Global Australians of the Year
Professor Terence Tao
Tao is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Australian Academy of Sciences (Corresponding Member), the National Academy of Sciences (Foreign member) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Alumni
Aisha Jalil
Aisha Jalil is in charge of game development programs in Pakistan, nurturing young players, managing their operations and designing cricket curriculums.
Madhavi Shankar
Madhavi Shankar, Alumni. Madhavi is an entrepreneur and technology enthusiast who is passionate about building and engineering consumer-driven products, across scale.
Dr Antoni Tsaputra
Dr Antoni Tsaputra has a unique positionality as a government official, a researcher and a disability activist with good networking with both Indonesian national and local disability activists.
Asia Impact
Anuradha Gupta
Anuradha Gupta is an outstanding leader in global health and social impact whose dedication to improving the lives of people living in poverty has enabled positive change at a local, national and international level.
Dr Hum Gurung
Dr Hum Gurung has dedicated his professional life to promoting environmental conservation and has become a respected ambassador for conservation between Nepal and Australia.
Noni Purnomo
Noni Purnomo is the President Director of Bluebird Group Holding as well as the founder of Bluebird Peduli. Noni is also a founding member of Angel Investment.
The Arts
Tara June Winch
Tara June Winch was named as one of The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists for her first novel, Swallow the Air. She has gone on to win numerous Australian literary awards.
Christel Cornilsen
Christel has worked extensively as a commercial and social impact filmmaker around the world. Her work focuses on socially-conscious, investigative and comedic storytelling.
Sarah Grunstein
Sarah is an acclaimed pianist based in New York. She’s been praised by The New York Times for her "penetrating musical intelligence," her performance "tempestuous" and "imbued with a luminous calm".
Prof Gaye Sculthorpe
Professor Gaye Sculthorpe is an experienced museum curator, mediator and communicator with a long standing interest in Indigenous issues. Her career has encompassed museums, cultural heritage and native title.
Education & Research
Caroline Malcolm
Caroline is a senior public policy leader focused on the tech and finance sectors, with proven success in working across diverse teams to build creative solutions to complex, multi-disciplinary issues.
Prof Phiala Shanahan
Professor Phiala Shanahan a leader in theoretical physics achieving numerous awards and recognition. She obtained her Bachelor of Science (Honours) in High Performance Computational Physics in 2012 and PhD in Physics in 2015.
Emerging Leaders
Dr Martin Seneviratne
Dr Martin Seneviratne is an Australian doctor turned technologist, working as a senior clinician scientist at Google Health in London. Martin has devoted his career to building digital tools that improve health care delivery for clinicians and patients.
Dr Elizabeth Jens
Dr Elizabeth Jens is a Propulsion and Systems Engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. She also works on technology development for hybrid propulsion systems and is co-authoring a design handbook for these rockets.
Prof Kate Manne
Kate Manne is an associate professor of philosophy at Cornell University. Manne writes regularly for a variety of public-facing publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The Boston Review, The Huffington Post, and others academic journals.
Global Talent
Dr Sonu Bhaskar
Dr Sonu M M Bhaskar is a Clinician, Scientist, Academic, Neurologist, Healthcare Executive and Social Entrepreneur. Under Dr Bhaskar’s leadership, the NSW Brain Clot Bank (‘BCB’) is one of the finalists in the NSW Health Pathology awards.
Dr Aida Brankovic
Dr Aida Brankovic is a Research Scientist with the Australian e-health Research Centre, CSIRO, and an Adjunct Fellow at the University of Queensland. She is the inventor of 2 patents, author of 1 software, algorithms planned for implementation in 22 QLD hospitals, and 17 publications.
Dr Shafali Gupta
In co-founding Uuvipak, Dr Shafali Gupta wanted to “bring cutting-edge research to save our planet”. Their aim is nothing less than the elimination of single-use plastic pollution. The company manufactures edible plates, cutlery and bowls made from organic food waste.
Inspiring Corporate Leader
Dr Siobhan Martin
Dr Siobhan Martin's great passion is helping bring out the best in others then helping them to apply those gifts to work towards a better world for everyone. She leads and inspires others around the world to deliver on meaningful change.
Tanya De Hoog
Tanya De Hoog is an influential figure and role model for women in the engineering sector. Tanya’s in-depth experience and skills has quickly established her as a leading engineer in her field.
Cameron McLean
Cameron McLean leads PayPal’s international business across Europe, the Middle East and Australia. With over 20 years’ experience Cameron has played a key role in driving strong business performance across a range of global markets.
Science & Healthcare
Dr Barry Kirby AO
Dr Barry Kirby is a champion of maternal health and an unlikely hero in a remote landscape of overburdened and unsupported healthcare workers.
Dr Stephen Hicks
Dr Stephen Hicks is an Australian neuroscientist and entrepreneur. Stephen is best known for his pioneering work in visual prosthetics in which he used a range of technologies.
Dr Rosemary Morrow
Dr Rosemary Morrow is a global expert on one of the most critical metrics of climate change: sea level. Dr Morrow’s expertise lies in the use of satellite and in-situ observations to monitor and measure ocean dynamics.
Social Impact
Frances Voon
Frances Voon is the Executive Manager of UNSW’s Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, and is one of the 40 Under 40 Most Influential Asian-Australians, honouring her outstanding leadership in advancing the rights of refugees.
Rachel Gwendolyn Barnard
Rachel G. Barnard is a social practice artist formally trained as an architect. Barnard’s work brings diverse and often adversarial groups of people together to create new spaces of belonging.
Rachel Davis
Rachel Davis has over 15 years experience in shaping and leading work in the emerging field of business and human rights. She co-founded Shift, now the leading non-profit centre of expertise on the Guiding Principles.
Sustainability
Nicole Rycroft
Nicole Rycroft is the Founder and Executive Director of award winning environmental not-for-profit, Canopy. Nicole leads Canopy in its quest to help solve the climate crisis and the precipitous decline in biodiversity.
Khunapong Khunaraksa
Khunapong Khunaraksa is an advocate for sustainability and social impact in Asia. He has pioneered sustainable market-based models to address the intersection of environmental, social, and financial barriers to build inclusive and circular economies.
Craig Leeson
Craig Leeson is an award-winning filmmaker, television presenter, news correspondent and entrepreneur. He is the executive producer, director, writer and narrator of landmark global documentary A Plastic Ocean.
Technology & Entrepreneurship
Dr Seiji Armstrong
Dr Seiji Armstrong is on a mission to make the internet safer developing machine-learning algorithms to pick up on online abuse or content that violates policies.
Dr Lee Letian Rong
Dr Lee Letian Rong is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Co-Founder of AI-Link, a technology startup focused on the application of technologies underpinning smart manufacturing.
Prof Kate Crawford
Professor Kate Crawford is a leading scholar of the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She has been at the forefront of the Ethical AI conversation, helping disadvantaged and marginalised people have a voice in emerging technology.