Be sure to check back here for updates on more speakers soon.
Professor Aman oo
Dean of Engineering, Head of School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences AUT
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Professor Aman Oo is currently Dean of Engineering and Head of School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences at Auckland University of Technology. Previously, he was the Dean and Head of School of Engineering at Deakin University Australia. He is a professor of Electrical Engineering and has made significant research contributions in the area of electrical power engineering and renewable energy, engineering education and published more than 300 scholarly articles in the peer reviewed high impact journals, books, and conference proceedings.
Aman has research interests and expertise in Microgrid & energy storage system integration, hydrogen, smart grid communication, power system stability and control, energy management and efficiency, protection and security of smart grids, sustainable operation and control of microgrids as well as in Engineering Education. He has supervised more than 20 PhD students to completion and is currently supervising several PhD students in the area of electrical power engineering and renewable energy engineering. Aman has been actively working with several international and national professional communities and industries. He is sought worldwide to deliver keynote addresses and presentations at workshops and conferences. |
Brad Thomas
Cyclone PLD Facilitator
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Brad is an experienced Digital Learning Designer, Google Certified Teacher and MOE Accredited PLD facilitator. He has worked extensively with school leaders and teachers to develop effective digital strategies to support and enhance teaching and learning. Brad is passionate about supporting others to reach their goals using technology and the opportunities that Minecraft Education: Edition provides for enhancing learning. |
Christopher Mende
Customer Engineering, Google Cloud NZ
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Christopher is the engineering lead for Google Cloud’s digital native customers. He’s closely involved with NZ businesses creating a pathway for their journey to Cloud and AI, his work being showcased across industries and the globe.
Christopher is also a facilitator in the Google Innovation Labs team that brings concepts to life using a methodology heavily focused on customer empathy. His work here involves joining the best of Google tech with market shaping concepts to move the needle on an organization's innovation journey. |
Professor Jarrod Haar
Professor of Human Resource Management, AUT
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Dr Jarrod Haar is a Professor of Human Resource Management at AUT. He has Māori tribal affiliations of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Mahuta.
He researches employees and organisations and has won industry and best-paper awards and won multiple research grants. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi and has over 400 refereed outputs (including 139 journal articles) and has given 82 keynotes or invited presentations. He is a frequent media commentator with over 60 TV appearances. Professor Haar will be talking about Wellbeing. Your own and those around you. He draws on New Zealand data from six thousand employees from May 2020 to May 2022 to provide insights into how we can improve our wellbeing and better manage our wellbeing and positively influence those around us. |
Jennifer gottschalk
Digital Technologies Teacher, Massey High School
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Jennifer currently teaches Digital Technology at Massey High School where she pushes, prods, cajoles and otherwise encourages her students (from year 9 to year 13) to become effective programmers and designers.
Over the years Jennifer has contributed resources for teaching web design, databases (php / sql) and programming to TKI. She also administers the Usability / Heuristics Fails (and Successes) Facebook group where teachers and their students are encouraged to post examples of good and bad usability. |
Hon Judith Collins
Member of Parliament for Papakura
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Hon Judith Collins is a New Zealand politician and National Party Spokesperson for Science, Research, Innovation, Artificial Intelligence and Technology. Collins served as the Leader of the Opposition July 2020 to November 2021 and was the second female Leader of the National Party. She has served as a Member of Parliament since 2002 (Clevedon seat now Papakura following electorate boundary changes) and was a senior government minister in the cabinets of John Key and of Bill English.
Judith holds a Bachelor of Laws, Master of Laws (Honours), a Master of Taxation Studies, and a Graduate Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety. Before entering politics, Judith practised law. She was President of the Auckland District Law Society and Vice-President of the New Zealand Law Society. Judith grew up in rural Walton, Waikato on a dairy farm alongside her four siblings. Judith is passionate about equal opportunities for women and encouraging more women into leadership roles. |
Katana Dunn
Digital Technology teacher
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Katana Dunn is a qualified electronic engineer with over 20 years industry experience. After changing into Teaching, she completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Education, endorsed in e-Learning and Digital Technologies, in 2013 and a Master of Education degree in 2014. Currently, she is teacher-in-charge of Electronics and Robotics at Burnside High School. There is a dedicated electronics program from Y9 to Y13 where students develop their understanding of basic electronics to complex Arduino Systems. The Robotics Club also had numerous successes over the years with attending the Vex Robotics World Championship in Dallas, Texas, earlier this year, a culmination of years of hard work.
Her main interests are motorcycling, electronics, robotics, online learning and developing E-resources for Teaching and Learning. |
Dr Mahsa mohaghegh
Director of Women in Technology, Senior Lecturer at AUT’s School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences
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Dr Mahsa Mohaghegh is the Director of Women in Technology and a Senior Lecturer at AUT’s School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences. With a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, she is heavily involved in researching and developing high-level AI strategy in contexts such as the future of work and digital disruption. She is on the Executive Council for AI Forum, and is a board member of NZ Tech representing government and education, and on their sub-board for diversity and inclusion. She is also a board member of Variety – the Children’s Charity, an organisation dedicated to supporting children and young people in need across New Zealand. She is an external technical advisor on AI strategy to a few New Zealand SMEs. Mahsa is also the founder and director of charitable trust She Sharp, which aims to encourage more girls to study STEM fields. Her passion for promoting careers in technology to young women has been widely recognised, and she has received a number of nominations and awards for her efforts, including the Emerging Leader Award at the NZ Women of Influence Awards in 2013. She was one of ten finalists for the 2018 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year. In 2019 she was the Champion Award winner of the YWCA Equal Pay awards, and in 2020 presented with the Massey University Distinguished Alumni Award for community service.
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Malcolm clarke
President, Digital Technologies Teachers Aotearoa (DTTA)
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Malcolm has had 22 years of experience teaching Computing and Digital Technologies, 14 of which has been within NZ. His journey started off at Secondary level teaching up to NCEA Level 3. This then led to working as the Edtech Educator at The Mind Lab in Wellington. This is where he further developed his passion for tinkering and trying new ideas out. He is currently working in an intermediate school in Central Auckland as a Specialist DigiTech teacher.
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Michael Stoddart
Michael Stoddart is Director, Digital Media Enterprise
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Michael Stoddart has been part of Adobe’s engagement with the Asia Pacific design industry for over twenty years. He has had many and varied roles over that time – from evangelising new design technologies for individual creatives, to advising multinational brands on their digital transformation. Michael initially trained as a teacher, before being accepted to design school to study graphic design.
At the time of the industry’s first digital transformation, Michael expanded his small design studio to consult to print publishers moving to digital workflows. After joining Adobe, Michael supported the creative industry’s rapid adoption of new design processes that were being enabled by new technology. Initially focussed on the evolution of design into digital and interactive experiences for web and mobile delivery, Michael’s remit has expanded into user experience design and beyond. Michael is a spokesperson and thought leader at both Adobe’s own design and creative events, and at various industry communities and activities. Design education is integral to Adobe’s vision of changing the world by harnessing creativity and digital skills to create change. Engaging with leading design schools across the region, Adobe supports design as the leading differentiator of the modern experience. |
Minh Nguyen
Head of the Computer Science and Software Engineering
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Associate Professor Minh Nguyen MSc, PhD, FHEA, MIITP, is currently Head of the Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE@AUT) Department in The School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences at Auckland University of Technology (AUT).
Minh is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning support in higher education) and a Full Member of IT Professionals New Zealand. He obtained a PhD degree from the University of Auckland in 2014 and is currently the deputy director of the Centre for Robotics & Vision @ AUT. His research focuses on the computational theory and practice of Computer and Robot Vision, Image Processing, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality for Educational and Medical purposes. He has produced over 50 publications, organised many international research conferences, and received several grants, including three Callaghan Innovation R&D Student-Fellow Grants, an External Fund for Multidisciplinary Computational Anatomy, a Collaborative Research, Innovation and Development Programme grant, etc. |
Patrick Sullivan
Principal Architect, Google Cloud NZ
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Patrick is Principal Architect at Google Cloud NZ. He works with Google’s largest enterprise, banking and insurance customers across Australia & New Zealand, helping them to adopt cloud technologies securely and at scale.
Prior to joining Google, Patrick was Principal Consultant at Westpac in Australia, where he led large scale migrations of Westpac’s cybersecurity capabilities to Cloud based services, designing, deploying and operating cybersecurity services that kept Westpac’s 40K staff and 10 million customers safe online. |
Pippa Lawlor
Technology Teacher
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Pippa is a highly skilled technology teacher and MoE accredited PLD facilitator.
Pippa is the author of “Digital Technologies: E-Textiles”, which has been widely used in NZ schools |
Sam Ramlu
Managing Director, Method
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Sam is a proven thought leader, storyteller and creative technology innovator. She has spent over 20 years finding awe-inspiring ways to bring stories and experiences to life, starting with digital and extending into exhibitions, games and emerging technologies. She is passionate about authenticity, creating and producing experiences and stories that truly connect with audiences. Sam sees technology as a driver and enabler that allows storytellers to create experiences that are engaging, fun, awe-inspiring and immersive. A vocal advocate for New Zealand’s digital talent, Sam is on a mission to foster greater collaboration within the tech and creative industries, to showcase local skills and creativity, connect innovators and storytellers of all kinds, and attract more international projects to New Zealand. She also cares deeply about creating pathways for new generations to enter the creative and tech industries. Sam is co-founder of three studios. Method is an award-winning creative tech studio creating world class awe-inspiring experiences. Mad Carnival is a game studio making beautiful, fun and wholesome games for all ages. And Wanderer is an innovative Virtual Reality games studio, creator of an acclaimed adventure game of the same name that has set the VR world on fire. |
Shen (Hin) Lim
Senior Lecturer at the University of Waikato
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Hin is a senior lecturer in University of Waikato and Mechatronics Engineering programme leader of School of Engineering, University of Waikato. He is the chair of New Zealand Robotics, Automation and Sensing (NZRAS) group - a collaborative group working across research and science - that organises industry-students networking and presentation event via NZRAS Postgraduate Seminar series and released the Robotics, Automation and Sensing (RAS) roadmap of New Zealand.
He specialises in smart technologies and robotics in agriculture and was also the project leader of the asparagus harvester project that has developed 2 prototypes with successful field trials at Los Banos, California and in New Zealand, and Finalist of Fieldays Innovation Awards 2021. |
Steve Rodkiss
Game Development Teacher at Burnside High ChCh, DTTA National Exec. Committee Member
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Steve Rodkiss has been teaching Game Development to students of all ages for more than fifteen years, both at schools and holiday courses for the likes of Bubbledome and Yoobee. He now heads a popular game development course at Burnside High School in Christchurch.
This course offers students a collaborative, project based, NCEA program of learning with around twenty credits at each level and caters to more than one hundred students from years eleven to thirteen. Steve’s experience includes postgrads from Mindlab and the University of Canterbury and he is also a certified Unity Developer despite having more recently fallen in love with the Godot game engine. |
Steve Smith
Google for Education, NZ Program Manager
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Ko Horomaka te Maunga, Ko Otakaro te Awa, Ko Ōtautahi te Tūrangawaewae, Ko Smith Toku Whanau , Ko Steve ahau
Steve has been a High School Social Studies and Geography teacher for the last 16 years in New Zealand since returning from teaching in London for 2 years. Steve worked to bring Google for Education to his school and along with a colleague trained the staff in the use of Google for education. He has been a passionate advocate for the use of Google Tools for the last 8 years at different workshops and events across New Zealand He is a level 1 and 2 certified educator and Trainer and in 2019 was a member of the Sydney 2019 Innovator academy looking at how we can cater for the needs of a school’s more innovative students. He is a member of the Google Earth Education Experts group where he gets to show people the awesome Geo tools that Google has. Steve is based in Google’s Auckland office as New Zealand Lead, Google for Education and his aim is to continue to energise the educator communities in New Zealand, support our Partners and bring more Google goodness to the Education community of New Zealand |
Tanya Gray
Front-End Web Development Lead, Soul Machines
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Tanya has been building web apps which allow people to create and communicate with AI digital humans for the last 2 years.
Web development is her day job, but introducing others to programming is one of her favourite things to do outside of work. Tanya has a long history of working with teachers and students, usually focusing on web technology such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Python. |
