Speakers
Fran Kelly, Presenter, ABC Radio National Breakfast
Fran Kelly – the presenter of ABC’s Radio National Breakfast program — is one of Australia’s leading political interviewers and commentators. She has earned a reputation as an intelligent, informed and balanced journalist who has been a key contributor to the nation’s political and social debates for the past 15 years.
In that time she’s been the ABC’s Europe Correspondent based in London, the political editor for The 7.30 Report and the political correspondent for the prestigious AM program.
Radio National Breakfast is Australia’s leading national morning current affairs radio show. Its daily agenda is a mix of national and international politics, current affairs and social issues – and it draws on the world’s leading commentators, players and thinkers. It’s influence makes it required listening for opinion leaders across the country.
Jason Calacanis, "Entrepreneur in Action", Sequoia Capital
Jason McCabe Calacanis is the founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine focused on the top English-language search terms, including verticals such as travel, products, news, entertainment, sports, food, and health. Prior to Mahalo.com’s launch in alpha in May, 2007, he was an "Entrepreneur in Action" at Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firm, a position he held since December 2006.
Jason co-founded and was the CEO of Weblogs, Inc., a network of popular weblogs that was sold to AOL in November 2005. Upon joining AOL, he was appointed senior vice president. In addition, he was named general manager of AOL’s Netscape and was responsible for the July 2006 relaunch of the iconic browser as a social bookmarking news site.
Prior to forming Weblogs Inc., Jason was the founder of Rising Tide Studios, a media company that published the magazines Silicon Alley Reporter and Digital Coast Reporter. The flagship publication later became Venture Reporter, a venture capital database, and was sold to Dow Jones.
Jason is from Brooklyn, NY and currently resides in Los Angeles and New York with his wife and bulldog. He received a B.A. in psychology from Fordham University. Jason is known for his transparency and insights into the internet and media industries.
Dr Sridhar Vembu, Founder & CEO, Zoho
Sridhar Vembu is the CEO of AdventNet, the company behind the Zoho suite of online applications. He co-founded AdventNet in 1996, and has been CEO since 2000. AdventNet has transformed itself from a modest beginning as a software company serving network equipment vendors to a be an innovative online applications provider. It has maintained growth and profitability, without needing outside capital.
Prior to AdventNet, Sridhar worked as a wireless systems engineer at Qualcomm, Inc. where he was fortunate to work with some of the leading minds in wireless communications. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.
Dr Isaac Shariv, Director, Sydnovate, University of Sydney
Isaac Shariv holds a PhD in Physics gained at the Weizmann Institute of Science and an MBA degree from Tel Aviv University.
Until joining the University of Sydney in 2006, Isaac was Chief Executive Officer of Yeda Research and Development Company Ltd, the commercial arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Prior to joining Yeda in 2000, Isaac was CEO of El-Mul Technologies Ltd for five years. El-Mul is a high-tech company, active in the field of charged particle detectors.
Dr. Chris Nicol, Chief Technology Officer, NICTA and Chair of Embedded Systems Australia
Dr Chris Nicol was awarded the B.Sc and Ph.D. degrees from the University of New South Wales, Australia in 1991 and 1995 respectively. He then joined AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey as a Principal Investigator of Research from 1995 to 1998 – working on Integrated Circuits for communications.
In 1998, Dr Nicol returned to Australia with the vision to create the first Bell Labs Research facility for Lucent Technologies in Asia Pacific. After establishing this team in Sydney, he went on to build a Wireless Product IC Design team responsible for designing integrated circuits for 3G mobile wireless infrastructure systems. From 2000-2003, he held the position of Head of Bell Labs Australia. In 2003, he transferred the Bell Labs Australia organisation to Agere Systems and was the founder and Managing Director of Agere Systems Australia - a centre of excellence, responsible for the design of digital base-band processors for Agere’s 3G mobile wireless products. In 2006, he joined National ICT Australia (now NICTA) as Chief Technology Officer in the area of embedded systems.
He has served on the program committee of the International Solid State Circuits Conference, the International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design, the International Symposium on Circuits and Systems and as an editor of the IEEE Journal of Selected Areas of Communications (JSAC) and the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits (JSSC). He addressed the Australian Prime Minister’s Science Engineering and Innovation Committee (PMSEIC) in June 2000, served on the Australian Major National Research Facility Selection Committee in 2001, the ICT Centre of Excellence Selection Committee in 2002, the E-Research Committee in 2005, and was a member of the Board of the Australian Research Council (ARC) from 2001-2004. He currently serves on the Industry Research and Development Board, IT&T Committee. He is inventor on 17 U.S. patents.
Dr. Mark Anderson, Chief of Command Control Communications and Intelligence Division, DSTO
Dr. Mark Anderson is the Chief of Command Control Communications and Intelligence Division (C3ID) at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. He has over 20 years experience in various ICT areas and in particular Information Security. He is the inventor or principal inventor for a number of products which have entered service with the Australian Defence Force and Government, as well as a number of countries.
As Chief of C3ID he oversees an extensive S&T program ranging from Satellite Communications, Mobile Networks, very high Security Communications and Information Processing Systems for Critical Infrastructure, and Network Management.
Dr. Al Bryant, General Manager, Phantom Works Australia, The Boeing Company
Mr. Bryant is currently General Manager, Phantom Works – Australia, a unit of Boeing Phantom Works. Mr. Bryant is responsible for all aspects of PW-Australia, including the research direction, strategic interfaces with internal Boeing organizations and external R&D collaborations with Industry and Government in Australia. In this assignment, he will focus on establishing a fully operational R&D presence of The Boeing Company in Australia.
Prior to this assignment, Mr. Bryant was Director, Distributed R&D and Customer Partnerships within the Mathematics and Computing Technology organization, a unit of Boeing Phantom Works. In that assignment, Mr. Bryant was responsible for all non-Seattle WA, USA based R&D sites, all strategic interfaces with internal Boeing Customers, external R&D alliances and led the marketing and communications functions for M&CT fielding questions related to R&D efforts across Phantom Works.
Senator the Hon. Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
Senator Carr entered the Senate in 1993. He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne, with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours), a Diploma of Education and a Master of Arts degree.
Before entering the Senate, he worked as a secondary school teacher and as a senior adviser to the Victorian Government. He held a range of shadow portfolios during the previous Parliament, including acting as the Shadow Minister for Industry, Innovation, Science and Research in 2003-04 and from December 2006 until the 2007 Federal Election.
He was sworn in as Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research in December 2007.
Phillip Tompson, Chairman, The Powercom Group
Phillip Tompson is the Chairman of the board of the Powercom Group. He is a Chartered Professional Engineer holding an honours degree in Electrical Engineering (Electronics and Communications) from the University of Queensland. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (Australia), a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (UK) and a Member of the IEEE.
After a career with Telstra specializing in radio engineering and Hydro Tasmania in communications and SCADA systems, he established what is now known as the Powercom Group in 1991. Since then, he has been responsible for product innovation and development bringing the full product range of Novaris and Datacall to markets both in Australia and overseas.
Karsten Schulz, Program Director, Vice President, and Founder, SAP Research Centre Brisbane
Karsten Schulz is the Program Director, Vice President, and Founder of SAP Research Centre Brisbane. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Queensland, and a BA Electrical Engineering from the University of Furtwangen in Germany.
In his current role, Karsten overseas SAP Research in the Asia-Pacific Region and is actively involved in SAP’s global internal and external research. He is member of SAP Research’s Executive Leadership Team and executive sponsor of Web 2.0, Internet of Services, and Business Process Management at SAP Research. Further, Karsten is managing the research partnership of SAP with HP Labs. Recently, Karsten was appointed to the board of Directors of the Cooperative Research Centre on Smart Services, with nodes in Sydney and Brisbane.
Through his work at SAP, Digital Equipment, and the Cooperative Research Centre on Smart Services, Karsten has gained multi-cultural experiences in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America. At SAP, Karsten has overseen a number of strategic research transfer activities into SAP’s Netweaver and Business ByDesign Products. As part of his job, Karsten builds relationships between Universities and Industry
