Sarah joined Microsoft in 2015 and has held a range of technical leadership roles across the organisation, supporting both local and global teams. In 2021 Sarah was appointed as the Chief Technology Officer for the Enterprise Commercial team. In this capacity her role is to support the development of Microsoft’s industry strategy across retail, manufacturing, energy and telecommunications, as well as bringing innovation and insights to commercial customers, helping them plan for the future. Sarah is passionate about supporting veterans in their careers outside of the military and has recently been appointed as a co-chair for Microsoft’s global military board.
 
Prior to Microsoft Sarah served in the Australian army, followed by a decade travelling the world and working across a broad range of industries in both Europe and the Middle East. She has supported Think Tanks, built custom business applications and attended ballet for a living. Her varied experience and perspective across industries brought her back to Australia, first to telecommunications, and then to IT. Her degree in fluvial geomorphology from the University of NSW has only ever proved useful for boring friends on long road trips, but as a lifelong learner her MBA from the City of London University and current pursuit of a PhD are proving far more applicable.

Giuseppe Porcelli, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lakeba Group

As the Founder and Group CEO of Lakeba Group, Giuseppe leads a privately held international technology group that optimises business and society through technology.

With over ten years of experience in conceiving, creating, and commercialising technologies that accelerate competitive advantage for individuals, businesses, governments, and non-government organisations, Giuseppe is passionate about solving the world's challenges with the most powerful and newest technology. 

 

Bill Simpson-Young, Chief Executive Officer, Gradient Institute

Bill Simpson-Young is co-founder and Chief Executive of Gradient Institute, a non-profit research institute that works to build safety, ethics, accountability and transparency into AI systems. He has a background as a software engineer and technologist and has led teams of researchers, software engineers and designers developing novel computer technologies for global technology companies (Canon and Unisys) and research institutions (CSIRO and NICTA). He and his teams have built new technology and products in areas such as machine learning, computer vision, spatial data systems, data privacy, web technologies and computational law.

Bill has also been on the executive teams of three leading Australian science and technology organisations (Canon's Research and Development lab CiSRA, National ICT Australia and CSIRO’s Data61) and is on the NSW Government's AI Review Committee, the ANU School of Computing Advisory Board and several government research grant review committees.

 

Dr Aengus Tran, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, harrison.ai

Co-founder and CEO, harrison.ai / Qualified medical clinician / World-ranked Al engineer and data scientist / Daily Telegraph’s Top 30 Tech Entrepreneurs under 30 / Forbes 30 under 30 in Asia 

Dr Aengus Tran is a medical doctor and world-ranked Al engineer and data scientist. He’s also co-founder and CEO of harrison.ai, a clinician-led artificial intelligence medical technology company, tackling some of the biggest issues in healthcare causing inequitable diagnosis today. Aengus & his team have rapidly developed breakthrough AI software across IVF, radiology and soon pathology, all with the aim of helping clinicians make the right diagnoses faster and treat patients sooner.

Aengus Tran and his brother, Dimitry, grew up in Vietnam. Their father wrote the key mathematics textbook studied by all students in the country. As kids, they learned programming from their father and had the first ‘home computer’ to be imported into Vietnam. Aengus moved to Australia when he turned 16 and attended Sydney Secondary College at Blackwattle Bay, before enrolling at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to study medicine. During his medical training Aengus became fascinated with cardiology, becoming president of the university’s Cardiothoracic Society, a student body organisation. During a temporary placement in the Cardiac Centre at the Tam Duc Hospital he noticed that the main challenge doctors faced was a shortage of human or physical resources to effectively manage and prevent disease. This was an epiphany for Aengus. He concluded that what the healthcare industry needed most of all was the ability to scale.

His time at UNSW enabled him to flex his business muscles. While there, Aengus co-created ClubQnect, a free to download ‘social ticketing’ mobile app for which they won the Hong Kong Polytechnic University PolyU Innovation and Entrepreneurship Global Student Challenge (GSC). He also created a pioneering AI system to help embryologists improve IVF pregnancy rates. “Ivy”, a deep learning model uses time-lapse incubation video to increase the probability of pregnancy. The AI software, created in partnership with Australian reproductive service provider Virtus Health, sold to Swedish company Vitrolife for US$6m in 2019. Aengus graduated with distinction at UNSW, which, coupled with his Ivy success, set him on a pathway to revolutionise medical practice by creating a set of technologies that can scale medicine. His passion for computer science combined with deep medical expertise and the ambition to change the world for the better led Aengus at age 24 to form harrison.ai with his brother Dimitry. 

harrison.ai has an astounding mission: to raise the standard of healthcare for millions of patients every day. It’s building a range of ventures by partnering with world-leading healthcare services to bring live-saving products to market at speed and scale. Aengus wears the dual hat of a clinician and an AI engineer, which translates into clinically sound designs and technically robust solutions to benefit patients. Since its creation in 2018, harrison.ai has been growing at break-neck speed, raising a total of $158 million in funding for its AI technology company. Aengus and his vision caught the eye of Australian VC firm Blackbird Ventures, who led the capital raising, and inspired Horizons Ventures, Skip Capital and Ramsay Healthcare to jump on board. 

harrison.ai’s partnership with I-MED, Australia's largest medical imaging service provider, formed what is now one of the largest radiology AI companies in the world, annalise.ai. Their first product, Annalise Enterprise CXR is the world’s first comprehensive chest X-ray (CXR) solution detecting 124 findings, up to ten times more findings than other AI solutions currently available. Within three years, Aengus & his team have developed two products in the field of radiology; one a chest X-Ray support tool, and the other – CT Brain – a support tool for brain scans. Both were driven by a scarcity of radiologists; in some cases, such as the UK, up to a 40% shortage. 

In 2020, franklin.ai was born. Globally, pathology faces a stark skills shortage, with the number of US pathologists decreasing 18% between 2007 and 2017 despite an increase in workload. With this in mind, harrison.ai partnered with Sonic Health to build ground-breaking AI solutions for pathology that will help scale the capacity of diagnostic care across the globe. Aengus featured in the Daily Telegraph’s Top 30 Tech Entrepreneurs under 30 in Australia as one of the brightest minds under 30 who are thinking big and changing lives with medical technology. Also named on the Forbes 30 under 30 in Asia in 2020, the young entrepreneur’s mission is simple and bold: for his technology to touch millions of lives across the globe, and make healthcare more equitable and accessible to all.

James Ward, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Epistemology, GLG Network Member (Supported by GLG)

James Ward has been a GLG Network Member since 2019 and is the founder and CEO of Epistemology, a specialist consulting business based in Sydney, which helps private and public equity firms, corporate executives and government policymakers to achieve more with less, using the power of Artificial Intelligence. He is a Mentor in the Expert Community at PeakSpan Capital, a Private Equity firm headquartered in New York, focused on investing in high growth technology startups. 

Prior to founding Epistemology, James founded technology startups ICG and Forward Media, both of which he took to cash exit, earning a place in the "BRW Fast-100". His success at building high performing teams became a case study in Australia's best-known MBA textbook - the "Fish Book".

His work primarily concerns the big picture challenges we face today in the areas of ecology, sustainable development, financial asset allocation, biodiversity preservation and the development of next generation digital infrastructure, including AI infrastructure. He has consulted in these areas to the United Nations, World Economic Forum, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the Civilization Research Institute, and to several large global asset management firms. 

Prior to his entrepreneurial roles, James worked as a strategy consultant for Deloitte and later for McKinsey & Co, and has led Artificial Intelligence strategy at Teletech, IAG and SAS. Academically, James holds a Bachelor of Computing Science, a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence, and has lectured in Computing Science and Business at UTS. He has earned two academic scholarships to pursue Artificial Intelligence research with the Key Centre for Computing Science, and with Apple.

James' primary research interest today is the further study of Applied Intelligence, both Human and Artificial, through the lens of Causal Science, which he sees as the gateway to achieving Artificial General Intelligence within his lifetime. Please note that the content of this discussion is based on the speaker's personal insights and views. 

 

Professor Kimberlee Weatherall, Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society

Kimberlee is a Professor of Law at the University of Sydney focusing on the regulation of technology and intellectual property law, and a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

She is a Fellow at the Gradient Institute, a research institute developing ethical AI, and a research affiliate of the Humanising Machine Intelligence group at the Australian National University, and a co-chair of the Australian Computer Society’s Advisory Committee on AI Ethics.