2020 Queensland Pearcey ICT Entrepreneur Award Recognises AI and Quantum Computing Industry Leader Nicholas Therkelsen-Terry

The Pearcey Foundation today announced Nicholas Therkelsen-Terry, CEO and co-founder of Max Kelsen, as this year’s recipient of the Queensland Pearcey ICT Entrepreneur Award. Max Kelsen is a leading Australian artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions business. The award was presented last night in Brisbane by Dr Sarah Pearson, Deputy Director-General for Innovation, Advance Queensland at an event hosted by John Grant, 2010 Pearcey Medallist.

The Queensland Pearcey Awards recognise outstanding ICT professionals who have demonstrated innovation, taken risks, made a difference and are an inspiration to others in the industry, and the wider community. Nominees for the award this year alongside Nicholas Therkelsen-Terry were Amanda Rodgers, Athol Hann, Brad Moran, Daniel Johnsen, Jerome Leray, Melissa Occhipinti and Raymond Guy.

“Nick holds strong core values that are uncompromising in developing both his team and the technology helping to create a competitive advantage for all customers; reinvesting his expertise and profits to solve the challenges of humankind,” said Paul Gampe, Chair of Pearcey QLD.

Max Kelsen is working with organisations including Domino’s Pizza, University of Queensland, QLD Department of Transport and Main Roads and EB Games, to bring innovative solutions to the market and help push Queensland to the forefront of the digital economy. 

Max Kelsen has helped Domino’s improve staff utilisation by more than 15 percent through cognitive rostering; built a custom algorithm to identify disparate patient records for Metro North Hospital and Health Service; and used supervised machine learning methods to automatically extract diagnostic information from skin cancer pathology reports for QIMR Berghofer.

Nicholas Therkelsen-Terry is also an Australian leader in quantum computing, an industry which CSIRO believes is worth around $4 billion by 2040. Max Kelsen was recently named as the only Queensland based company working in quantum computing.

The Pearcey Foundation would like to acknowledge the support and sponsorship of ICEMEDIA and TechnologyOne, without whom the gala event would not be able to take place.

As the Pearcey QLD Award recipient, Nicholas Therkelsen-Terry will represent the state in the National Entrepreneur Awards as a key part of Pearcey’s Annual National Medal and Hall of Fame presentations (see below for details).

For more information about previous QLD Pearcey Entrepreneur Award winners, go to https://pearcey.org.au/qld.

Other State Awards

ACT: presented to Shane Hill, founder of Skoolbo (https://prwire.com.au/pr/92049/e-learning-pioneer-shane-hill-receives-2020-act-chief-ministers-pearcey-entrepreneur-award). 

NSW: to be presented on 13 October at the NSW Startup Hub. Nominations are still open. For more information, go to https://pearcey.org.au/nsw. It will follow the Pearcey Conversation entitled "Celebrating Women's contribution to Australia's computing industry" - to be held on Ada Lovelace Day, Tuesday 13 October 2020; 1.00pm - 5.00pm AEST with the support of the Tech Girls Movement Foundation. Speakers include: Ann Moffatt; Alison Harcourt; Helen Vorrath and Judithe Sheard. More details on this event coming soon.

SA: nominations are now open for the 2020 South Australian Pearcey Entrepreneur Award. A ‘virtual’ award event will be held during October. See further https://pearcey.org.au/sa. 

TAS: nominations are now open for the 2020 Tasmanian Pearcey Entrepreneur Award. A ‘virtual’ award event will be held during October. See further https://pearcey.org.au/tas.

VIC: the 2020 Victorian Pearcey Entrepreneur Award was presented to CEO of Blackmagic Design Grant Petty (https://prwire.com.au/pr/91649/world-leading-innovator-of-creative-technologies-receives-the-2020-victorian-pearcey-entrepreneur-award) 

WA: to be presented as part of the 2020 Lateral INCITE Honorary Awards in late October. Nominations are now open. The INCITE Awards are Western Australia's premier awards event in the ICT industry. The awards, aiming to showcase ICT brilliance are powered by the Western Australian Information Technology and Telecommunications Alliance (WAITTA). For more information on the WA Pearcey Awards, see https://pearcey.org.au/wa.

National Pearcey Awards

2020 Pearcey Medal, Hall of Fame and National Entrepreneur of the Year Awards will be presented on Thursday 19 November 2020; 6:00pm - 9:30pm in Sydney. Details on the planned dinner celebration are still to be confirmed, subject to COVID-19 restrictions. See further https://pearcey.org.au/national-awards.

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About the Pearcey Foundation
The Pearcey Foundation Inc. is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to raise the profile of the Australian Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry and profession. It was created in the memory of one of the greatest pioneers of the Australian ICT industry, Dr Trevor Pearcey. By celebrating the heroes in our industry, past present and future, the Foundation is looking to attract and encourage young Australians into this most exciting of global high technology sectors of our nation.

Web: www.pearcey.org.au

Twitter: @Pearcey_org #PearceyAwards

LinkedIn: Pearcey Foundation #PearceyAwards