Let's Talk Robotics

Joining me today is return guest Dr Cori Stewart. Cori is Founder and CEO of the ARM Hub, a not-for-profit company on a mission to digitally transform industry. The ARM Hub specialises in AI, robotics and manufacturing, collaborating with industry and universities to modernise manufacturing practises, commercialise R&D, and build workforce capability.

The ARM Hub draws together the best scientists, technical specialists, designers and engineers working side by side to develop commercial advanced manufacturing solutions – transforming high potential ideas into new products and services and accelerating adoption to generate high-value jobs and economic growth.

Cori is the winner of the AI in Manufacturing category for Women in AI Australia & New Zealand 2022!

Joining me today is Professor Flora Salim. Flora is the CISCO Chair in Digital Transport, UNSW Sydney. Her research is in the intersection of human-centred computing and machine learning for behaviour intelligence with multimodal sensor data, with applications in intelligent assistants, health monitoring, smart cities, spatio-temporal recommendation systems, and AI on the edge.

She is the recipient of Women in AI Awards 2022 Australia New Zealand in the Defence and Intelligence category. She is a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts, an Honorary Professor of RMIT University, an Associate Investigator of ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society, a member of the Steering Committee of the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp), Area Editor of Pervasive and Mobile Computing, Associate Editor of PACM Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), and an expert member of International Energy Agency’s EBC Annex 79. She was a Humboldt-Bayer Fellow, Humboldt Fellow, Victoria Fellow, and ARC Postdoctoral Industry (APDI) Fellow. She obtained her PhD from Monash University in 2009.

Joining me today is Dr Denis Bauer. Denis is a government research scientist, adjunct professor at Macquarie University and an AWS Hero. Her unique approach of joining cloud-computing with deep biological domain knowledge translates research into impactful products that have been used for disease gene detection in Motor Neuron Disease and the COVID-19 vaccine development. She contributes to open-source software projects and advisory committees, as well as keynotes international IT and Medical conferences. She was recognized as Brilliant Women in Digital Health 2021 and Women in AI 2022. She has attracted more than $35M in funding to further life-science research and digital health.

Denis holds a Bachelor in Bioinformatics from Germany, a PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Queensland and a Certificate in Executive Management and Development from the University of New South Wales Business School.

Joining me today is Dr Ramona Vijeyarasa. Ramona is the Chief Investigator behind the Gender Legislative Index (GLI), a tool designed to promote laws that advance women’s rights and gender equality. She is the head of the Juris Doctor Program in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney and a Senior Lecturer.

Before joining UTS, Dr Vijeyarasa worked for a decade in civil society as a women’s rights activist and for international organisations in developing and developed countries. In 2022, Ramona’s work on the GLI received the Woman in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Award for the Law Category and the 2nd runner-up prize for the Women in AI Innovator of the Year. Since 2020, she is a Women’s Leadership Institute Australia Research Fellow, investigating ways to bring her global expertise into Australia’s legal context and advocating for a more gender-equal nation. Ramona’s work for women’s rights across the world has been recognised by grants and awards from the New York University, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Letten Foundation and Young Academy of Norway.

Her new book (release date, July 2022), The Woman President: Leadership, Law and Legacy for Women Based on Experiences from South and Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press) is a global-first study of the impact women leaders have on women’s lives through the law.

Joining me today is Dr Simona Mihaita. Simona is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology in Sydney, founder and leader of the Future Mobility Lab. She is an industry-focused academic delivering value for people living in smart cities via her strong engagement with the government and several industry partners. Her research focus is to improve people's movement via artificial intelligence in a smart city context.

Simona holds several leadership roles securing funding over $5M in initiatives such as the Australian-Singapore Strategic Collaboration via a joint NRF-ARC Linkage Project, the "Premiere's Innovation Initiative" for easing congestion leading to ICMP (Intelligent Congestion Management Program), the "On-Demand Mobility" trials in Northern Beaches with Keolis Downer, the impact of Electric Vehicles with AEMO, the Automatic Road Star Rating with TomTom, the positioning accuracy of connected trucks with TfNSW, etc.

She is the winner of the 2022 Women in AI Awards – Infrastructure category, a triple finalist in the 2021 IoT Awards – Smart Cities, 2021 ITS Australia for Transport Data Excellence and for R&D Excellence, the winner of the 2018 ITS Australia National Awards for Research Excellence, finalist in Smart City Awards 2019, awarded Monash Business School Scholarship for Women in Leadership 2018, nominated for the 2019 Prime Minister's Science Awards, and interviewed by Channel 7 News and The Guardian.

Follow her on LinkedIn and reach out to her at [email protected]

Joining me today is Dr Melanie Zeppel. Melanie is a senior data scientist and researcher. She was awarded 2022 Women in AI: Agribusiness, for carbon modelling using Machine Learning, as well as 2019 Scopus Researcher of the year, in sustainability, for her research in climate change. She has been awarded over $1.9 million in competitive funding, with over 60 peer-reviewed publications. She has been co-ordinator of the local Python Users Group, with experience in modelling using Python, R, and SAS, as well as SQL, in addition to hosting departmental Women in Science groups.

Her multi-disciplinary research spans experimental design and modelling impacts of climate change, impacts of drought, temperature and CO2 on vegetation and soil carbon and water relations, as well as customer user experience and A/B testing for the financial industry. She also has experience in genomic medicine, including childhood cancer and other conditions. She has experience in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Predictive Analytics, Cluster Analysis, and enjoys presenting complex results, in simple language to stakeholders.

She has also worked on modelling financial well-being and costs of informal care due to chronic conditions on workforce productivity, particularly on vulnerable populations. She has modelled the impact of genetic diagnosis on costs and quality of life to individuals and government.

Experience over the previous 15 years includes measuring and modelling impacts of drought, elevated CO2 and heat waves on plant physiology, at National and Global scales. She has over 15 years of commercial and consulting experience in Telstra, Westpac, the Australian Museum Consulting (AMBS), and other smaller companies.

Joining me today is icon in the industry, Garrett Place. His role is Business Development, Robotics Perception at ifm. Garrett has been with ifm for 28 years. Since 2008 he has concentrated on 3D imaging in both mobile and fixed arm robotics, most recently targeting use cases in the Logistics Automation market.

We chat about his journey and insights over his career. Quite an achievement being with ifm for 28 years, he has seen many advances in robotics during this time.

Reach out to Garrett via LinkedIn.

Joining me today is Elena Sitnikova, Associate Professor of Cybersecurity and Networking, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University. A Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional, Elena leads cutting-edge research in Critical Infrastructure protection, focusing on intrusion detection for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems cybersecurity and the Industrial Internet of Things. With cyber-attacks increasing globally, she is exploring system antifragility and using artificial intelligence to analyse abnormal data that may affect critical cyber-physical systems.

Elena has been awarded nationally and internationally through numerous fellowships and awards including her recent Australia/NZ Women in AI Cybersecurity award and Defence-related fellowships as a recognition of her contribution to Australia’s ongoing defence.

Elena is also recognised as an innovative university educator in cybersecurity, pioneering online student engagement and research-led teaching. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) and has received an Australian Award for University Teaching (Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning; team). Elena has many cited publications and is an Associate Editor with the Australian Journal of Multidisciplinary Engineering.

An absolute honour and pleasure to speak with her today! Reach out to Elena on LinkedIn and follow her amazing work there!

Joining me today is Professor Alan Duffy. An astronomer at Swinburne University of Technology, Alan is the inaugural Director of the Space Technology and Industry Institute at Swinburne, finding ways to use space to help companies and communities on Earth. His research background in computational astrophysics sees Alan model universes on supercomputers to understand how galaxies like our Milky Way form within vast clouds of dark matter. He is trying to find this dark matter as the Swinburne Node Leader in the $35M ARC CoE for Dark Matter Particle Physics and a Chief Investigator of SABRE, the world’s first dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere, at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory at the bottom on active gold mine in Victoria. Alan is also the cofounder and CEO of mDetect, a spin-off company from his dark matter research, that uses particles from space to scan through rock for mineral exploration, identification of structural weaknesses in tailings dams, and subsidence/air gaps below critical infrastructure.

Connect and follow Alan on LinkedIn, or on Twitter @astroduff!

Dr Camille Goldstone-Henry is a wildlife scientist, Kamilaroi woman and CEO & founder of biodiversity tech start-up, Xylo Systems. She has been lucky enough to work with endangered species around the world in her wildlife conservation career, including Tasmanian devils and Sumatran tigers. Founded by Camille in 2020, Xylo Systems is a cloud-based platform using artificial intelligence to connect, track and manage conservation projects so that we can tackle the extinction crisis faster, together. Xylo Systems is already an award-winning start-up and Camille has been awarded honours including the Women’s Weekly Woman of the Future award 2021, NSW Young Woman of the Year finalist 2022, and Women in AI Trailblazer and Climate in AI Awards 2022 for her passion in bringing together for wildlife and tech to turbocharge wildlife conservation and preserve biodiversity for future generations