Gig Guide: CSIRO appoints inaugural digital chief


Brandon How
Reporter

CSIRO’s inaugural chief digital officer is Rebecca Ostergaard, who moves from her role as digital services project director at the Western Australia Office of Digital Government.

During her time in the role, she helped create the strategic roadmap for the development of the ServiceWA app. She has around 25 years of experience in digital leadership and the telecommunications sector.

Prior to her work in government, Ms Ostergaard served as Curtin University’s deputy director digital solutions and as the University of Western Australia’s associate director enterprise applications.

The chief digital officer will lead CSIRO’s digital strategy. CSIRO executive director – digital national facilities and collections Elanor Huntington welcomed the appointment.

“CSIRO has profound ambitions to disrupt the way science is done, to empower our researchers through leading edge digital technologies, skills and ways of working, which will ultimately support CSIRO in using science to create a better future for Australia,” Professor Huntington said.

Rebecca Ostergaard

The Victorian government has appointed new departmental secretaries to lead the Department of Families, Fairness, and Housing and the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry, and Regions. Peta McCammon fills the former role, moving from her role as Department of Justice and Community Safety associate director. Tim Ada fills the latter, moving from his role as Department of Premier and Cabinet deputy secretary economic policy and state productivity.

At the Department of Defence, Justin Keefe commenced as acting chief information officer in February 2023. He has been chief technology officer since January 2020 and originally joined the department in 2016 as assistant secretary application sustainment. He has also held roles at the Attorney-General’s Department and the former Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government.

Snowy Hydro’s chair David Knox has been reappointed for an additional 18 months while two non-executive directors, Sandra Dodds and Karen Moses, have been reappointed for three years.

Experienced public servant David Hazlehurst, who was recently head of secretariat for the myGov User Audit, is leaving his role as Department of Agriculture, Water, and Environment deputy secretary. Mr Hazlehurst will move to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to lead the secretariat for the review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Quantum Brilliance has formally announced  co-founder Mark Luo is the new chief executive of the company, having moved from his role as chief operating officer. Prior to co-founding Quantum Brilliance, Mr Luo worked on CSIRO’s ON Program as New Ventures Manager. Co-founder Dr Andrew Horsley has moved from the chief executive position to become chief technology officer.

Quantum Brilliance chief financial officer George Robinson said the executive changes “follows the natural progression of a startup. As we move from the research and development stage toward commercial products, we evaluated the skill set of our leadership team and placed executives in the best role to take advantage of their unique strengths”.

Quantum Brilliance co-founders: Chief executive officer Mark Luo, chief scientific officer Marcus Doherty, and chief technology officer Andrew Horsley.

Medicines Australia chief executive Elizabeth de Somer has been appointed as the medicines industry representative on the Health Technology Review Reference Committee. She replaces former Medicines Australia chair John Young, who has stepped down following his appointment to the board of pharmaceutical company Novartis.

In early March, Dr Darren Saunders began his role as NSW Deputy Chief Scientist and Engineer. He is an experienced science communicator and was the chief scientific officer of biomedical firm EpiAxis Therapeutics over the last two years. He also spent almost five years as Science and Technology Australia’s secretary until November 2020.

Three new board appointments have been made to the board of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Western Australia. The new board members are Defence Science and Technology group chief of research technology and operations Mark Bazzacco, Australian National University computational scientist professor Amanda Barnard, and Sonya Walker, who is IBM Australia’s executive partner – cloud strategic growth leader, global business services.

Optus and the University of South Australia (UniSA) have appointed Dr Mamello Thinyane as the inaugural Optus chair of Cyber Security and Data Science. Dr Thinyane moves from the United Nations University Institute in Macao where he “led research into citizen cyber resilience and data and sustainable development for the past six years”, according to UniSA. He was also previously a Visiting Researcher at the Australian Centre of Cyber Security at UNSW in Canberra.

Dr Mamello Thinyane.

Former Victorian Innovation and Digital Economy minister Jaala Pulford has joined the board of directors of MedTech firm Cyban. Ms Pulford was also announced to be the chair of MedTech and pharmaceutical growth centre MTPConnect in February 2023.

The new chief executive and managing director of cloud provider AUCloud is Peter Maloney, who moves from his role as legal software firm Dye and Durham Australia’s manging director. Outgoing chief executive and founder Phil Dawson will remain at the company as executive director, government relations.

Verizon has refreshed is executive team, with several role changes. Verizon Consumer Group lead Sowmyanarayan Sampath is now executive vice president and chief executive of Verizon Consumer Group. Global Networks and Technology lead Kyle Malady is now Verizon Business Group executive vice president. Senior vice president and chief network officer Joe Russo filled the vacated Global Networks and Technology role.

Executive vice president and chief financial officer Matt Ellis will step down from his role in Q2. The new chief financial officer will be senior vice president and controller of Verizon Tony Skiadas. Vice president of accounting and external reporting Mary-Lee Stillwell will be the new senior vice president and controller.

Battery manufacturer Magnis Energy technologies has appointed Jan Fuchter as Project Finance Director. He previously spent almost two decades at Export Finance Australia.

New Austrade branch heads for digital and technology services are Darren Cameron and William Notley.

Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.

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