12 October, 2021 | Pearcey Conversations2021Women in IT

Her Story: Partnerships Between Humans And Machines

Pearcey Conversations online seminar 12 October 2021 celebrated Ada Lovelace Day with a look at some remarkable achievements that women have made in STEM.

Her Story: Partnerships between Humans and Machines asked the esteemed panel to give their views and insights about ICT. The topics ranged from general topics of technology, computing, society, education, and careers, to more specific topics of human centred design and human-machine interactions. Other incidental topics included policy frameworks, complexity, ethics, AI, incentives, models, and where technology could take society into the future. Of particular interest was the rich discussion around the lack of women in computing and technology, the why and the where-to-from-here.

Panellists:

• Pia Andrews – Special Advisor, Digital & Client Data Workstream Lead, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)
• Paula Burton – Co-founder and CEO, Mass Dynamics
• Professor Judy Kay – Professor of Computer Science, The University of Sydney

Moderated by Susan Andrews – Pearcey Foundation SA Chair; Adviser, Mentor and Consultant in the ICT and Digital Technology Sector

Closing comments by Kelly Hutchinson - Deputy Chair, Pearcey Foundation

Speakers

Pia Andrews is an open government and open data ninja, working within the machine to enable greater transparency, democratic engagement, citizen-centric design and real, pragmatic actual innovation in the public sector and beyond. Basically she is trying to do her part in establishing greater public benefit from publicly funded data, software and research.

Pia is also passionate about the Australian tech sector, and continually works to improve the scene for startups, SMEs and clever people do clever things in Australia. This includes work in policy development, in public consultations (eg, the ICT industry Public Sphere, and the Digital Culture Public Sphere) and is interested in how government procurement policy can better facilitate government engagement with SMEs to tap into a broader skills and services base.

Susan Andrews was closely involved with building South Australia’s fast growth, globally-focused information and communications technology (ICT) sector for over 15 years as the ICT Industry Development Manager in the South Australian Government and for three years at Innovate SA. Her role involved developing commercialisation strategies, facilitating growth and building management capability in software, electronics, telecommunications and digital technology and media companies in South Australia, many of which were start-ups. Susan developed the Growing Global Companies program that delivered entrepreneurial skills training to over 300 innovative technology firms. Susan has extensive networks among technology entrepreneurs, investors and business advisers in South Australia and across Australia. She was involved in the delivery of the ANZA Gateway to the US program in South Australia for many years.

Between 2012 and 2018 Susan had a role in the South Australian Government initially developing the South Australian ICT Roadmap for Minerals and Energy strategy and then managing ten large collaborative innovation projects that led to the development of new products and services for the South Australian Mining, Equipment, Technology and Services (METS) sector. These projects aimed to increase productivity, reduce costs and improve environmental management in the mining and energy sector and open up new growth and export opportunities for South Australian METS companies.

Susan received the 2013 iAwards SA ICT Woman of the Year award; was the Head Judge for the ICT Woman of the Year, 2014 National iAwards; and the lead national panel judge, Digital Disruption Awards, Australian Computer Society (ACS), 2017 and 2018.

Paula Burton loves connecting the dots between business, technology, science, social impact and smart people to create for-impact outcomes.

Mass Dynamics, Co-founded and led by Paula, is made up of leading scientists and product people aiming to help its customers and the broader Mass Spectrometry community navigate the world around them by making good business, research-based and science experiment decisions.

Paula is also the Co-founder of the Flying Robot School, an educational initiative aimed at encouraging kids at public schools in rural areas to create cool technology that serves a useful purpose, and to consider further study in STEM; part of the Startmate Melbourne 2020 Cohort; GAICD; and Women in STEM advocate.

Judy Kay is a Payne-Scott Professor at the University of Sydney School of Computer Science. She leads the Human Centred Technology Research Cluster, in the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Sydney. A core focus of her research has been to create infrastructures and interfaces for personalisation, especially to support people in lifelong, life-wide learning. This ranges from formal education settings to supporting people in using their long-term ubicomp data to support self-monitoring, reflection and planning. Central to this has been in the design of the Personis user modelling systems and interfaces that enable people to control their own long-term personal information from diverse sensors on devices be they worn, carried, embedded in the environment or conventional desktops. She has integrated this into new forms of interaction including virtual reality, surface computing, wearables and ambient displays. Her research has been commercialised and deployed and she has extensive publications in leading venues for research in user modelling, AIED, human computer interaction and ubicomp. She has had leadership roles in top conferences in these areas and is Editor-in-Chief of the IJAIED, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education (IJAIED) and Editor of IMWUT, Interactive Mobile Wearable and Ubiquitous Technology (IMWUT).