James Seymour
Industry Advisory Committee
The Centre for New Energy Technologies (C4NET) is a leading membership-based organisation supporting the energy transformation. C4NET drives a series of projects and programs fostering collaboration between industry, research and government to deliver data based solutions in the energy sector, driving efficient adoption of new energy, and supporting skills and evidence-based policy development.
David Scerri
Industry Advisory Committee
Dave is the CEO of Biarri Optimisation, a company focused on leveraging the power of mathematics to unlock efficiencies across scheduling, planning and rostering. With some of Australia’s largest companies across retail, energy, supply chain and healthcare as customers, as well as Fortune 500 companies globally, Biarri software delivers embedded optimised results on a daily basis. Dave has been with Biarri for 12 years, previously having worked in AI research and as a founding CTO at a sports technology startup. He has a Computer Science degree from RMIT University.
Dr Francis Norman
Industry Advisory Committee
Dr Francis Norman is the CEO and Managing Director of the Centre of Decommissioning Australia (CODA). The first 30 years of his career were spent in a global engineering services organisation then in 2015 he was elected to the position of Western Australian president of Engineers Australia. This role led to a career change into industry advocacy where he worked initially for NERA and then most recently in his role with CODA.
Francis’ deep interest in understanding complex systems in both industry and society commenced in his engineering career in industrial controls and then expanded through both his management roles and during his PhD studies, where he researched interpersonal communications in virtual teams.
Francis holds a MSc in project management and a PhD in management, he is a Fellow and EngExec with Engineers Australia, a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Member of the International Centre for Complex Project Management and a Life member of the International Society of Automation.
Dr Simon Bowly
Industry Advisory Committee
Simon’s works with OPTIMA CI Prof. Andreas Ernst. His main research interests lie in optimisation algorithms: their real-world applications and how they perform on a wide range of problems with different structures. In algorithm performance analysis, he focuses on linear and mixed-integer programming methods. These techniques apply to many optimisation problems in transport, power generation and distribution, and network design (to name a few). His work focuses on generating test cases that effectively stress-test optimisation algorithms and determine their relative strengths and weaknesses, enabling algorithm selection and automated configuration methodologies to improve algorithm performance.
The focus of his applied work is on analysing passenger and freight movement in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The aim is to understand the potential role of rail transport in the region by applying mixed-integer programming and decomposition methods to solve logistics problems
Dr Charlotte Hurry
Industry Advisory Committee
Charlotte is a project manager, researcher, and higher education professional with 20 years of experience working in universities, including in the project teams of two ARC Centre’s of Excellence at Monash University. Her experience includes operational and strategic management, research administration, financial management, KPI and financial reporting, research project development, event management, industry engagement, outreach, communications, equity, diversity and inclusion, governance, project management and delivery. She is highly experienced in developing training programs for students and early career researchers. In 2009, Charlotte graduated with a first-class honours in population genetics and conservation biology from Monash University in Melbourne. In 2016, Charlotte completed a PhD at Griffith University, Queensland, in the population genetics, systematics and freshwater ecology of freshwater mountain crayfish.
Professor Peter Stuckey
Industry Advisory Committee
Peter Stuckey from Monash University has a world-leading research program in constraint programming. He led the G12 project, one of the largest projects at NICTA, peaking at 25 researchers, culminating in the Opturion spinout company, delivering optimisation solutions to commercial customers. He has been involved in 3 ARC Linkage Projects and other industry contract research projects, working in Energy, Security, Resources and Transport. His research expertise in optimisation broadly covers modelling languages and model transformation, solving using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Operations Research (OR) technology, and using machine learning methods in concert with optimisation. For the global influence and uptake of his research, he was awarded the 2010 Google Australia Eureka Prize for Innovation in Computer Science and honoured in 2019 with a Fellowship of the prestigious Association for AI Advancement.
Professor Kate Smith-Miles
Industry Advisory Committee
Kate Smith-Miles has significant leadership experience that cuts across academic disciplines and extensive industry engagement experience. She is a Melbourne Laureate Professor of Applied Mathematics, and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Capability) at The University of Melbourne. Before becoming the OPTIMA Centre Director, she was foundational Director of the Monash Academy for Cross & Interdisciplinary Mathematical Applications (MAXIMA). She recently concluded a 5-year ARC Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship, which advanced a new methodology known as Instance Space Analysis for rigorously stress-testing algorithms to ensure trust. She has completed 7 ARC Linkage Projects, several other industry contract research projects, and has supervised over 30 PhD students and over 30 postdoctoral fellows. She has collaborated with industry in manufacturing, energy, security, defence, healthcare, and finance. As Chair of the Advisory Board for the Choose Maths program – a $22m partnership between BHP Billiton Foundation and the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute – she has provided leadership to increase female participation in mathematics through mentoring, outreach and training.
Kate will work across the three research themes at OPTIMA