Presenters

Penelope
Bettison

Rom
Bouveret

Michael
Buckley

Reshmi
Buthello

Lucy
Cooke

Brenton
Cooper

Dean
Freestone

Katharine
Giles

Jamila
Gordon

Andrew
Horsley

Martin
Karafilis

Juxi
Leitner

Vijay
Paul

Paul
Phillips

James
Prior

Vanessa
Rauland

Debbie
Saunders

Vijay
Sivaraman

Salah
Sukkarieh

Tracie
Thompson

Stephen
Trowell

Damian
Veling

Luke
Wood

Penelope Bettison

Executive Director, 1414 Degrees

Penelope Bettison has 20 years’ experience in marketing and business management and is the company’s Head of Corporate Services. She founded and was a Director and Brand Strategist at Pitstop Marketing, investing in an early seed round and consulting to 1414 Degrees to prepare it for its initial public offering. She sold her interest in Pitstop Marketing to accept an executive role with the company in 2017, guiding the corporate development and people and culture. Her experience spans a wide range of industries including financial services, engineering, education, government, business events and tourism. Penelope has a Bachelor of Business, is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute and is an accredited Certified Practising Marketer.

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Rom Bouveret

CEO & Managing Director, AttoQuest

Dr Rom Bouveret obtained his PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 2005. He then relocated to Sydney to work as a senior scientist at the Victor Chang Cardiac Institute. He obtained an MBA from the University of Sydney in 2015 before becoming the Business Strategy Manager at the EMBL Australia node in Single Molecule Science at the UNSW Sydney. He is passionate about solving important challenges via scientific discoveries and impact research.

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Michael Buckley

CEO, Laava

Michael Buckley is a respected business leader with a proven track record in building client and team relationships, on a foundation of strong leadership, passion and execution excellence. Michael has a career spanning 25+ years in the consulting, startup, advertising and media industry with 20 years in the digital and emerging technologies space both in Australia and Asia Pacific. Michael has worked in both startups, grown and turn around situations. Michael is passionate about organisational culture, digital, media, convergence and technology as a means to better connect with staff and his businesses consumers. He has managed a wide range of clients and companies through business transformation using his expertise in innovation, technology and media fragmentation.

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Reshmi Buthello

Head of People & Culture, Baraja

Reshmi Buthello is the Head of People and Culture at Baraja, a startup with a unique approach to LiDAR for self-driving vehicles. Reshmi has been in the People and Technology space for 18 years working around the world with companies like ThoughtWorks, experiencing different cultures. She believes that when people are given the opportunity for creativity there are amazing breakthroughs. Reshmi is the custodian of the People and Culture, where Baraja is innovating and developing a fundamentally differentiated technology called Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR.

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Lucy Cooke

Founder, SpaceDraft

Lucy Cooke is a Behavioural Scientist with ten years experience in Hollywood film production and visual effects. Her credits include Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, Gods of Egypt, Son of A Gun, Sicario: Soldado, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Fast and Furious Eight, Pirates of the Caribbean; Dead Men Tell No Tales, Black Sails Season Four and Game of Thrones. She began producing VR/AR four years ago in LA and realised there was no pre-production planning tool to help non-technical creatives communicate their ideas for virtual space.

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Brenton Cooper

Co-founder & CEO, Fivecast

Dr Brenton Cooper is Co-founder and CEO of Fivecast. He is responsible for driving innovation in the security industry through the application of world leading data science techniques. Brenton was formerly CTO of the Data To Decisions CRC, a $100 million collaborative research initiative to address data analysis challenges facing Australia’s national security agencies. His PhD is from a long time ago… when neural networks were first popular.

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Dean Freestone

Co-founder & CEO, Seer Medical

Dean Freestone is the Co-founder and CEO of Seer Medical. His career has been focused on developing technology to better understand the brain and epilepsy. He has a PhD in neural engineering from the University of Melbourne, where he won the Chancellor’s Prize, and completed a Fulbright post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University in neural statistics.

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Katharine Giles

CEO, OncoRes Medical

Dr Katharine Giles joined OncoRes as interim CEO (now CEO) in 2017, but has been involved in the project since 2013 and was instrumental in OncoRes’ incorporation through her role as an Investment Manager at Brandon Capital Partners. Kath graduated from her medical degree (MBBS) with Honours and has an MBA from UWA. She is also a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Kath is a Director of the Curtin Commercialisation Advisory Board. Kath still practices as a medical doctor mainly working within the surgical field and has experience as a medical officer monitoring clinical trials.

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Jamila Gordon

Founder & CEO, Lumachain

Jamila Gordon is a global technology executive who has built her career around transforming enterprise IT environments, including supply chains. She is a former Group CIO of Qantas Airways and Leighton Holdings/CIMIC, and before that was a global executive with IBM. Jamila was recently appointed to the Board of Questacon, Australia’s National Science & Technology Centre. She is a recipient of La Trobe University’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and served on the university’s board for five years. Jamila was Microsoft’s global awardee in the 2018 International Women Entrepreneurial Challenge Award for her work on Lumachain, and was the first Australian to receive this award.

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Andrew Horsley

CEO, Quantum Brilliance

Quantum Brilliance CEO Andrew Horsley has worked as a scientist and engineer across the full spectrum of quantum technologies, developing microscopes to see magnetic fields, optical memories for quantum communication, and diamond quantum computers. Born and raised in Canberra, Andrew studied Physics at the ANU, worked for 6 years as a PhD student and postdoc in Switzerland, and returned to the ANU in 2017 to lead its diamond quantum computing program. Andrew and Co-founder Marcus Doherty recently founded Quantum Brilliance to commercialise their world-leading research.

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Martin Karafilis

Co-founder & COO, Tiliter Technology

Martin Karafilis is the Co-founder of Tiliter, a tech startup that creates AI software which recognises products without barcodes. Martin has a background in Electrical Engineering and Business with a strong emphasis on challenging the normal. Striving to drive emerging technologies, Martin uses his experience from large global corporates and startups to introduce world leading technology on local, regional and global levels. Martin follows a strict range of core values when carrying out business with a strong focus on creating environmental and social impact, ultimately trying to shape the world for the better through technology.

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Juxi Leitner

Co-founder, LYRO

Juxi Leitner is the Co-founder and CEO of LYRO Robotics. He is a leading expert in robotics and artificial intelligence for creating robots that can pick up and manipulate objects with 15 years of experience in machine learning, robotics, and computer vision. He has a PhD in computer science and two Masters in space technologies. He has led the “Robotic Manipulation and Vision” research efforts of the $25 million, federally-funded Australian Centre for Robotic Vision (ACRV) for four years, including extensive experience in project management of small and large technical teams. He led Team ACRV to victory in the Amazon Robotics Challenge (2017), a worldwide robotic picking competition in a warehouse scenario. Since coming to Australia, Juxi has created and boosted multiple interest and outreach groups to grow the ecosystem of artificial intelligence and robotics training and knowledge, including Brisbane AI (2000+ members, recently rebranded as Queensland AI) and the Brisbane Robotics Interest Group (1300+ members).

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Vijay Paul

Co-founder, Vantari

Dr Vijay Paul is the Co-founder of Vantari VR, built with the intention of harnessing the power of Virtual Reality for transformative healthcare applications. Vijay has always been passionate about working at the intersection of technology and health in order to leverage the unique strengths of emerging technology to solve real life problems in clinical medicine. After completing his undergraduate in medical science with neuroscience research, Vijay completed medicine at the University of Queensland. Post-graduation he was interested in both surgery and acute medicine and worked in various health networks over time. His time commitments to Vantari VR means he travels around regional Australia working as an emergency medicine registrar as time allows, combining clinical medicine with a full-time business venture.

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Paul Phillips

Co-founder & CEO, Blueprint Lab

Paul Phillips has a degree in Mechatronic engineering from the University of Sydney. On graduating he worked as a mechanical engineer and later the R&D manager of AVT. In December 2016, Paul and Mark started Blueprint Lab and it has been his full time occupation since.

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James Prior

Managing Director, Skykraft

James Prior is Managing Director of Skykraft, which is a UNSW Canberra Space spin off company that specialises in the design and manufacture of SmallSat constellations. Skykraft’s current focus is the development of an Air Traffic Management constellation with Indra. James’ previous experience includes a 19 year history with Airbus Defence Space, where from 2013 to 2017 he was the Managing Director of Airbus DS Intelligence, which is Airbus’ Australian geospatial subsidiary. Prior to this position, James was based in Singapore where he established a new ASEAN business development position within Airbus for the development of government operated satellite ground receiving stations. His experience brings a well-rounded commercial understanding of the space and spatial industry from both the multinational and SME perspectives.

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Vanessa Rauland

Founder & CEO, ClimateClever

Dr Vanessa Rauland is an entrepreneur, academic and public speaker. She worked at Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute for 10 years as a researcher and lecturer in the field of climate change and sustainability. She has a keen interest in innovation, STEM, social impact and entrepreneurship and is passionate about tackling climate change through education, technology and startups. Vanessa works with Climate-KIC Australia, helping to deliver their Cleantech entrepreneurial activities and events. She is also the Founder and Managing Director of EdTech startup ClimateClever, which helps schools and their communities to reduce their carbon footprint and save money.

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Debbie Saunders

Founder & CEO, Wildlife Drones

Dr Debbie Saunders is the founding Director, CEO and Chief Remote Pilot of Wildlife Drones. She is also a Conservation Ecologist who loves making a positive difference in the world. She has successfully translated her cutting-edge technology ideas into reality by establishing Wildlife Drones, building an expert multi-disciplinary team and translating a research prototype into the world’s most advanced drone radio-tracking system. Debbie believes that drones and their sensors are highly valuable tools that provide unprecedented opportunities for new insights into the natural world.

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Vijay Sivaraman

CEO, Canopus Networks

Vijay Sivaraman is a well-regarded pioneer in the area of network architectures and programmable networks. He was an early-stage employee at a silicon-valley startup, helping the company raise US$65 million and build award-winning optical switch-routers. He got his PhD from UCLA, and is a Professor at UNSW, where he leads a vibrant research lab in Programmable Networks, supported by entities like Google, Telstra, Optus, Cisco and HPE. He co-founded Canopus Networks with open-source software expert Himal Kumar, and as CEO drives company strategy including capital raising and customer acquisition.

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Salah Sukkarieh

CEO, Agerris

Salah Sukkarieh is the Professor of Robotics at the University of Sydney, and the CEO of Agerris. He was the Director Research and Innovation at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics from 2007-2018, where he led the strategic research and industry engagement program in the world's largest field robotics institute. He was awarded the NSW Science and Engineering Award for Excellence in Engineering and Information and Communications Technologies, the 2017 CSIRO Eureka Prize for Leadership in Innovation and Science, and the 2019 NSW Australian of the Year nominee. He is also a Fellow of ATSE.

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Tracie Thompson

Co-founder & CEO, HackHunter

Tracie Thompson is Co-founder and CEO of HackHunter, a cyber security startup that secures IoT communications by detecting and locating malicious activity used to intercept wireless communications. Tracie has over 15 years experience in information security, was COO of a Security software and consulting company with over 200 customers, and has successfully sold two businesses. Tracie is an alum of the Startmate, CyRise and SBE Australia by Springboard Enterprises programs.

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Stephen Trowell

Founder & Managing Director, PPB Technology

Dr Stephen Trowell studied biochemistry at Cambridge University and gained a PhD from the Australian National University. He recently completed the Executive Program for Growing Companies at Stanford GSB. Stephen joined CSIRO in 1989 leading projects such as the Heliothis ID Kit (LepTon™), The Insect Extract Library, CYBERNOSE® and CYBERTONGUE®. Stephen has over 100 scientific publications and is inventor on 18 patent families. He is the recipient of a Newton Turner Career Award and a 2019 Stanford Australia Association Scholarship. Stephen is passionate about using science to change the world.

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Damian Veling

Co-founder & CTO, Okra Solar

Damian Veling co-founded Okra in December 2016 with the goal to solve energy poverty. Damian has an academic background in Information Systems and Business, excelling as a Software Engineer developing solutions for a range of industries. From automating digital marketing workflows to managing integrations between hundreds of thousands of IoT embedded devices, Damian is now leveraging his practical tech experience and applying it to meaningful, lasting impact - empowering people through energy access.

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Luke Wood

Co-founder & CEO, escaVox

Luke Wood is Co-founder & CEO of escaVox; a company passionate about making our food supply chains more efficient and transparent. Luke graduated from the University of Huddersfield in 1996 with a BSc (Honours) in Logistics Management. He moved to Australia in 2001, deploying technology into industrialised settings through various start-ups, consulting and smaller companies. He spent a number of years in the US after founding an RFID asset management company in the oil industry. Prior to his current role he was Head of Supply Chain Systems - Strategy & Innovation for Woolworths.

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