Andrew Layden, Optiver
Andrew graduated from the University of Sydney in 2014 with a PhD in Space Physics. He joined Optiver following the completion of his PhD in July 2014. Here he works as a researcher where he analyses data and develops models of financial markets to assist their trading team.
James Alexander, INCUBATE
James Alexander is the Founder and Manager at INCUBATE, an award winning startup accelerator program for University, funded by the University of Sydney Union. Since 2012 INCUBATE has backed 40 tech startups founded by students at university.
Kimberley Apted, Optiver
Kimberley completed a Bachelor of Computer Science and Technology (Advanced) at the University of Sydney, completing her Honours in 2007 with the Computer Human Adaptive Interaction Research Group. During her time as an undergraduate, she tutored software development and database subjects with the University, and was involved with the NCSS through the Summer School and Girls' Programming Network. Kimberley now works at Optiver as a software developer, after joining as a graduate over 7 years ago. In her time she has contributed to a range of systems in a variety of languages. She became involved with recruitment to foster her passion for mentoring talented young people in technology.
Mark Assad, Atlassian
Mark is the Senior Performance Engineer at Atlassian. Atlassian Software Systems Pty. Ltd. is an innovative Australian software company providing enterprise software solutions to the world's leading organizations. Atlassian currently has offices in Sydney, Australia and New York, USA.
Sonia Cianci
Sonia Cianci obtained her PhD in Astronomy (focussing on Optics/Instrumentation) from the University of Sydney. She then joined the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet (formerly The Cabinet Office) in 2004, taking on administrative work. Sonia is the Executive Support Officer to the General Counsel, and will return to this role upon completion of her current secondment to the Department's Electronic Document and Records Management Team.
Sean Farrell, Teradata
Sean Farrell is a Data Scientist consultant with the Teradata Australia and New Zealand Advanced Analytics group. As the resident Data Scientist in Teradata's Canberra office he is responsible for providing analytics expertise and support for Teradata's engagement with the Australian federal government. He uses the Teradata massively parallel database and Aster analytics discovery platform software to tease out value added insight from a wide variety of very large data sets.
Ilana Feain, The University of Sydney
Dr Ilana Feain is a senior research fellow in the School of Medicine at Sydney University. She is also CEO of Nano-X Pty Ltd, a startup company striving to commercialise a cost-effective and radically different cancer radiotherapy machine. Before moving into medical physics in early 2014, Ilana was a radio astronomer at CSIRO and the ASKAP project scientist.
Matthew Francis, Bureau of Meteorology
Dr Francis completed a PhD at Sydney University in computational cosmology "using supercomputers for simulations to learn about the formation of galaxies and the large structures in the universe". Since graduating he has worked as a R&D Scientist for IPS Radio & Space Services at the Bureau of Meteorology, investigating solar flares and space weather.
David Harrison, Freelancer
David Harrison is the Vice President of Engineering at Freelancer, and has been responsible for leading the engineering team in its design and implementation of the web-scale features that have allowed Freelancer's websites to handle the growth in web traffic that has been experienced. David has also led the Company's adoption of cloud based technologies, realtime systems, and service oriented architectures. He is also a co-author of a patent application. David holds a Bachelor of Computer Science and Technology from the University of Sydney.
Marton Hidas, IMOS eMarine Information Infrastructure
Marty got his PhD in Astrophysics from the University of NSW and spent three years as a postdoc with Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network in California, studying extrasolar planets. He then decided that there was more than enough on his home planet to keep him interested. Marty joined the Integrated Marine Observing System's data centre as a Project Officer and Data Scientist in 2011.
Tanya Hill, Museum of Victoria
Dr Tanya Hill is the Senior Curator of Astronomy at the Museum of Victoria Planetarium. An experienced science communicator, Tanya develops award-winning planetarium shows that are screened world-wide. Tanya completed her PhD at the University of Sydney in 2002. She writes an astronomy column for the online news service "The Conversation" and is the Australian Representative of the European Southern Observatory's Science Outreach Network.
Suzanne Kenyon, Snowy Hydro Ltd.
Dr Kenyon is one of the few people on the planet to have visited Antartica as part of her Ph.D. research at UNSW. There she investigated the optical properties of the sky at Dome C using a spectrograph called Nigel. She is now an atmospheric scientist at the hydro-electricity company Snowy Hydro Limited.
Zdenka Kuncic, University of Sydney
Professor Kuncic is an international expert in the application of physics to medicine and biology, with specific expertise in theoretical and computational modelling. She is the Director of the Advanced Computing Facility for Cancer Research and leads the Complex Systems and Modelling Research Theme of the Charles Perkins Centre.
Louise Ord, Taylor Fry
Louise is an analyst with Taylor Fry, a leading independent consultancy firm that offers analytics, actuarial, statistical and policy advice to business and government.
Alain Picard, goCatch
Dr. Alain Picard is a research scientist turned software engineer with twenty years of experience in Telco and internet programming. His specialty is architecture and systems design and implementation. He worked as head architect and CTO at Memetrics from 2000 until its acquisition by Accenture in 2009. There, he built a marketing analytics platform to run choice modelling experiments in real time. He then co-founded TechnoWait, a startup dedicated to improving patient waiting times in walk-in clinics in Canada. Recently, he joined goCatch! to help with their software architecture and optimization of their dispatch algorithms.
Geoff Sims, Quantium
Geoff completed his PhD in 2013, where he studied the atmospheric and astronomical properties of sites on the high Antarctic plateau, and the implications for unique high-frequency (THz or sub-mm) radio astronomy observations. He now works as a data analyst for Quantium, and is mainly involved with building predictive models on the Hadoop BigData platform.
Edwin Tay
Edwin worked as an intern at Google while studying for his degree at the University of Western Australia. After graduating, Google offered him a job as a software engineer, focusing on technology such as Google maps.
Scott Wales, The University of Melbourne
Scott Wales is part of the computational modelling systems team at the Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science (ARCCSS), The University of Melbourne. He helps climate researchers with programming and debugging atmospheric models running on the NCI supercomputers, and works with leadership in ARCCSS, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology to improve Australian climate models and associated infrastructure.