AI Conclave Speakers

Akanksha Balani

Regional Alliance Head – AWS – APAC & Japan at Intel

Akanksha Balani is the Regional Alliance Head for Intel to lead the partnership with Team Amazon for Asia Pacific & Japan. She is responsible for growth, scale and collaboration with Intel’s key partner. With her teams, Akanksha brings in Intel & AWS partnership value, driving ecosystem impact through technology leadership in Migrations, AI, HPC and Edge to Cloud.

Akanksha has the charter to drive optimised value on all Intel® technologies on Cloud. She has been driving focused strategies to help build HPC, IOT and AI knowhow on Intel across the region. In her tenure at Intel, Akanksha built many developer and data scientist related programs like code modernisation workshops, software developer conferences, HPCDEVCONs and since the past 16 years has managed to tech skill over 100,000 developers. Prior to her career at Intel, Akanksha was market evangelist for Microsoft. She holds a double MBA from UCLA and a DCE from BU.

Rohit Bhargava

Startups at AWS & Host of The Startup Playbook Podcast

Rohit is a founder, podcaster and connector. He is currently the Startup BDM for Australia at AWS covering early stage startups across the country. Prior to this he was the founder of “Crowdfunding for fashion” platform StageLabel where he helped launch and grow 150+ brands globally. He is also the host of The Startup Playbook Podcast, a weekly series interviewing some of the best startup founders and investors from around the world.

Tim Bradley

General Manager, Emerging Technologies at the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources

Tim Bradley has over a decade of experience evaluating and assessing economic policy. Tim began his career as an economist with the Productivity Commission where he worked on a range of issues including the fiscal implications of demographic change, regulation and competition policy.

In 2005 Tim accepted a position as an Associate Lecturer with the Australian National University’s Faculty of Economics. Tim taught undergraduate and graduate courses in micro and macro-economics, trade theory and public finance. He also worked with the Australian Centre for Regulatory Economics to develop professional courses in regulatory economics.

From 2007 to 2014 Tim was employed as an economic consultant, where his engagements regularly required complex (often quantitative) analyses of economic issues including cost benefit modelling, forecasting and CGE. Tim’s projects frequently involve consultations with a wide range of stakeholders (including policy makers, regulators, industry, service providers and community groups). He takes a leading role in the consultation process including facilitating workshops, presenting to stakeholder forums and hosting face to face interviews.

Tim joined the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science as General Manager of the Economic Advice Service in 2014. In this role, Tim led a team of around 30 economists, researchers and data specialists that provided advice to the department and to ministers on economic issues relevant to the portfolio.

From 2018-2020, Tim represented DISER as Minister Counsellor (Industry, Science and Education) at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC.

Tim now heads DISER’s Emerging Technologies and Adoption Branch. In this role, Tim is responsible for driving the Government’s agenda as it relates to Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Quantum and other emerging technologies and currently represents the Australian Government on the OECD’s Network of Experts on AI.

Tim has a Masters degree in Commercial Law from the University of Melbourne, a Masters degree in Political Economy from the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) from the Australian National University.

Pradeep K. Dubey

Intel Senior Fellow at Intel Labs

Pradeep K. Dubey is an Intel Senior Fellow and director of the Parallel Computing Lab, a part of the Intel Labs organisation at Intel Corporation. He leads a team of top researchers focused on state-of-the-art research in parallel computing. Pradeep and his team are responsible for defining computer architectures that can efficiently handle emerging machine learning/artificial intelligence, traditional HPC applications for data-centric computing environments, and deriving product differentiation opportunities for Intel’s CPU and GPU processing platforms.

Pradeep previously worked at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center. He has made significant contributions to the design, architecture and application performance of various microprocessors, including the IBM Power PC, the Intel386™, Intel486™, Intel® Pentium®, and Intel Xeon® processors.

Pradeep holds 36 patents and has published more than 100 peer-reviewed technical papers. In 2012, he was honored with an Intel Achievement Award for breakthroughs in parallel computing research, and was honored with Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineer Award from Purdue University in 2014. Pradeep holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Purdue University. He is also a Fellow of IEEE.

Casey Flint

Investment Associate at Square Peg

Casey Flint is an Investment Associate at Square Peg. Square Peg is a global venture capital fund investing in startups across Australia, Israel and Southeast Asia from seed-stage and up, with a focus on Series A and B. Square Peg are investing out of a $340m 2018 fund and have raised over $1B to invest in startups. Before Square Peg, Casey spent five years working across strategy and operations for Uber in Australia, The Netherlands, Korea and Japan.

Colette Grgic

Head of Startup Ecosystem, ANZ at AWS

Colette Grgic is passionate about building a startup ecosystem that is innovative, inclusive and has a positive impact. She has a firm belief that startups create the future, and by bringing together the creativity of humans and power of technology, there isn’t a challenge that we can’t solve.

For over a decade Colette has contributed to our innovation community across startups, accelerators, corporate innovation and university R&D. Taking her learnings from her own startup adventures, she set out to help another 150 founders in Australia and Southeast Asia build their startups from scratch at a venture studio. She is a board member at Heads over Heels, an organisation which turbo-charges customer connections for women-led startups, and advisory board member for the School of Transdisciplinary Innovation at UTS. Having seen hundreds of patterns of success and failure she now leads the Startup team at AWS, working with founders and partners to grow the ecosystem and have impact at scale, at a company where it is always Day 1.

Sue Keay

CEO at Queensland AI Hub

Sue Keay is the CEO of Queensland AI Hub, after being Research Director for Cyber-Physical Systems at CSIRO’s Data61. An experienced R&D leader, she has a PhD in Earth Sciences from the Australian National University and an MBA with UQ Business School. With a focus on disruptive technologies, Sue set-up the world’s first robotic vision research centre and led the development of Australia’s first Robotics roadmap, outlining how robotics and automation will impact every sector of the Australian economy. She loves the challenge of building communities across distributed sites. She is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and chairs the Board of Robotics Australia Group and serves on the Board of the CRC for Optimising Resource Extraction and Women in Robotics International, and is responsible for bringing the Grace Hopper Celebration to Australia.

Andrew Lai

Managing Director of Boab AI

Andrew Lai is the Managing Director of Boab AI, Australia’s first AI scaleup program by Artesian and LaunchVic, investing $300,000 in growth AI companies with up to $5m in follow-on. Boab seeks to help build the Australian AI ecosystem by funding at least 32 AI scaleup companies over the next 4 years. Andrew was formerly a Venture Director at Deakin University and Managing Director at SproutX accelerator and VC fund.

Dave Lemphers

Head of Technology, Startups at AWS

Dave Lemphers is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, engineer, and applied data scientist. In his current role at AWS, he works with founders to identify and adopt leading edge technologies. Prior to AWS, he co-founded and successfully exited four AI startups, has authored 3 US patents on AI and ML, worked on deep learning systems as an Applied Data Scientist at Microsoft, and serves as the CTO in Residence at Techstars. He holds degrees in Computer Science, Software Engineering, and Law.

Matthew Macfarlane

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at icetana

Matthew Macfarlane was the founding chief executive officer of icetana and returned to the role in September 2018. Matt is a Chartered Accountant and Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a successful entrepreneur, angel and venture capital investor and worked for over 10 years doing international cross-border mergers and acquisitions. In 2018, Matt was recognised by the West Australian IT and Telecoms Association (WAITTA) as the Pearcey Entrepreneur of the Year.

Dr Iain McCowan

Co-founder and CTO at Notiv

Iain McCowan leads Notiv’s engineering and machine learning teams and sets the technical vision for the company.

Iain is a 20-year veteran of machine learning and speech technologies. Previously, he founded Dev-Audio which developed an innovative speech-enabled microphone array product and was acquired by Biamp Systems in 2014. Before this, Iain worked as a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO (Data61) and the IDIAP Research Institute exploring real-world applications of cutting edge natural language processing and machine learning techniques.

Iain holds a Ph.D., B Eng, and B. IT from the Queensland University of Technology. He has particular expertise in the development of multi-microphone devices, digital signal processing (DSP), speech & audio signal processing, speech-to-text (STT), and far-field speech recognition. Iain is an Adjunct Professor with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Science, and Engineering Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology.

Sadaf Monajemi

Co-founder and Director at See-Mode Technologies

Sadaf Monajemi is the co-founder and director of See-Mode Technologies, a med-tech startup that helps doctors better predict and prevent strokes without any additional tests. Using routinely collected medical images, See-Mode provides critical risk factors required for stroke prediction that are missing from current clinical tools. This is achieved by combining computer vision, deep learning, and computational modelling. See-Mode has developed its first product (AVA) for AI-based analysis of vascular ultrasound from ideation to commercial stage in less than 2 years and has received regulatory approval from FDA (US) and HSA (Singapore).

Before starting See-Mode, Sadaf completed her PhD in the National University of Singapore, focusing on machine learning and AI for medical applications. Applying her expertise in AI, she has tackled complex biomedical problems for more than 10 years and has been recognised as the featured honouree in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia and MIT Technology Review in 2020.

Dr Michelle Perugini

Co-Founder & CEO at Presagen

Michelle Perugini has a PhD in Medicine and was a stem cell biologist for a decade. She founded her first AI business 10 years ago which was acquired by Ernst and Young in 2015. She is now co-founder and CEO of Presagen which is an AI company that specialises in creating globally scalable image-based medical diagnostics products, using its advanced federated AI platform. Presagen’s first product is Life Whisperer that uses AI to assist clinicians to select viable embryos in IVF to improve outcomes for couples wanting to have children. Michelle is also a dedicated mentor and advisory board member for many startups, and a Committee Member on the Commonwealth Research & Development Incentives Committee.

Dr Silvia Pfeiffer

CEO and Co-founder at Coviu

Silvia Pfeiffer is Coviu’s CEO and Co-founder, driving the global mission of Coviu for universal access to healthcare. In recent months, Coviu became the leading telehealth software in use by Australian healthcare providers, delivering 500K+ consultations in April. With over 20 years of experience building new Web video solutions, Silvia has worked at leading corporations including Google, Mozilla, NICTA and CSIRO. Silvia and Co-founder Nathan Oehlman spun Coviu out of the CSIRO in March 2018. Silvia has a double degree in computer science and business management and has led Coviu through the pandemic from a team of 7 to 35.

Ben Rolleston

Head of Business Development, Alexa ANZ at Amazon

Ben Rolleston is an experienced media, technology and telco executive having held senior management roles with leading brands across APAC. Ben leads the Alexa Skills Business Development team in ANZ to help brands, companies and content owners launch voice experiences to engage with customers. Prior to Amazon, Ben held the role of Vice President, Commercial for Viacom International Media Networks where he was responsible for leading content distribution and digital products across the region for their leading brands MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central amongst others. Qualified as a lawyer, Ben began his career as in-house counsel for APN News & Media (now HT&E), worked for the Wallabies negotiating their contract and commercial terms as General Manager for Player Services, and led Optus’ content business through the emergence and growth of smartphones.

Sarah Russell

Co-CEO at Elula

Sarah Russell loves transforming businesses and has a proven track record of delivering exceptional customer outcomes. Sarah is a true leader at heart and brings a wealth of financial services experience covering corporate strategy, finance, program delivery, data science, robotics, internal comms and large-scale operations in Australia, NZ and the UK. Sarah’s strong strategic instincts and restless determination give her the edge when it comes to solving the most difficult problems.

Bradley Scott

Chief Operating Officer at UneeQ

Bradley Scott has spent the last 12 years of his career in growing NZ tech companies including M-Com/Fiserv, Xero and now is Chief Operating Officer at UneeQ. UneeQ provides brands, developers and creators a platform to create digital human experiences. Digital humans being AI-powered customer experience ambassadors that recreate digital human interactions at scale.

Richard Shanahan

Head of Data Science at Tic:Toc

Richard joined Tic:Toc in 2017 before the launch of its world-first digital home loan, tasked with automating validation of a customer’s financial position. Today, Tic:Toc can decide on a home loan faster than anyone. With a passion for automating the onerous and almost 20 years’ experience in financial services and information technology through product management, software implementation and data science roles, Richard provides a unique perspective when presented with problems and opportunities. When not staring at algorithms he enjoys being outwitted by his kids and spending as much time as possible outside.

Joshua Shipman

Co-CEO at Elula

Joshua Shipman is Co-CEO and Co-founder of Elula. His passion for technology-based businesses has taken him all sorts of places, from building ambitious tech start-ups to embedding market-leading payment, fraud and machine-learning capabilities in multi-national companies across the UK and Australia. Josh is known for pushing the boundaries of technology to bring unexpected solutions to life.

Anton van den Hengel

Director of Applied Science at Amazon and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Adelaide

Anton van den Hengel was the founding Director of The Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), and a Director of Applied Science in Amazon. AIML is Australia’s largest machine learning research group, at over 120 members, and on many measures its most successful. Anton is also Professor of Computer Science at the University of Adelaide, and has been a CI on over $60m in research funding from sources including Google, Facebook, Canon, BHP Billiton and the ARC.

Prof van den Hengel has won a number of awards, including the CVPR Best Paper prize in 2010, the Pearcey Foundation Entrepreneur Award, and the SA Science Excellence Award for Research Collaboration. He has authored over 300 publications, has an h-index of 56, has had 8 patents commercialized, formed 3 start-ups, and has recently had a medical technology achieve first-in-class FDA approval. Current research interests include deep learning, vison and language problems, interactive image-based modelling, large-scale video surveillance, and medical machine learning.

Prof van den Hengel and his team have developed world leading methods in a range of areas within Computer Vision and Machine learning, including methods which have placed first on a variety of international leaderboards such as: PASCAL VOC (2015 & 2016), CityScapes (2016 & 2017), Virginia Tech VQA (2016 & 2017), and the Microsoft COCO Captioning Challenge (2016). Professor van den Hengel’s team placed 4th in the ImageNet detection challenge in 2015 ahead of Google, Intel, Oxford, CMU and Baidu, and 2nd in ImageNet Scene Parsing in 2016. ImageNet is one of the most hotly contested challenges in Computer Vision.

Jackie Vullinghs

Principal at AirTree Ventures

Jackie Vullinghs is a Principal at AirTree Ventures, an early and growth stage venture firm backing world-class entrepreneurs at startups like Canva, A Cloud Guru and Secure Code Warrior. Prior to AirTree, Jackie invested in Fintech at NAB Ventures and was Chief of Staff at B2B SaaS startup Kalo, a Series A stage startup based in San Francisco & London. Jackie started her career on the trading floor at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch as a VP in Equity Derivatives, and graduated from Cambridge University.

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