ACS Panel Session: Pioneering your future in STEM

Data and Information Ethicist

Theresa is a data and information ethicist who is passionate about shaping future digital and data infrastructure. Building consensus through gaining and maintaining community trust and implementing good practice to advance socially-just data policies is embedded in her work. Her award-winning work as an educator and as a researcher for the past twenty years engages with the ever-evolving relationship between people and emerging technologies. As inaugural Director of the Master of Data Science and Innovation program at UTS from 2014-2018, her research guided the development of a uniquely transdisciplinary and human-centred curriculum. Theresa's current work engages with data and AI ethics at both theoretical and practice levels and the connections between people and technologies in the knowledge discovery practices associated with data science. She is a Sydney Ambassador for Stanford's Women in Data Science Program and also actively contribute to international work on data sharing for resilience and healthy cities. Theresa is also an Australian Expert on ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32/WG 6 contributing to an international standard for data sharing.

Data Science Practice Manager, Lendlease

Dorotea Baljevic has been in the IT industry for over 10 years working in systems that support retail banking and financial services. She began her career as a system engineer and has held roles in delivering business outcomes and change by leading large technology and data teams. Currently she is building the international Data Science Practice at Lendlease.  

Dorotea has degrees in Information Technology, Master of Business in Technology Management and a Master of Data Science and Innovation.  As part of her Data Science degree, she spent a year abroad studying Computational Neuroscience at Humboldt Universität  in Berlin. During this time an avid interest in the organic processes of Decision Making was formed. She is exploring this further in her role at Lendlease and her PhD at the University of Technology, Sydney with a focus on ethical decision making.

Dorotea embraces organic technologies using a humanistic approach – nature informing technical design and ultimately man working with machine. Data should support and inform the narrative in all we do. Dorotea wants to ensure this story is trusted, relevant and enables the right outcomes.

She also mentors many young (human) men and women in the technology industry.

Executive Director of Data Science UTS and the UTS Data Science Institute

Distinguished Professor Fang Chen is an award-winning and internationally recognised leader in AI and data science who has created many innovative data-driven solutions to industry problems, particularly real-life complex problems in large-scale complicated systems and networks. Fang leads multidisciplinary teams of experts who have won major national scientific and industry awards. With her work in AI solutions, she has become an expert in influencing technology uptake, most notably, human perception, and has pioneered a theoretical framework of human behaviour understanding for building human-machine trust. She is a member of inaugural NSW Government AI Advisory Committee, and serves on the expert panel of the Singapore National Science Foundation. With passion and vast experience in many segments of industry, governments and academia on digital transformation, Fang understands where technology fits within the social, political and economic landscape, allowing her to formulate ground-breaking research, transformation processes, and research and development strategies that lead to products, solutions and market penetration. Fang provides unique innovations that bridge the gap between machine learning and its impact, and she has made significant contributions to transforming water, transport and civil infrastructure. She is the winner of the Australia and New Zealand “Women in AI” in Infrastructure award for 2021; she was awarded the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Excellence in Data Science in 2018, and she was the Australian Water Association’s “Water Professional of the Year” in 2016. In 2017, Fang received the Brian Shackle Award for “the most outstanding contribution with international impact in the field of human interaction with computers and information technology”. Global Water Intelligence estimates her solutions could enable Australian water utilities to save $700 million annually on reactive repairs and maintenance. The recent innovation that she and UTS colleagues created in water leak detection has demonstrated savings of more than 4,000 megalitres of water (more than 1,300 Olympic pools) worth more than $10 million in 18 months. Fang has more than 300 refereed publications, including several books, and has filed more than 30 patents in Australia, US, Canada, Europe, Japan, Korea, Mexico and China. She also holds a professorship with the University of NSW.

Helen is currently acting as an Ambassador to ICT industry championing causes, cohorts, groups as they address the challenges and initiative of our Profession, primarily focussed on Women in ICT, Hack-a-thons, Start-ups and Agile and Disruptive Service delivery, Not-For-Profits. Her career has contributed to the success of policy strategies in Federal Government Service Delivery Objectives in senior roles advising corporate leaders. Helen is th e current ACS NSW Chair 2021-2022 and has held a number of other positions in ACS as a volunteer including NSW Vice Chair for 3 years and Chair and member of ACS Women NSW for 5 years. Groups Helen proudly supports are: TechGirls, RareBirds, NSydInnovation, Scrum Alliance to name a few.