Speakers – 2021
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International keynote
AI and the Future of Work Now Professor Tom Davenport |
For years, experts have predicted AI will fundamentally change the future of work. But many workers are already close colleagues with AI systems in achieving their daily work objectives.
Drawing on more than 30 cases of work alongside smart machines, Tom Davenport will describe many examples of AI-assisted work, discuss what makes it successful, and detail how companies can redesign work and increase skills. As Davenport has predicted since his 2016 book Only Humans Need Apply, augmentation of human work is both far more likely to succeed and offers far more value to organizations than replacement of humans through automation.
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Industry keynote
Are you future-fit for the rise of the Augmented Business User? Glen Rabie |
Prior to co-founding Yellowfin, Glen worked for National Australia Bank in multiple roles, including Senior Business Consultant and Global Manager. It was here that he learned the value of enterprise data and developed his passion for data analysis.
Glen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Yellowfin – a global analytics and BI software vendor recognised for innovation and acknowledged as a leader in the industry by analyst firms such as Gartner, Forester, Nucleus Research and BARC.
He founded Yellowfin with the mission to help business people to understand their businesses better by creating tools that were designed for business users rather than specialist data analysts. What started as a simple idea has grown into global business with clients in 75 countries, 3 million end users, customer adoption rates that are 3x higher than the rest of the industry, and five consecutive years in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
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The Hon Jaala Pulford
Minister for Employment |
Jaala was appointed Minister for Employment; Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy; and Minister for Small Business in June 2020 and in August 2021 also became the Minister for Resources.
Prior to 2020, Jaala served as Minister for Roads, Road Safety and the TAC; and Minister for Fishing and Boating from December 2018. In the Andrews Government’s first term she was Victoria’s first female Minister for Agriculture, as well as Minister for Regional Development and Deputy Leader in the Legislative Council.
Prior to entering parliament, Jaala worked for more than a decade in the union movement and knows the value that a secure, safe and fairly paid job provides – not only to the person in the job but also to those who depend on them. Prior to that, Jaala grew up in Castlemaine watching her parents establish and run their own small businesses.
Jaala is focussed on ensuring that all Victorians have the opportunity to work and to succeed, whether they are an employee or running their own business. She is committed to making sure that Victoria maintains its world class reputation as a leader in Innovation and Medical Research. She has a strong interest in new and emerging technologies and is keen to support the accelerating growth of the Digital Economy.
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Vice President & Regional Head – Delivery & Operations |
Ashok Mysore has over 29 years of industry experience across Telecommunications, Financial Services, Logistics, Energy, Utilities and Services industries. Ashok as Vice-President and Regional Head – Delivery and Operations for Australia and New Zealand, is responsible for developing a performance driven culture among a group of diverse and talented individuals to achieve accelerated profitable growth by delivering value while continuously improving internal efficiencies.
Ashok joined Infosys in 2004 to lead the telco, media and entertainment business and has held numerous roles before taking up the leadership of delivery and operations across Australia and New Zealand. Ashok has wide experience in sales leadership, general management and consulting across Australia, New Zealand, the United States, India and South-East Asia.
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Stefan Harrer, PhDChief Innovation Officer
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Stefan joined IBM Research at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, New York, in 2008 where he worked together with Roche 454 on developing novel DNA sequencing technologies. As a researcher and data scientist at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience and following corporate strategic roles as Science Technical Assistant to the Director of IBM Research Australia and then Technical Assistant to the VP of Cognitive Computing of IBM Research he founded the Brain-Inspired Computing Research Program of IBM Research Australia, Melbourne in 2015.
As IBM Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM’s Global Lead of Epilepsy Research and as a member of the Neuroethics Working Group of the Director of IBM Research, he helped to develop IBM’s corporate technical strategy in Health AI and Neurotech. In 2021 Stefan was appointed Chief Innovation Officer of Digital Health CRC Ltd., an incubator and investor in the digital health space. He is responsible for the commercialization and technical venture incubation strategy of the $110M fund.
Stefan has been inducted to the IBM Academy of Technology, holds 65 issued patents and was named IBM Master Inventor twice. He is a Member of the New York Academy of Sciences and a Senior Member of the IEEE.
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Research Scientist |
Kristine’s research in the dynamic between technology and the way that people work has been a focus of her publications and teaching for the last fifteen years. Currently she is investigating the design and management of the workplace to understand how organisations use digital capabilities internally to create more effective ways of working, and the impact of new ways of engaging with talent in the digital era. This work has stemmed from a historical research focus on the relationship between HRM and IT, Mobile Connectivity, Human Resource Information Systems, Gamification, and Remote Working.
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Founder & Director
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John Blicq is the founder and director of Innovation Matters, a consultancy specialising in strategy development and innovation management.
John is also the author of “Digital Twins, the next human revolution”
John has had multiple lives working across Western Europe and the Asia Pacific. He started as an entrepreneur during his time in business school. After successfully selling his start-up, he worked as a management consultant, before joining a Greentech start-up/scale-up building new businesses. John has also held senior leadership roles in a number of large financial services institutions, and lectured MBA students in France and Australia.
John is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (#GAICD) and sits on the Board of Advisors for Reputationaire a start-up that specialises in digital reputation enablement
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Chief Data Scientist
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Professor M@ Kuperholz is the PwC Australian firms Chief Data Scientist, has been awarded Australia’s top analytics leader by the premier industry body, and a serious computer geek who has been applying A.I. in anger to real world client problems most days this millennium. M@ is joining us today to talk about how the rapidly changing exponential times we are living in provide opportunities for government and industry to do a better job by getting more value from data, illustrated with relevant case studies. Touching on automation, blockchain, analytics and AI, M@ will also discuss the risks and opportunities of these technologies and how PwC helps clients transform their data and analytic functions at scale by focusing on the most valuable business challenges and to use these technologies RESPONSIBLY, including the global initiative he has lead called RESPONSIBLE AI
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Global Vice President |
Karthik is currently the Global Vice President for data strategy and product development within Oracle’s Construction and Engineering Business Unit.
In a career spanning 21 years across 4 continents, Karthik has successfully built many high performing teams and delivered several large-scale digitization initiatives that have been featured in case studies, patent applications and industry journals.
Named as one of Australia’s Top 10 Analytics Leaders for 2021, Karthik is a passionate believer in the disruptive power of technology and data. More recently, he led the launch of Oracle’s Construction Intelligence Cloud Services, an AI powered industry solution that helps customers accelerate capital project delivery.
Karthik is also part of the Industry Advisory Board within the Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics at Deakin Business School and regularly presents at leading industry events and conferences globally on the use of data and analytics to drive meaningful change.
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Artificial Intelligence Leader |
Leading Amazon’s AI / Machine Learning business across ANZ – helping customers do what they do best, Simon (Peter) brings a technical depth and entrepreneurial business breadth focusing on AI Solutions for Business. Commercial experience across several key verticals; Resources, Energy, FSi, Telco and Retail/Manufacturing.
An advocate of Artificial Intelligence, and the desire to help businesses fully capitalise and not be misled by hype. Simon clearly articulates what the tech ‘is’ and ‘is not’ and how to best apply for long term ROI – Cost/Risk reduction, revenue increases, optimisation, customer experience…adding new cloud/edge AI solutions.
20+ years research, management and consulting experience (US, EU, APAC) covering a range of innovative, industry-led research and commercialisation ventures – engaging across start-ups / SMEs / large corps, and the wider ecosystem.
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Regional Vice President |
Clyde is a career technologist who has spent time working in many sectors across Australia, Asia & the UK. He now works for Salesforce, leading teams focused on positioning how the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform & Revenue Cloud helps organisations reimagine how they can connect with their stakeholders in whole new ways. He also likes to share his perspectives on a broad range of topics, including; “The future of the work”, “How to succeed in a constantly growing VUCA world” and “Why Equity & Ethics matter, now more than ever”.
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Senior Director |
Nicholas is a passionate technologist who has been architecting and developing market leading software applications for the past 21 years. During his career, he has been a founder of several start-up companies, worked with several multinational organisations and held numerous roles in development, research and management.
Nicholas’s research has lead to numerous publications, patents and awards in exposing web services from business applications to data mining and processing on mobile devices. Nicholas regularly presents at universities and conferences on digital transformation and disruptive technologies. Nicholas has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Monash University.
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Data & Analytics Leader |
Oleg Kravets CPA is an experienced Data&Analytics leader, Advisory Board member and international keynote speaker. As a Global Head of Data and Analytics at The Travel Corporation (TTC), his goals include creating enterprise D&A vision and strategy, driving Data Science, AI/ML initiatives and delivering Data Management and Analytics platforms.
With a background in Data&Analytics, Finance and Commerce, his career expands over several industries including Tourism, Energy and Retail. He helps companies deliver business value and impact through digital innovation and change, create and implement visions and strategies, find and explore new opportunities as well as develop and mentor high-performing teams.
In addition to his primary job functions, Oleg is heavily involved in the Data/Analytics/Tech community via presenting keynotes, participating in panel discussions at international summits and writing articles for IT magazines.
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Professor Phil Bolton
Partner, Data & AI |
Phil is an accomplished data analytics leader, experienced in delivering advanced data and analytics solutions to solve his client’s most important problems. Phil has been delivering data led projects to businesses across APAC, EMEA and North America for over 17 years – including government, financial services, energy, mining, utilities, and telco; helping his clients recognise the value in their often latent data assets, through the application of A.I. and machine learning techniques. Phil aims to increase his clients’ data analytics capability by co-designing, upskilling, training and developing integrated solutions; providing a wide variety of data analytics consulting services that leverage sophisticated data science techniques; text analysis, image analysis, network analysis, prediction, optimisation, simulation and segmentation.
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Nicci Rossouw
CEO |
Nicci Rossouw is the CEO of Exaptec, a start-up company she founded in 2015 to provide service robotics solutions to the Australian market. She is passionate about applying innovative technology such as artificial intelligence and automation to improve work-life balance and wellness overall by removing repetitive and boring work. She has provided numerous robotic telepresence solutions to educational facilities and businesses to augment communication and movement for disabled and incapacitated people. Nicci believes that well designed application of robotics will lead to the emergence of new business models that will change the way people work and play for the better. Noted as one of six women who “rock” robotics in Australia, Nicci is a passionate educator of how robots can augment your life for the better. Exaptec was one of Westpac’s 2018 top 200 Businesses of Tomorrow winners, Nicci was noted as “30 women you need to know about in robotics” in 2020. This is a global recognition and Nicci was one of two women in Australia to be awarded this accolade.
Nicci is the host of the Melbourne Robotics Meetup Group and Co-host of Women in Robotics Group|Melbourne Chapter. She also hosts the podcast, “Let’s talk robotics”! which focuses on the amazing robotics community in Australia.
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Julian Watts
Director, Engineering & Asset Management, KPMG Australia |
Julian is an international expert in asset management whose passion is in enabling clients to realise more customer value from their assets. He is a strategic thinker with more than 15 years’ experience leading teams to develop asset management frameworks and strategies in multiple sectors including transport, power and utilities, and government infrastructure.
His experience in asset management stems from when he was Asset Planning Manager for Dunedin City. He has since delivered customer value-centric initiatives across Australia, New Zealand, USA, UAE and the UK and can confidently advise on the effectiveness and improvements between strategy, planning, delivery and operational teams to maximise returns across the value chain.
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Ruby Wolff
COO
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An experienced Operations and I.T Executive, who has demonstrated the ability to lead and develop diverse teams of professionals to new levels of success within fast-paced environments. Strong technical and business experience with an impressive track record of more than 12 years of hands-on experience in strategic planning, business development, project and customer service management. Proven ability to successfully analyze an organization’s critical business requirements, identify deficiencies and potential opportunities, and develop innovative and cost-effective solutions for enhancing competitiveness, increasing revenues, and improving customer service offerings.
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Jonathan Chang
CEO
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Jonathan Chang is the founder and CEO of Silverpond, a machine learning and artificial intelligence company in Australia. Jonathan leads a talented multi-disciplinary team of data scientists, machine learning engineers, designers and project managers who developed HighLighter, an AI powered platform that brings machine learning and artificial intelligence technology to sectors ranging from engineering and construction, medical research and healthcare, environment and conservation. He’s passionate about how AI can positively transform society; you will find him speaking at events and conferences, or working with industry groups and government on responsibly and effectively applying this technology.
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Dr Catherine Lopes
Director
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Dr. Catherine Lopes is a strategist and leader with 20+ years’ experience in data, analytics, and AI. Her recent focus is on helping organizations to uplift business performance by developing data analytics strategy, building broad range analytics use cases including machine learning and AI, establishing data analytics capability and culture through a governed enterprise data management framework and process.
Catherine is an advisor and an entrepreneur in AI and data analytics. She is the founder of Ada’s Tribe, a community supporting women in data, analytics, and AI. She is also an active mentor helping professional transfer from academia to industry.
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Sami Makelainen
Head of Strategic Foresight
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Sami Makelainen has been involved in the online and mobile worlds since the 1990’s. From building the early online commerce and banking platforms in North America and Europe, Sami then spent several years with various aspects of the mobile business, from applications development to network systems research for Nokia in Finland.
Since 2009, Sami has been with Telstra Corporation in Australia, in roles spanning from a mobile platforms subject matter expert to Innovation Program Management. Currently Sami is the Head of Strategic Foresight, focusing on long-term technology and related trends and how they impact the business, industry, and society at large.
Sami holds an MSc degree in Computer Science from the University of Helsinki. His current research interests include impact of automation on skill degradation, complex systems and architecting for resilience.
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Nicholas Therkelsen-Terry
Chief Executive Officer
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Nicholas Therkelsen-Terry (Nick) is CEO and Co-Founder of Max Kelsen, a machine learning and artificial intelligence software company. Max Kelsen are at the forefront of implementing AI & ML into real world environments—particularly in Healthcare and Life Sciences. Nick has a deep theoretical and applied understanding of cutting-edge machine learning techniques, and has been widely recognised as an expert and thought-leader in this field. Nick is a founder member and board representative of the Queensland AI Hub, a large investment supporting the development of the AI industry, creating more jobs and providing aspiring AI engineers with a space of their own to contribute to Australia’s innovation growth.
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Steve Nouri
AI and Data Science |
Steve Nouri is an AI expert who has evolved the way people look at AI and innovations. With more than 300 million views on social media in the last year, he aims to inspire people through the latest technology trends and projects and empowers prospective data scientists through high-quality education and learning materials. He is a member of the AI committee at the standards Australia, Forbes Tech Council, Australian ICT Professional of the Year, and an accomplished influencer on LinkedIn. From humble beginnings as a junior software engineer and university lecturer he has worked in different IT roles before joining the Australian Computer Society as the Head of Data Science and AI.
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Sveta Freidman
Director of Data Analytics & Science |
Sveta is an executive leader in data analytics & science with extensive experience in consulting and client based environments. She has vast of experience working in different industries including gambling, retail, health and digital businesses and startups.
Sveta is honored to have been awarded in the Top Analytics Leaders of the Year by the Australian industries professional association.
Sveta also have been listed in Global Data Women of the year by CDO journal.
Sveta has a passion for connecting people to the data they need to make decisions ,build better products and execute marketing, personalisation and customer strategies. She has a great ability to liaise between business and technology. Extensive experience in building data science and analytics practices from scratch, recruiting and developing teams.
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Chris Howard
AI/ML Technical Leader |
Chris is the AWS technical leader for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning across Asia Pacific and Japan. He is responsible for a team of deep specialists building and deploying AI/ML powered solutions on the AWS platform.
Chris is also responsible for co-leading the development and roll-out of Ratio – the AWS Responsible AI Framework, and actively works with customers globally to share best-practice on how to deploy AWS AI & ML services in a responsible way.
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Manoj Shivanna
Regional Leader (AUS & NZ) |
Manoj is the Southern Hemisphere Regional Leader for Advanced Analytics and AI Solutions at GHD Digital. He is an experienced leader with a demonstrated history of working in transport, water and civil engineering industries. He has extensive experience in developing Data & Analytics strategies, Advanced Analytics execution and developing Artificial Intelligence Solutions to address clients’ most complex problems.
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Scott Thomson
Head of Innovation |
Scott works for Google in Customer Engineering in the Google Cloud APAC team where he leads the customer innovation practice for Google globally. Prior to this, he worked with Adobe across APAC on digital strategy and digital transformation. He’s worked for Telstra and Sensis in digital transformation and held the role of CTO in an Australian startup focused on personalised video advertising for mobiles. He is sadly addicted to working with and helping startups throughout AU and NZ – he still dreams of running away to join another startup circus.
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Dan Sutherland
Solution Centre Lead, Artificial Intelligence |
Dan is the AI Solutions Lead at Deloitte Australia. Blending a technical and business background, Dan’s focus is on driving value from AI-based solutions and products. He has a particular focus on how to best embed AI solutions in day-to-day usage by broad user groups to deliver value at scale and support data science teams in bringing solutions to business users.
Dan is an experienced AI product executive with a history in scale-ups and industry expertise across energy, mining, utilities, infrastructure and FMCG.
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Senior Research Fellow |
A²I² – Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute
Chief Investigator, ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Digital Enhanced Living
Dr Leonard Hoon is a Senior Research Fellow in the Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute, leading the Health Technologies and AI Ethics portfolios for the institute, and is a Chief Investigator with the Australian Research Council Industrial Transformation Hub for Digital Enhanced Living. Leonard leverages his background in software engineering, usability and product management to enable research translation.
Dr Hoon operates in the discovery through to the delivery stages of commercial research projects for the institute including work in human factors, natural language processing and the operationalisation of AI.
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Regional Director |
Daniel Hatfield is a Regional Director for Denodo working with clients around Data Virtualization and Transformation. He has over 25 years of industry experience of thinking outside the square, helping Australian organisations leverage emerging technology to transform and deliver successful outcomes. With the explosion and focus on Automation and AI in Australia he has a keen passion to help organisations achieve real business value from the technology. This includes building the right Data maturity foundations through Data Virtualization, applying Design Thinking to focus on Business Opportunities, and ensuring alignment to Business Processes and Customer/Citizen Experience Improvements.
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Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy |
Senator the Hon Jane Hume was first appointed to the Australian Federal Ministry in 2019, with responsibility for Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology. Her responsibilities were expanded in 2020 to encompass the broader digital economy, and again in 2021 when she became the first Minister for Women’s Economic Security.
Minister Hume is passionate about her portfolios- from improving Australia’s superannuation system, ensuring it is transparent, efficient and fit-for-purpose; to facilitating Australia’s ambition to be a world leading digital economy and society by 2030; to ensuring the best possible economic outcomes for women, there is much work to do.
Upon being elected as a Liberal Senator for Victoria in 2016, Senator Hume was appointed Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Economics. She previously held various senior positions in the financial services industry, working for the National Australia Bank, Rothschild Australia, Deutsche Bank and, immediately prior to her election, as a Senior Policy Adviser at Australian Super.
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Executive Dean and Alfred Deakin Professor |
Mike Ewing is an Alfred Deakin Professor of Marketing and the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law. Prior to Deakin, Mike previously worked at Monash University for 12 years as Professor of Marketing, Head of the Department of Marketing, Deputy PVC and Head of Faculty. He also worked at Curtin University for 6 years.
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Dean Deakin Business School |
Amanda is a Professor in Human Resource Management and Employment Relations and Head of the Department of Management in Deakin Business School. In a career spanning thirteen years in higher education, Amanda has worked in Australia and internationally and is currently the Head of the Department of Management in addition to holding a professoriate position. Amanda has established a strong track record as a researcher in the areas of employee voice, employee engagement and employee workplace participation, both in Australia and internationally.
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Head of Department, Information Systems and Business Analytics |
Hind Benbya is a Professor and the Head of IS and Business Analytics at Deakin University. Her main areas of expertise are Digital transformation and Artificial Intelligence, especially around the implications of automation via algorithms and robotics on work and organizations. Her career has criss-crossed between industry and academia and she publishes in both practitioner and academic journals.
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Associate Professor Sandeep Reddy Director, MBA (Healthcare Management) |
Title: Implementation of AI in Healthcare-The Translational Chasm
Sandeep Reddyis an Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare researcher based at the Deakin School of Medicine who also functions as a certified health informatician. He is a World Health Organisation recognised digital health expert and a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health. He has a medical and healthcare management background and has completed machine learning/ health informatics training from various sources. He is currently engaged in research about the safety, quality and explainability of the application of AI in healthcare delivery in addition to developing AI models to treat and manage chronic diseases. Also, he has authored several articles and books about the use of AI in Medicine. Further, he has set up local and international forums to promote the use of AI in Healthcare in addition to sitting on various international committees focusing on AI in Healthcare.
Speaking Opportunities
There are opportunities for industry-focused speakers to present at this conference. If you’re interested in speaking at the event to share your business case studies or experiences in AI and Future of Work, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us to enquire about speaking opportunities.
