2022

Tom Cleary has made a distinguished contribution to ICT via his ability to use cyber security techniques to protect and enhance the safety and security of Australia and its citizens from criminal and nation state actors. Tom is regarded as an agent of change, assisting governments and corporate boards to learn from challenges, embrace strategies, mobilise resources, and evolve cyber safety and cyber security policies and measures. He has repeatedly gone well beyond expected involvement in order to communicate these complex concepts in a manner that leads to understanding and action. His freely offered commitment, advice and support to other members of the profession has shaped the future of ICT and Cyber Security throughout Australia.

2022

Professor Tanya McGill has made a significant contribution to the development of information technology within the tertiary education sector. She has over three decades of high-level influence and engagement in developing strategy and planning in educational structures that have been instrumental in the acceptance of computer programming. She is regarded as a pioneer of restructuring teaching and learning in ICT, programming, and ICT research development. Her work in the reform and acceptance of e-Learning changes has been shared across universities throughout Australia and internationally. At a time when the computer science discipline was dwarfed by other more established disciplines, Professor McGill has steered the tertiary education of computing and ICT to significantly higher levels of technology acceptance whilst preserving the need for standards, rigour, and academic integrity. Professor McGill has shown tremendous thought leadership in the acceptance of the digital and computing disciplines in higher education. She is highly sought for her educational reform practices and teaching and learning innovations that impact upon issues of equity and diversity, work integrated learning, ICT research ethics, and the promotion of women in IT. She leads by example with over 162 peer reviewed conference publications, journals, book chapters and books, as well as supervising multiple doctoral completions, successive research grants, and acts of engagement that demonstrate a widespread level of interaction in computer science acceptance.

2022

Beau Tydd has made a distinguished contributions by installing innovative ICT solutions and melding the adoption of new technologies into the workplace culture. Beau led the Australian Aid team which transformed both the country wide ICT infrastructure for the Solomon Islands and the skills of its ICT professionals. The network which he established was the first of its kind in the Pacific. Beau volunteers with the indigenous Australian community, actively supporting business initiatives and proselytising for programmes to recycle PCs for indigenous use. In 2018 he implemented the first airport wide Common User Passenger Processing System (CUPPS) in Australia, allowing single check-in across multiple airlines and also one of the world’s fastest airport customers WiFi services in time for the Commonwealth Games. Subsequently he initiated the signing of the first Memorandum of Understanding between universities and the airport sectors.

2021

Dr Asheley Jones is internationally recognised as an agent of change in ICT education and workforce development, both as an educator and as a thought leader in the education industry. In particular Dr Jones pioneered the application of the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) delivering ICT curriculum and workforce transformation across corporate Australia and the higher education sector. She is acknowledged as a leader in the development of outcome based micro credential frameworks including digital literacy and SFIA aligned ICT post-graduate credentials as well as for building outcome-based assessment to provide formal education pathways into Masters of IT Leadership programs. Dr Jones’ expertise has been recognised by her appointment as an accredited expert for the Australian Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and as Head of the Council of Professions Australia Education and Accreditation portfolio. Within ACS, Dr Jones led the highly applauded Professional Year curriculum redesign.

2021

Gavin Keeley has made a distinguished contribution to the field of ICT as co-founder of a Digital Careers Program (known as Group X) that led to a sixty percent increase in ICT enrolment at University in Queensland. This became a national program in 2013 and has since had participation from millions of School students, thousands of teachers and supported the public debate about STEM. His research, and lobbying Government for seven years, led to the establishment of an undersea fibre optic connection direct to the internet from the Sunshine Coast. Finally commissioned and operational in March 2020 the network provides Australia’s fastest, most affordable international data connection to Asia from the east coast. Gavin also co-founded the Silicon Coast group in 2014. It has over 2,000 members and drives collaboration to support the growth of the Sunshine Coast Digital Economy as the leading representative body for entrepreneurship, innovation and technology.

2021

Willy Susilo’s ground-breaking research on authentication techniques has empowered the advancement of eApplications across the world and contributed to the security of Australia. His work on shortened authentication techniques, algorithms, and protocols has had a lasting impact, in particular on cloud computing. He has been acknowledged as one of the top cyber security researchers in the world. As a senior academic and Head of School at the University of Wollongong, he has led initiatives which have profoundly enhanced the standing of ICT within the Australian research landscape. These include a revamp of the curricula that has enhanced its appeal to a greater diversity of applicants.

2021

Nigel Chartres distinguished contribution to ICT has been to envision and deliver the use of ICT to completely transform the way that users accessed various health related services first in West Australia, and then nationally. His leadership and ability to achieve organisational change in the pursuit of a single doorway to government services led to systems such as the ‘Online WA Program’ and established a yardstick for ICT reform in healthcare. To achieve this, he established digital pathways in areas where no such systems previously existed, opening routes between the many entities in healthcare and government. He thus demonstrated possibilities that shaped ICT reform across all levels of government bureaucracies. He is acknowledged for bringing together stakeholders, industry professionals and government departments at the National level in the reform of digital and online health care systems and data management. He remains an inspiration to the many that he has mentored.

2021

Morris Fedeli made a significant contribution to ICT as a pioneer of technology initiatives and being the first to bring them to market. In 2004 in Queensland, he was the founding director of Satellite & Wireless Pty Ltd. In 2005, in the Philippines, he leveraged his expertise from his Australian operations and deployed the first wireless ISP service. This was in partnership with the national carrier, RJ Holdings DZRJ-TV, and used their national terrestrial footprint of towers for transmission. Leading Odyssey World Pty Ltd from 1992-2008 Morris continued to develop innovative business models and technologies including e-commerce solutions. For example, enabling the first pizza delivery from an online order in Australia – before this was actually a thing. Morris next established the THRIVE organisation; a world leader in sustainable business modelling. THRIVE is backed by a sustainable business model theory, methodology and practical assessment tools that Morris designed.

2021

Professor Guandong Xu is recognised for his distinguished contribution to ICT for his work in data analytics developing algorithms used to predict behaviour. These, when applied across a diverse range of applications in business decision making for commerce industry and government, led to hugely significant savings in cost and efficiency which have had far reaching benefits to the Australian economy. His research into human behaviour patterns used artificial intelligence and machine learning. This revolutionised the way, for example, risk analysis, business processes and customer based financial transactions were understood and changed the way such applications were deployed in a digital environment. His interest in Data Science extended beyond the use that can be made of his research into supporting education as Chair of the IEEE’s Committee’s Educational Data Mining Task Force and sitting on the editorial board of several prestigious international journals.

2021

Professor Ghassan Beydoun has made a distinguished contribution to ICT in software development. He is an internationally recognised researcher in complex information systems development processes. He has published more than 160 journal and conferences papers in this area. Professor Beydoun has been a leader in Academia in various roles, including as the IT cluster chair at University of Wollongong, and as the Deputy Head of School at UTS, where he was instrumental in the transformation of the school to become research intensive. He is acknowledged for his leadership and expertise within the SME community in the field of information systems. He has served with distinction on high impact Journals and has supervised many prominent and emerging future leaders in doctoral completions and senior research accomplishments.

2021

Dr Kenneth Price made a distinguished contribution to the field of ICT education for school-aged children, at the forefront of bringing new ideas and curricula into ICT education at a state and national level over four decades. He was passionate about including the incorporation of life-long, transferable problem-solving skills and the social, economic and ethical impacts of digital technology. During his career he actively continued his research into the role of computing within the STEM area, enriching the materials and approaches used to support teachers in order to enable them to remain current with this rapidly changing topic. He was particularly valued as a mentor among his peers and for over two decades maintained an online support community for Tasmanian ICT teachers. He was a member of numerous ICT education bodies at many levels including state (TASITE), national (Australian Council for Computers in Education board) and international (Computer Science Teachers Association).