Australian Capital Territory Pearcey

2012 ACT Pearcey Award

The 2012 ACT Pearcey Award was presented on Thursday evening 15th November at the Boat House by the Lake as part of the ACS ACT Branch annual Canberra ICT Awards night. The ACS in the ACT and the Pearcey Foundation have been collaborating on this event for the past five years and attracted more than 90 ICT professionals from the territory to the gala dinner. In presenting the Pearcey Award, Mr Alan Patterson, CEO of ACS (and member of the National management committee for the ACS), commented on the depth of Australia innovative talent across Australia and spoke of the need to encourage more yopunger people to seek careers in ICT given the dearth of graduates from our national tertiary educational institutions.

The winner of the 2012 Pearcey Award was Dr Vikram Sharma, CEO and Founder of QuintessenceLabs, an early stage company focused on techniques and technologies to protect data, trade secrets,and national security assets. As Dr Sharma was in California at his US Laboratories, the award was received on his behalf by Scott Rashleigh, a mentor to Vikram and board member of QuintessenceLabs.

Additionally, the judging panel decided to recognise a 16 year old Year 11 student, Joshua Luongo, with a highly commended certificate and cash award. Joshua has illustrated the true entrepreneurial spirit by developing an administrative iPhone app for his school (Hawker College in Canberra) and fellow students. He is the classic exemplar of the new generation of entrepreneurs - he had his first computer at age 3! Now with the Apple iPhone/iPad environment, he can’t help himself. In 2010 this individual developed an iPhone App that allows students to check themselves into Maths Classes using QR codes. Pretty soon School management embraced the idea, extended it to enable users to view school announcements, student diary, detailed guidelines on how to connect to the school network, access on-line text books, calendars, school map and the list gets longer and longer as it is embraced as part of the daily scene at the college. This free App from the AppStore is used by more than 300 students daily to register attendance at various classes. This student was recently invited to present this “Hawker App” to an audience of higher education academics and software developers as part of the first Augmented Reality Camp at the University of Canberra’s Inspire Centre. Clearly this young man is on his way to continue to expand his ICT knowledge and skills formally and informally. The industry will look forward to hearing more of his inspirational efforts in the years to come.

Background

This award is a State award aimed at encouraging and rewarding fresh and innovative talent in the ICT profession. It is awarded to an individual during his or her career who has demonstrated innovative and pioneering achievement and contribution to technological development in ACT. Especially the judges are looking for younger professionals who are running risks, making a difference and inspiring others by their deeds (more...)

Trevor Pearcey built Australia's first and the world's fourth electronic computer in 1948 in Sydney. It is the oldest surviving computer in the world. The Pearcey Foundation's objective is to reinforce the recognition, knowledge and appreciation of Australian contribution to the development and growth of the ICT professions, research and industry.