Prof. Andy Koronios

Professor Andy Koronios is the CEO of the SmartSat CRC, a consortium of industry and research organisations developing game changing satellite technologies to catapult Australia into the global space economy. Previously, Andy held the positions of Dean: Industry & Enterprise and Head of the School of Information Technology & Mathematical Sciences, at the University of South Australia.

Andy is a professor of information systems and holds academic qualifications in Electrical Engineering, Computing and education as well as a PhD from the University of Queensland.

He has extensive experience in both commercial and academic environments and his research areas include data quality, information management & governance, data analytics and the strategic exploitation of information.

Andy has led the establishment of several research concentrations, labs & research centres. He served as the Research Program Leader for System Integration & Interoperability in the CIEAM CRC. He is internationally known for his work in data quality, has been an adjudicator for the European Corporate Data Quality Awards for several years and is the Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Information Quality.

He has worked both as a consultant as well as a professional speaker on IT issues in Australia and South East Asia and has over twenty five years’ experience in the academic environment. He is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society, a Founding Fellow of the International Institute of Engineering Asset Management and a Distinguished Speaker of the ACM.

The success of a nation’s economy depends largely on its productivity and that determines the wealth of the nation. Productivity is the result of high technological innovation which alas is not evenly distributed resulting in the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. High technology nations such as the US, France, Germany, Taiwan and South Korea for example are more high tech nations and thus are among the wealthiest on a per capita basis. Contemporary innovation is driven by and large by digital technologies. Information Technology and Informatics have played a critical role in lifting productivity to unprecedented levels during two dozen years or so. They have played a role in lifting our standards of living and how we communicate, work and play. Informatics and IT have come in waves.

The PC revolution, the Internet Revolution, Digitalisation, Industry 4.0 and Artificial Intelligence. In their path they have transformed just about every industry and every sector of the economy. They now are on the cusp of transforming the space technologies industry which is undergoing its own revolution. Smaller nations can now also participate in this, soon to be a trillion dollar industry.

Collaboration between industry and research organisations is critical for success in highly complex activities such as space technology. Collaborative R&D accelerates the commercialisation of new technologies, facilitates knowledge transfer, and can help to establish a shared vision across the space sector. This presentation will discuss how informatics technologies such as digitalisation, machine learning, deep learning and other artificial intelligence techniques as well as, big data, Internet of Things, digital twins and quantum computing are changing the traditional space industry and generating new opportunities for innovation. It will provide insights on how smaller nations can also become space-fairing nations and benefit from the huge opportunities that space technologies offer.