and worked as one of the lead engineers in the team that turned this acquisition into Google Maps, now used by millions of people around the world. Lars holds a Ph.D. in theoretical computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. He has possibly the world's least developed sense of direction, and consistently types faster than he can spell.

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Matt Rockman | Co-Founder, SEEK

Matt Rockman is an investor in early stage opportunities and community projects, which have scale and real game-changing potential in the social sector.

Matt has a number of investments where he is directly involved in the operations of the business. These include Max Superannuation and Wingate Group investment Bank.

Prior to working as an investor in his own right, Matt was one of the three original founders of SEEK LTD. Along With Paul and Andrew Bassat, Matt took SEEK from business plan to become one of Australia's most successful online businesses. SEEK is now an ASX Top 100 Listed company with a market capitalisation of $2 Billion, and with businesses in the UK, China, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia.

Matt holds a Bachelor of Business (Banking and Finance) degree from Monash University.

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Greg Roebuck | Chief Executive Officer - carsales.com.au

Greg Roebuck is the Chief Executive Officer and original architect of Australia's #1 automotive Internet site: carsales.com Ltd. Greg has been in the Auto industry for over 25 years and prior to joining carsales.com in an executive role, was Joint Managing Director of Pentana Solutions. Greg's background was as a software developer and included roles with Hartley Computer and Solution 6 before joining Pentana Solutions in 1983.

With more new and used cars than any other site in Australia, carsales.com.au has outstripped the print based sites to emerge as the most visited and most successful site in the country. With over 1,800,000 vehicle searches per day and over 180,000 cars for sale it's no wonder that carsales.com.au deliver more car buyers to more car sellers than any of its competitors. The carsales network is comprised of over 25 leading websites including: carsales.com.au; bikesales.com.au; boatsales.com.au; trucksales.com.au; quicksales.com.au; caravancampingsales.com.au; carpoint.com.au; bikepoint.com.au; boatpoint.com.au. Other brands include discountnewcars.com.au; discountnewbikes.com.au; DataMotive; MediaMotive and Red Book.

carsales.com Ltd made the BRW Fast 100 list for fast growing companies, for five consecutive years. The company employs over 350 staff and head office is in Hawthorn, Victoria. It has customers and offices in numerous countries including the Middle East, China and Thailand.

carsales.com listed on the ASX in September 2009 and has a market capitalisation of over $1.1bn.

Greg was named the Australian Entrepreneur of the Year for 2009.

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David Spence | Chairman, Vocus Communications

David Spence has 30 years of senior management experience, and was directly involved in building the OzEmail brand, and managed the ISP from inception to listing, as MD, COO and then and CEO. Most recently (from 2004 to Feb 2010), Mr. Spence was CEO of previously ASX listed Unwired Australia Pty. Ltd. Mr. Spence has previously been on a number of Boards, including WebCentral, Access1, emitch and the Internet Industry Association. He is the Chairman of Vocus Communications.

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Jodi Stanton | Investment Manager, MH Carnegie & Co

Jodi Stanton leads the technology and digital media lane for the Carnegie Venture Capital Fund and is on the investment committee for the Sydney Angels' Side Car Fund and holds several board seats. Jodi Stanton started her career as an actuary in the US, focused on asset-liability matching with leading insurance companies Aetna and Unum Provident. She then earned her MBA from Yale, focused on Investment Management, and moved to Wall Street where she was an advisor in financial engineering and risk to leading firms such as Microsoft, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Jodi came to Australia in 1999 as a consultant initially with McKinsey & Company where she advised global clients in digital commerce, telecommunications and financial services and worked in McKinsey's Global Sustainability Practice. Post McKinsey she spent 12 years consulting in growth, performance and investment to senior executives at leading corporates such as Westpac and Telstra as well as for several early stage ventures, private equity firms and private client investment portfolios. Jodi has an in-depth working knowledge of complex technologies in telecommunications, financial markets, consumer analytics and marketing science and optimisation and her digital media client list includes Lonely Planet, Big Pond, Telstra Mobile, 247 Ads Global, Catalogue Central, Zenergy and the UK's Financial Times.

Jodi brings hands on entrepreneurial experience through the founding, funding and growing several online and offline businesses, including online classifieds in automotive and recruitment (a recipient of numerous business awards), ecommerce and digital marketing, online gaming, credit risk, export and white water rafting. Jodi has also received awards for communication at McKinsey, business coaching and mentoring in Australia, and from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for her 40k KM, 18 month bicycle trek circumnavigating the globe.

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Glenn Wightwick | IBM Distinguished Engineer, Chief Technologist, IBM Australia & Director, IBM R&D - Australia

Glenn Wightwick is Director of IBM Research and Development - Australia, Chief Technologist for IBM Australia and an IBM Distinguished Engineer. Glenn is currently leading the establishment of a new R&D Lab focussed on rapidly accelerating smarter planet initiatives into the market by closely linking research scientists with development engineers from the earliest concept phase through marketplace delivery.

During the previous 4.5 years Glenn led the establishment and growth of the IBM Australia Development Laboratory which is engaged in the development and support of IBM software. Glenn has led numerous systems and software development projects, and has undertaken international assignments in the USA and China.

Glenn is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology and is a senior member of the IEEE, and has served a three year term on the Australian Research Council College of Experts. In 2010, he was appointed an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has recently been appointed to the Australian government's Information Technology Industry Innovation Council.

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Jennifer Zanich | Vice President Myriad Group & General Manager Xumii Services

Jennifer became the General Manager of Xumii Services, a mobile social messaging service, after its acquisition by the Myriad Group in August 2009. Xumii provides a platform that enables Operators, OEMs or ODM's to provide social networking, messaging and media sharing to their markets. The Xumii Services platform enables the service to be scaled from a browser to native applications through to providing embedded social networking services. Jennifer is an accomplished leader with over 20 years of marketing and executive management experience. Prior to her return to Australia in 2007, Jennifer spent nine years in the US, where she was a Founder of SeeSaw Networks, a digital media services company which successfully raised $10m USD in venture capital. As CEO of Wedgetail Communications, an enterprise security company, she delivered more than seven times return for investors via a successful acquisition. Jennifer has also held executive positions in SkyPilot Networks (wireless broadband) and Microsoft APAC. Jennifer holds several advisory and board roles in the US and Australia including Capital Markets CRC and Aggregate Knowledge, and has been an active mentor of Australian companies migrating to the US for seven years through ANZA TechNet.

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Dr Alex Zelinsky | Group Executive Information Sciences, CSIRO

As CSIRO Group Executive of Information Sciences Dr Alex Zelinsky oversees a budget of some $220m with 1085 scientists and engineers working in the information sciences domain. He is responsible for the Astronomy and Space Science, the Mathematics, Informatics & Statistics, the Information & Communication Technologies Centre, and the Information Management & Technologies business units. He is responsible for the development and adoption of advanced information technologies in scientific efforts across CSIRO. He has oversight of the scientific research, business development, commercialisation and technology transfer activities, including major business transactions for the information sciences portfolio.

He has executive responsibility for the $111m Australian Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Pathfinder, a radio telescope made up of 36 dishes that is currently under construction in Murchison, Western Australia. He also has responsibility for the construction in Perth of the $80m Pawsey Centre for High Performance Computing for SKA Science - it includes a Petaflop scale computer that will support the Australian SKA Pathfinder.

Dr Zelinsky is a member of the Federal Government's IT Industry Innovation Council. He is on the Board of Seeing Machines Ltd, a listed company on the London Stock Exchange that he co-founded. He is also on the Board of Epicorp, an early stage incubator of startups and venture capital company. He has been nominated as one Australia's top 100 Most Influential Engineers in 2009, 2010. In 2009 he was named Professional Engineer of the Year (Sydney Division, Engineers Australia).

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