Pearcey Foundation Announces its 2020 Pearcey Medallist, Hall of Fame Inductees and National Entrepreneur of the Year

The Pearcey Foundation announced the recipients of its 2020 National Awards as part of a virtual panel discussion about what 2021 might bring for Australia’s ICT industry. The Pearcey Medal is a prestigious individual award that recognises a distinguished lifetime of achievement and contribution to the development and growth of the Australian ICT industry and has been awarded annually by the Pearcey Foundation since 1998. All previous 22 Pearcey Medallists can be found at https://pearcey.org.au/pearcey-medals.

The “Looking into the Future” event was moderated by Pearcey’s NSW Chair, Simon Foster, and featured a panel of industry leaders including Jamila Gordon, CEO and Founder of Lumachain, and recipient of the 2020 NSW Pearcey Entrepreneur Award, Jon Whittle, Director of CSIRO's Data61, Leanne Kemp, Queensland's Chief Entrepreneur, Advance Queensland and Elaine Stead, Manager, South Australian Venture Capital Fund.

The 2020 Pearcey Medal was presented to Professor Jennifer Seberry, Emeritus Professor at the University of Wollongong. 

“Professor Seberry has been recognised with our 2020 Pearcey Medal for her distinguished contribution to cyber security and mathematics in Australia and, dare we say, to the world,” said Wayne Fitzsimmons, National Chair, Pearcey Foundation.

The 2020 Pearcey Medallist: Professor Jennifer Seberry

Professor Jennifer Seberry, a distinguished academic who is regarded as “the mother of Cryptography in Australia”, completed her first degree (Bachelor of Science) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 1966 while teaching maths and science at Loreto College and North Ryde High School. Jenny then ventured south first as a tutor at Melbourne University then at La Trobe University, where she completed her second degree, a Master of Science. Her love and aptitude for Mathematics saw her undertake her PhD in Computational Mathematics at La Trobe in 1970, while she was juggling two sons under the age of five! That saw her returning to the world of computing, where she first started straight out of high school, working as a programmer for ICL Computers.

Over the ensuing years Professor Seberry worked in the Departments of Computer Science at the University of Sydney (USyd) and many international academic institutions in the US, UK and India culminating in her being appointed Reader, Computer Science at USyd from 1984 to 1987. 

She became the first female Professor in Computer Science in Australia when she was appointed the Head of Computer Science in 1987 at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). It was while she was at ADFA that her focus on computer security emerged and Professor Seberry returned to USyd (and UNSW) in 1989 to lead the team which designed the LOKI family of encryption algorithms, which are fundamental building blocks in contemporary global cryptography standards (see further https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOKI).

Professor Seberry then assumed the role as Head of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of Nebraska demonstrating her enthusiasm for international experience, collegiality and collaboration; something she has sustained throughout her career, regularly convening, chairing and speaking at international conferences and committees. This included becoming a director of the International Association for Cryptologic Research from 1990 to 1992, and the only Australian elected as a Fellow of this association in 2012 for her “outstanding contributions to research and education in cryptologic research and education and for fostering the Australian Research Community”.

Professor Seberry joined the University of Wollongong (UoW) in 1992 where she established the Centre for Computer Security Research, one of the earliest in Australia. The goal was to ‘provide a reservoir of expertise for computer security’ which was prescient in view of the importance of cyber security today. She has always been renowned for her generous mentoring, and many of the notable names in cryptology in Australia and globally have been her students and protégés at some time. 

Jenny Seberry was admitted as an Emeritus Professor of the University of Wollongong in July 2015 

Pearcey Hall of Fame
Professor Seberry was also inducted into the Pearcey Hall of Fame, and has been joined this year by Owen Hill and Dr Jeff Whittle AO. 

Owen Hill is an inspiring, visionary and successful pioneer of the computing industry. Like Trevor Pearcey before him, Owen believes in Australian ingenuity.  He graduated as a cadet engineer in telecommunications in the Postmaster-General's Department (PMG) – now Telstra – before founding Applied Technology in 1975. Applied Technology was an electronics components and electronics kits distributor, that produced the Microbee, the first commercially marketed Australian PC. The first 1000 Microbees were sold in kit form in 1982, before entering the market as a fully formed product competing directly with the IBM PC and the Apple II. By 1987 more than 3000 Australian schools were using Microbee computers and the Microbee had been adopted as the national standard in Swedish schools. Applied Technology listed on the ASX in 1985 and the Microbee reached a peak of 11% of the Australian market and had significant international sales in Asia, Scandinavia and Russia (with a Cyrillic keyboard/interface when Apple was still English only). Struggling to compete with the cost and production scale of the IBM PC and with the application support for the Apple II in the school markets, the company wound up in 1990. In total, more than 70,000 Microbee computers were sold worldwide, placing Australia squarely at the very forefront of technology development for the microcomputer and personal computer globally.

In 2001 Owen acquired Earthsafe (founded in 1953), a designer and builder of solar-powered, waste-water, treatment systems. He was inspired by a project started by Bill Gates, with whom Owen had developed an acquaintance during his Microbee days. As part of his efforts for his company Owen has been a strong advocate for the retention of the Australian innovation patent regime, engaging directly with the Federal Government to argue for Australian innovators. In 2020. Earthsafe was nominated as a finalist for the Engineers Australia Engineering Excellence Awards.

Jeff Whittle was born in England, trained as a physicist and worked at the Medical Research Radiobiology Research Unit at the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. He and his family moved to Australia in 1961, where he joined the newly created Computer Centre at Monash University. In the early 1980s Dr Whittle turned his attention to developing software which would optimise mining operations, with Whittle Consulting mining software considered to be an international industry standard. It is said that mining engineers around the world know that their pits are not optimally designed until they have been ‘Whittled’.

In 1983 Dr Whittle wrote Three-D which was the first implementation of a pit optimisation algorithm that could be used with any mining software package on any computer. This later became Four-X, which has become an industry standard for open pit design, used by many mining companies worldwide and sold to Canadian mining software house Gemcom in 2002.

From 1998 onwards Dr Whittle’s interest had been in optimising the schedules of very large mining complexes. His software can produce optimal, or near-optimal, long-term schedules for complexes with hundreds of pits, multiple processing options, multiple products that have to be blended, and multiple stockpiles.

His more recent Prober software has become a trusted benchmark for enterprise optimisation in the mining industry. This has delivered lasting and quantifiable economic, environmental, commercial and societal benefits. A version of Prober-B software was released in late 2016 to the general market via GEOVIA Whittle. Jeff Whittle was recognised in the Australia Day Honours for 2018 as an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia for his distinguished service to the information technology sector and the mining industry, particularly through the development of industry standard computer programs for strategic mine planning and optimisation.

The Pearcey Hall of Fame was established in 2004, and is online at https://pearcey.org.au/pearcey-hall-of-fame.

“The great thing about our Pearcey Medallist and our Hall of Famer inductees is that each year they are chosen by their industry peers in a nationwide vote. These are the very best in our industry based on a lifetime of achievement, and their contribution to the Australian ICT industry is permanently recorded in our Hall of Fame,” said Mr Fitzsimmons

Pearcey National Entrepreneur Award 2020

This year’s Pearcey National Entrepreneur Award was presented to the CEO of Blackmagic Design Grant Petty, chosen from the 2020 State Pearcey Awardees (see list below with links to more information). The national award gives prominence to one of this year’s State Pearcey winners for inspiring leadership, scale, impact, innovation and acclaim on the world stage.

Commenting on Mr McDonald’s win, Rick Harvey (Chief Judge, Pearcey Foundation) said, “Grant grew up in a small Victorian country town and from an early age he was fascinated by electronics, computers, software and audio visual. He started Blackmagic Design as a side project in 2002 which has now grown to become an international digital cinema company with more than $350m in revenues, a head office and manufacturing facilities in Melbourne and another 1000 employees worldwide. Blackmagic software and equipment is used for broadcasting, live streaming, editing, special effects and sound engineering, and BlackMagic technology has been behind many Oscar-winning movies over the years. Grant has been instrumental in putting Australian ingenuity and technology at the forefront of the international audio-visual industry.”

2020 State Pearcey Entrepreneur Awards

ACT: Shane Hill, Founder of 3P Learning and founder and CEO of Skoolbo.

NSW: Jamila Gordon, Founder and CEO of Lumachain.

QLD: Nick Therkelsen-Terry, Co-founder and CEO of Max Kelsen.

SA: Dr Michelle Perugini, Co-founder and CEO of Preagen and Life Whisperer.

TAS: Mike Cruse, Founder and CEO of Definium Technologies.

VIC: Grant Petty, Co-founder and CEO of Blackmagic Design.

WA: Greg Riebe, Co-founder of Entrepreneurs in Residence.

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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