2023 judges

William (Bill) Barrett is Senior Vice President of Asia Pacific Aerospace Consultants (APAC) based in Sydney, Australia where he advises space companies from multinationals to start-ups. He has over 25 years of experience in the Space and Telecommunications industries across all major space sectors including satellite manufacture, satellite communications, ground stations, launch services, space insurance and space policy for companies such as Hughes Space and Communications (now Boeing Satellite Systems), OTC, Telstra, GIO/AMP and Asia Pacific Space Centre. He was a member of the Australian delegation for UNISPACE III as an expert advisor on commercial space matters and continues to advise the Federal Government on commercial space matters including the recent revision of the Flight Safety Code, the Hayabusa probe return to Australia and the Space Skills Gap Analysis. He is co-founder and long term Deputy Chair of the Space Industry Association of Australia (SIAA), currently on the SIAA Advisory Board, recipient of the SIAA lifetime service award and a space innovation supporter assisting more than 12+ start-up space ventures.

Bob has been in the telecommunications industry for over 53 years having started as a PMG Technician in 1967. During that period Bob has had 5 successful careers. He has worked in a variety of roles with organisations like PMG/Telecom, Alcatel (formerly STC), Ericsson Australia and worked 31 years as founder, owner, dealer principal and CEO of TTGroup Communications incorporating SmartSpeak Solutions.

While he has held many chairman positions and directorships, at the moment Bob is Chairman of Azentro, a Voice Vision and Data Company after a merger acquisitions with Productiv Pty Ltd, VV Tech Pty Ltd, FleetLink Australia and as at 22/02/18 Data Mobility and Voice (DMV) in Adelaide South Australia. DMV are a Gold MITEL Partner and Calibre One based in Darwin and Adelaide.

In building Azentro into it’s 2023 profile Bob managed 6 merger acquisitions and 4 brand changes.
Bob is also a founding director of Sheldon College which his wife Dr Lyn Bishop founded in 1997.The college has 1600+

Tania Ezra BA(ANU), MPM (USQ), PGCertAstro(Swin), ITIL, PMP, PMI-RMP, CPPD, MRMIA, MAIPM, MASA, SFC is a Security Specialist with Microsoft. She has extensive academic achievements and over 20 years of intimate end to end involvement in complex high-risk programs, and has previously worked IBM, CSC and Logica and is a leader in space and security risks in projects. Tania is an explainer for NASA and JPL and has assisted the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. She is part of Astronomy Australia Limited's Project Oversight Committee.

Sam Giffney is ReadyTech's Chief Information Officer, with two decades of experience in technology and security leadership roles across the Australia and New Zealand region.

Responsible for building the ReadyTech information security program and maintaining certification under the international ISO 27001 security management standard, Sam has been integral to embedding information security best practices and culture across the organisation's products and teams as it grew from 20 to 500 staff.

Sam is an (ISC)² Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP).

Thomas Green is a co-founder of Neumann Space where he served as a research and policy analyst and in-house counsel for almost five years. He is currently a Project Manager in the Emerging Technologies branch of Transport for NSW and is a member of the International Institute of Space Law, the Royal Society of NSW and the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science.

Thomas is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Wollongong on the regulation and enforcement of new technology — specifically concerning access to space by commercial and non-government entities.

Thomas has also previously worked on software projects and start-ups related to machine learning, worked in private equity, served as a Ministerial Advisor on emergency services and road safety, and was a business coordinator for the COVID-19 response team for Transport for NSW during the COVID outbreaks in NSW throughout 2020 and worked in the private sector as a Quality Manager through 2021 managing the design, development and production of novel COVID-19 testing kits to improve pandemic management responses and patient outcomes.

Gary Hogan serves on the Council of RMIT University and is the former Enterprise Professor of Industry Engagement at Melbourne University. He taught at the Industrial College of the US National Defense University and is a former Senior Adviser for Defence at KPMG Australia. During a distinguished ADF career, Gary was Head of Military Intelligence and Director-General, Scientific and Technical Analysis. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Business Analytics at the University of Newcastle and Director Partnerships at Swisstec Health. He is a member of the Northern Territory’s Defence and National Security Advisory Panel. He was Australia’s first Defence Attaché to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Head of Defence Staff in Jakarta. Gary is a graduate of the US Naval War College and China’s National Defence University. He is a member of the Order of Australia, the US Legion of Merit and the Grand Meritorious Military Order of Indonesia.

Born and educated in Perth in Western Australia, David attended Wesley College from 1967 – 1973 and then graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1981 with law degrees B.Juris LL.b.
David was elected to the Australian Parliament as a Senator for Western Australia in 2001 and was a Senator for 15 years.

Prior to that he was a Barrister and Solicitor in Western Australia practicing in the areas of Mining and Crime and lived and worked on the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia for 12 years before returning to Perth to continue in the Law and as a Barrister and In-House Counsel providing advice and representation mainly pertaining to mining matters in Western Australia.

In Parliament David was inter alia, chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee, was appointed by Prime Minister Howard as Minister for Justice and Customs in 2007, was Opposition spokesperson as Shadow Minister on Minerals Energy and Tourism and then Defence from 2009 to 2013 and then Minister for Defence 2013 and 2014.
David has a strong commitment to Australian Defence Industry and the current Australian Government’s budgetry support the Defence portfolio particularly focussing upon Australian naval ship and submarine building.

David is currently sits on the Board of SAAB Technologies Australia, Kalia Ltd (mining), International SOS (advisory board), The Centre for Defence Industry Capability (advisory board), The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Council), Pelican Clean Energy Pty Ltd (LNG wholesaler) and is the Commonwealth’s Advocate for Australian Defence Industry Exports.

Professor Ryan Ko is Chair and Director of UQ Cyber Security at the University of Queensland, Australia. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Engineering)(Hons.) (2005), and PhD (2011) from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Ko has held senior scientific leadership, executive, and directorship roles across industry and academia, and has more than a decade of board, governance and advisory experience across government, industry and NGOs across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and USA. He currently serves on the AustCyber Queensland Innovation Node advisory board, Queensland Government's Digital Professionals Workforce Plan (DPWP)'s Program Advisory Board, Technical Reference Group member of Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA)'s Integrity Systems Company, and Technology Advisory Board member of the NZX-listed (NZE:LIC) Livestock Improvement Cooperation (LIC).

He is co-founder of Cyber Security Certification Australia (CSCAU), and co-founder of First Watch Ltd (NZ) – an industrial cybersecurity spin-off based on his patented OT security and provenance research at the University of Waikato. He is also an advisor to leading Australian cyber security startup Cybermetrix Pty Ltd, and the Silicon Valley-headquartered startup Nyriad.

He has also served as expert advisor to INTERPOL, the government of Tonga, NZDF, NZ Minister for Communications' Cyber Security Skills Taskforce, and one of four nationally-appointed Technical Adviser for the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, Ministry of Justice. Earlier in his career, Ko was a systems engineer, and subsequently founded two start-ups (one of which was a social enterprise which became an events/conventions management contractor with IMG at mega-events in Singapore, including the inaugural Youth Olympics in 2010).

Since joining the School of ITEE at UQ in 2019, he has served as Group Leader - Cyber Security (2019), the founding Discipline Leader of the Cyber Security and Software Engineering discipline (2020-2021), and most recently as Deputy Head of School (External Engagement) (2021-2022).

Ko has successfully established several university-wide, multi-disciplinary academic research and education programmes, including UQ's interdisciplinary cyber security research and postgraduate programme involving four UQ faculties, establishing NZ's first cyber security graduate research programme and lab (CROW) in 2012, establishing NZ's first Master of Cyber Security (encompassing technical and law courses), the NZ Cyber Security Challenge since 2014, and being the founding director of the New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science – Te Puna Haumaru, the Evidence Based Policing Centre (at Wellington with NZ Police and ESR), and Master of Security and Crime Science in 2017 with the University of Waikato, NZ.

Over his academic career, Ko has been awarded A$14.5million in competitive grants as lead Chief Investigator. Prior to UQ, he was the highest funded computer scientist in New Zealand, as Principal Investigator and Science Leader of the largest MBIE-awarded cloud security research funding for STRATUS (NZ$12.2 million; 2014-2018). STRATUS' research was awarded 'Gold' by MBIE (i.e. top performing project, 2017), adopted by INTERPOL and featured in NZ's Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's NZ Cyber Security Strategy 2016 annual report.

Ko has a track record developing international and national cyber security curricula, including the co-creation of the gold-standard (ISC)2 Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) curriculum (2014-2015), and authoring the initial draft of the NZQA's Level 6 Cybersecurity Diploma qualification as part of the NZ Cyber Security Skills Taskforce on behalf of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Ko's research in cyber security focuses on returning control of data to users. His research reduces users' reliance on trusting third-parties and focusses on (1) provenance logging and reconstruction, traceability and (2) privacy-preserving data processing. His research is adopted internationally (e.g. CERN, INTERPOL, and HP clients such as Apple, Nasa, US Treasury/IRS). His papers have received conference Best Paper Awards (2011, 2015, 2017), and resulted in several technology transfers (e.g. HP), open source contributions (e.g. Kali Linux THC) and spin-offs (e.g. First Watch). He has published in top venues including WWW (The Web), NeurIPS, DCC, ESORICS, IEEE TrustCom, IEEE ICWS, IEEE TDSC, IEEE TSC, Computers & Security, IEEE Trans on Smart Grid, and more than 100 publications including books, refereed conference papers, journal papers, book chapters, encyclopaedia entries, technical reports and international patents (PCT).

Recently, he is researching information integrity and cyber autonomy in critical infrastructure sectors such as energy, manufacturing, regulatory and agriculture sectors. He has served in technical programme committees for more than 30 IEEE conferences/workshops, associate editor for 6 journals, and as series editor for Elsevier's security books.

Within the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 technical committee, Prof Ko is Head of Delegation for the Singapore national body, served as Editor, ISO/IEC 21878 “Security guidelines for design and implementation of virtualized servers”, and hosted the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 meetings at Hamilton, New Zealand, in 2017. He is currently one of the editors of the ISO/IEC PWI 5181 Data Provenance Reference Model. In 2022, Ko co-chaired the development of the Singapore standard TR 106:2022 Tiered cybersecurity standards for enterprises in collaboration with the SPSTC and Singapore Cyber Security Agency.

Ko serves as an asessor for the Australian Research Council (ARC), Irish Research Council, Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO),and the NZ MBIE College of Assessors (since 2015). He is also an external expert for the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). Ko has externally examined 11 PhD and 3 Masters theses for universities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore.

He contributed to the establishment of the Government of Tonga CERT and CERT NZ, and has spoken regularly on cyber and cloud security research across the globe, including the Republic of Korea National Assembly (2018), INTERPOL (2017), TEDx Ruakura (2017), and the NZ Members of Parliament (2016).

He is a Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences, a life member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and member of the IEEE and the Australian Computer Society (ACS).

For his contributions to the field, he was elected Fellow of Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) (2016) for significant contributions to cloud security research and education, the Singapore Government (Enterprise Singapore)’s Young Professional Award (2018) for his leadership at ISO, and awarded the inaugural CSA Ron Knode Service Award 2012 for the establishment of Cloud Data Governance and Cloud Vulnerabilities Research Working Groups. He is also recipient of the 2015 (ISC)2 Information Security Leadership Award.

For his research and teaching excellence, he was awarded the University of Waikato's Early Career Excellence Award (2014), Faculty Teaching Excellence Awards (2014, 2015, 2018), and the Nola Campbell eLearning Excellence Award (2014). During his PhD, he was also awarded ASTAR SIMTech's Best Student Award (2009), and clinched the 1st Prize of the IEEE Services Cup 2009 at IEEE ICWS (CORE A) in Los Angeles, CA.

He is an active science communicator and is regularly interviewed and featured by Australian (ABC News, SBS News, 7 News, 9 News, Courier Mail, Network 10, AFR), NZ (NZ Herald, Dominion Post, Stuff.co.nz, Waikato Times, TVNZ, Central TV) and international media on topics of cyber security, cybercrime and data privacy.

Peter Lynch is a leader in Professional Indemnity Insurance in the real estate, valuation and management right industry sectors.

He boasts over 30 years’ experience with Aon Risk Solutions and as the Client Manager is responsible for developing new business within the real estate sector including the identification of business opportunities with franchise groups and other stakeholders.

He took a significant role in providing advice and support to introduce a Real Estate specific indemnity insurance scheme and is responsible for the highly successful REIQ/REINT schemes which he coordinated with the assistance of industry, lawyers, underwriters and claims staff.

Peter has a strong interest in promoting safe and quality business practices in real estate and has been a regular contributor to course materials, presentations and editorial submissions. He has been called upon to be a guest speaker at training forums for the REIQ, REIA, REINT, REIWA and various franchise groups.

Peter also provides individual Risk Management training to a number of his Franchise Group clients.

Kim Chandler McDonald is the Co-Founder/CEO of a Deep-Tech firm that has a developed a next-gen all-in-one, secure, permission-based, secure by design, data integration, sharing and governance platform, which is focussed on data and digital enablement for all.

Kim is a globally respected thought leader on disruptive approaches, transformational trends and innovative business strategies - particularly those involving innovation and empowerment in the global DACE (Digital, Attention and Collaboration Economies). An internationally sought after board member, Kim’s current board positions include the Paris-based Cybersecurity Advisors Network, Women In AI (Australia, NZ), Griffith University’s Enterprise Advisory Board and Washington D.C.’s WordSmithRapport.

The award-winning author of ‘Innovation: How Innovators Think, Act and Change Our World’, ‘Flat World Navigation: Collaboration and Networking in the Global Digital Economy’; and co-author of ‘Entrepreneurial Renaissance: Cities Striving Towards an Era of Renaissance and Revival’, Kim’s most recent book ‘Postcards From Tomorrow’ continues to raise money for Lou’s Place, Sydney’s only daytime drop-in centre for female victims of domestic abuse and coercive control.

Dr Pozza is the principal of Gravity Lawyers and her expertise includes: Commercial international space law, domestic legislative frameworks over military space-uses as well as international law space law dealing with armed-conflict, Cybersecurity and IT, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and Technology.

Dr Maria Pozza gained her PhD in Law and Politics at the University of Otago, specialising in Space Law and International Relations in 2013 and was also awarded the visiting Lauterpacht Fellowship from the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at University of Cambridge UK in recognition of her work and contributions to space law. Dr Pozza’s expertise in space law has been called upon by a number of overseas and national government agencies, domestic and international institutions, research institutions, legislative development committees, and an impressive portfolio of private clients.

As a prolific publisher, Dr Pozza is presently working on a book publication titled: Risk Management in Outer Space Activities – An Australian and New Zealand Perspective as part of her Book Series titled Space Law and Policy.

Sushmita Ruj is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW, Sydney. She has more than 15 years experience in applied cryptography, blockchains, cybersecurity and data privacy. She designs practical, efficient and provably secure protocols that can be deployed in real-life applications. She served as a working group member of The National Blockchain Roadmap of Australia and a working group member of the First Blockchain initiative by Reserve bank of India. She has collaborated with researchers across the continents and has delivered over 85 technical lectures around the world. She has won several competitive grants like Samsung GRO Award, NetApp Faculty Fellowship, Cisco Academic Grant and IBM Research grant. She is an Associate Editor of the Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Elsevier Journal on Information Security and Applications (JISA) and Elsevier Journal on Pervasive and Mobile computing (PMC).

She is a senior member of ACM and IEEE. Before joining UNSW, Sydney she was a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO's Data61. She was an Associate Professor at Indian Statistical institute and Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and was also worked at the University of Ottawa, Canada and Lund University, Sweden.

Tanya Sale is the Founder, CEO and Managing Director of multi award-winning, national Aggregator group, outsource Financial. Tanya is the only female CEO / Managing Director of a mortgage Aggregator in Australia. Having extensive banking and finance experience, Tanya pioneered the third-party mortgage sector, by creating diverse models to change the way lending was conducted in Australia.

In 2019 Tanya appeared on the expert's panel, for the Channel 9 television show, Secrets of the Money Masters, she won 'CEO of the Year' at the Women in Finance Awards and was named as one of MPA’s Global 100. In 2020 Tanya was inducted as a Fellow of the FBAA by their Board of Directors and in 2021 was named again, in the MPA Global 100. Most recently, Tanya was named as one of the MPA’s inaugural ‘Elite Women’ 2022.

Dr Paul Scully-Power is an integrator, strategist and orthogonal thinker and is Australia’s first astronaut. He has a unique international background in Industry, Government, Defence, Space and Academia in the US, UK, Australia, and NZ, and is well known for his network of people and institutions around the world. A leader in applying technology, he has broad expertise in national security & intelligence, aviation & aerospace, cybersecurity, remote sensing, and systems analysis & ICT. He is currently engaged in AI (national iAward for innovation), UAVs, microsatellites, smart sensors, nanotechnology and big data analytics.

Dr Scully-Power has led many high-tech, defence and security programs. He held executive appointments under Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, and was Deputy to the Associate Technical Director, US Naval Undersea Warfare Center, where he held the US Navy Distinguished Chair of Underwater Acoustics He was a Research Associate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Chairman of Membership of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, President of the Fort Trumbull Federal Credit Union, and served on the Universities & Colleges Accreditation Board and the US Office of Naval Research.

Dr Scully-Power qualified for very high altitude full pressure suit flying at Edwards Air Force Base, and was a flight crew instructor in the NASA Astronaut Office, Johnson Space Center, Houston Texas, where he became Australia’s first astronaut flying aboard Challenger on the 13th mission of the Space Shuttle

Sanjaya Senanayake is an Infectious Diseases Physician in clinical practice in Canberra. During his training, he became fascinated with the public health aspects of communicable diseases after reading a book about the Spanish flu. This led to him undertaking a Masters of Applied Epidemiology at the Australian National University (ANU). Sanjaya is currently a passionate teacher and Associate Professor of Medicine at the ANU.

Troy Swan is the Chief Legal Officer, Company Secretary and Board Member of the $1.4billion office products company Winc Australia & New Zealand. Winc was formed following the acquisition of Staples & OfficeMax by US based private equity firm Platinum Equity.

He has been publicly recognised as one of Australia's leading corporate lawyers and was named the 2017 Australian Lawyer of the Year (FMCG) and a General Counsel of the Year finalist in both 2016 and 2017. He became only the second Australian lawyer to win the prestigious International Value Champions Award in San Francisco and was recently named in Washington, the Association of Corporate Counsel Member of the Year, from over 43,000 lawyers worldwide for his commitment to the legal community and profession. This was the first time this honour was ever awarded to a lawyer outside America.

Known for his business judgment, he is highly active within the Sydney legal and business community. He is a regular speaker and media commentator on legal affairs, innovation and large scale legal service delivery models and leads an award winning legal team based in Sydney.

Dr Marcus Thompson is a retired Major General who served 34 years in the Australian Army. Graduating from the Royal Military College in 1988, Marcus was allocated to the Royal Australian Corps of Signals. He served in a variety of command, regimental and Special Operations appointments including: Command of the 3rd Combat Signal Regiment; secondment to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as the Senior Advisor Defence Policy and Operations; Director General Special Operations Capability; Commander 6th Brigade; and deployments to East Timor, Iraq, and Afghanistan. His final appointment was as the inaugural Head of Information Warfare for the Australian Defence Force.

Marcus holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering with honours from the University of New South Wales, a Bachelor of Business from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, a Masters Degree in Defence Studies from the University of Canberra, a Masters Degree in Strategic Studies from Deakin University, and a PhD in Cyber Security from the University of New South Wales. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Since leaving the Australian Army, Marcus has founded Cyber Compass Pty Ltd, an independent advisory focused on improving cyber security and developing sovereign Australian capability. He has worked with and supported several Australian entities, including Bank Australia, Macquarie Telecom Group, NAB, Macquarie Bank, ParaFlare, and Melbourne Business School. He is the Chair of the Board of Penten and an elected Board Director of Engineers Australia.

Xu received his dual PhD degrees from University of Technology Sydney in 2020 and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China in 2019 respectively. He received the BE degree in Computer Science from Beijing Information Science and Technology University in 2010.
Dr Xu Wang is a Lecturer of Cryptography and Digital Forensics. His main research interests include blockchain, cybersecurity, vehicle privacy and security, and IoT.