People

Dr Alastair Nisbet
Director of the cybersecurity Research labratory

Alastair Nisbet’s primary research areas are in computer security & computer forensics. After serving as a Police Officer in New Zealand for 14 years, he earned university degrees in business, education and law along with a PhD in computer security. Alastair is passionate about education and computing with a focus on cybersecurity & forensics. He is currently the Director of the Cybersecurity Research Laboratory and is responsible for the Master of Information Security and Digital Forensics where he is actively involved in lecturing and designing hands-on practical laboratories teaching security & forensics skills and knowledge.

Workshop: ​Hacking, Cracking, Sniffing & Snorting: Cybersecurity and forensics in the digital age

AUT Profile

Andrew Luxton-reilly
Associate professor in the department of computer science at the university of Auckland 

Andrew Luxton-Reilly, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland has taught introductory programming courses for more than 20 years. His research is situated in Computer Science Education, focusing on assessment of novice programmers, novice programmer comprehension, gender equity in Computer Science, and tools that facilitate collaborative learning.

Associate Professor Angsana Techatassanasoontorn​
Associate professor of business information systems

​Angsana is an Associate Professor of Business Information Systems, in AUT’s Faculty of Business, Economics, and Law. Originally from Thailand, Angsana has taught at universities in Thailand, the U.S. and New Zealand. She joined AUT in 2011. Her areas of teaching are in process-enabled business transformation and database.  Her research engages with technology, social inclusion and well-being.

Demonstration: Data is everywhere: How can I make sense of it?
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AUT Profile

​PROFESSOR GUY LITTLEFAIR
​PRO VICE-CHANCELLOR AND DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF DESIGN AND CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES, AUT

Professor Guy Littlefair is the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies at AUT.
Guy held a successful role as the Dean of Engineering in the Faculty of Science, Engineering and the Built Environment at Deakin University in Australia.  Combined with an academic career spanning 25 years, Guy has also spent time in industry, most recently at Navman where he oversaw the integration of the Mercury Marine business when the company was acquired by the Brunswick Group.
Guy is internationally regarded as an authority in the field of machining.  He has led research teams in England, Australia and now in NZ focusing on the machinability of materials. Guy has worked with some of the world’s most innovative research-led manufacturing organisations including Rolls Royce, DeBeers, Toyota and Land Rover.

AUT Profile

hohepa spooner
lecturer at Te Ara Poutama

Hohepa Spooner is a lecturer at Te Ara Poutama, The Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Development, and member of the Digital Media team at the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLAT). He is engaged in the revitalization of Māori language, culture and knowledge through digital media. His interests include developing digital resources like eBooks and Apps for teaching and learning

​Demonstration: ​Creating Interactive Teaching and Learning resources with Adobe Creative Cloud​

​AUT Profile

​keynote speaker: DR Hossein Sarrafzadeh
​dR. hossein sarrafzadeh, professor and director of cybersecuirty, st. bonaventure university, ny

​Dr. Hossein Sarrafzadeh is Professor and Director of Cybersecurity at St. Bonaventure University, NY.  He has strong links to the international research and academic community. Leveraging these strong networks with industry, academia, and with government, particularly in the field of cybersecurity and computational intelligence, he has made contributions through publications and patented systems and has attracted significant funding.
He is frequently invited as a keynote speaker at international conferences.

Title: Envisioning future and emerging IoT and intelligent technologies in schools and the cybersecurity impact

kEYNOTE sPEAKER: ian taylor
Animation Research Ltd / Virtual Eye

In 2010 Ian was awarded North & South Magazine’s New Zealander of the Year Award. This is how the editorial announced the award back then. “In a year of recession when at times there seemed little to celebrate, North & South magazine pays tribute to an inspirational innovator who has put Dunedin on the map – and never stopped believing that Kiwis can take on the world. In 2008, Ian Taylor was on the verge of bankruptcy. A world leader in high-tech computer graphics for two decades, he arrived at his Dunedin office to tell his team that the company would have to close. As he walked past his receptionist she showed him the front page of that morning’s newspaper announcing the closure of a local factory with the loss of hundreds of jobs. “I can still remember her saying, ‘God, how awful would that be,’” says Taylor. “And I thought, ‘Well, I can’t do it today.”
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In North & South’s January 2010 issue Ian was profiled as a man whose maverick style and ability to inspire the passion of those around him saw him claw back from the brink to rebuild his company exporting Kiwi ingenuity to the world.”
Over a decade on from facing down that challenge Ian was this year named 2019 Kiwi Bank New Zealand Innovator of the Year.

Jim BUchan
CO-DIRECTOR THE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING RESEARCH LAB, AUT

Jim started off his career as a secondary school teacher and has had a variety of careers after that, including working in the IT industry, running his own Environmental Engineering company, and a polytechnic and university lecturer in Business and Computing.
His area of teaching and research is now Software Engineering, and over the last decade he has particularly focused on how the Agile way of working works, and when and why. He loves teaching at all levels from undergraduate to PhD and was the proud recipient of two teaching awards in the past three years. He is the Co-Director the Software Engineering Research Lab at AUT.

AUT Profile

PROFESSOR JAIRO GUTIERREZ
​DEPUTY HEAD OF THE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, COMPUTER AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES AT AUT

Associate Professor Jairo Gutierrez is the Deputy Head of the School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences at AUT. His current research is on Business Models for Digital Services, Cloud Computing, Network management systems, and Security issues for wired and wireless wide-area network
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AUT Profile

Keynote speaker: Kiwa Hammond
​Tohuao maori - making culture count - aatea solutions

​Currently residing with my whānau in sunny Te Wairoa, Northern Hawkes Bay/East Coast with our main office in Te Hāwera, South Taranaki. Technology enables us to be connected to our team around the country and live a lifestyle we enjoy. Ka mate kāinga tahi, ka ora kāinga rua.
Actively co-ordinate and facilitate wānanga (schools of learning) in the community and on our respective marae on both sides of the country. This includes the teaching of te reo Māori (Māori language), tikanga (customary practices), mau rākau (martial arts), waiata/haka (traditional performance), whaikōrero/karanga (oratory), whakapapa (genealogy) and karakia (ritual affirmations). 
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Title:  Kia Takatū, Kia Tūmāia: Teacher Preparedness and Resilience in Digital Technology and Hangarau Matihiko

mARTHA mCFAUL LECTURER AT AUT
& OLLIE BAKER TEACHER AT STONEFIELDS SCHOOL

​Martha McFaul is a lecturer at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in the School of Education. Since 2017 she has been co-leading a paper which focuses on the integration of the technology curriculum within the context of Innovative Learning Environments. 

Demonstration: Technology 2020: Living the curriculum in primary schools.
​Ollie Baker is a teacher at Stonefields School. Utilizing digital pedagogies with an Innovative Learning Environment, such as gaming-based learning (GBL), as effective teaching strategies in his year 4-6 classroom. 

​Demonstration: Technology 2020: Living the curriculum in primary schools.

DR MAHSA MOHAGHEGH
​LECTURER ENGINEERING, COMPUTER & MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES, AUT
DIRECTOR/FOUNDER SHESHARP

Dr Mahsa Mohaghegh is a computer engineer with a background in artificial intelligence and natural language processing. She obtained her PhD from Massey University with a thesis in Statistical Machine Translation.
Prior to joining AUT, Mahsa was a Senior Lecturer and Program Leader at Unitec, and also lead an outreach effort within the Department of Computing there. After being awarded Google's Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2012, Mahsa became involved with Google's Computer Science for High Schools initiative, and successfully applied for Google funding to run these workshops in Auckland for the last 3 years.
​Mahsa is also the founder and director of the women's technology group She# - shesharp.co.nz, a platform aimed at promoting STEM to the next generation, and creating networking opportunities for tertiary students and industry professionals in the digital sector. Her passion for promoting careers in technology to young women has been recognised by a number of organisations, and resulted in her being awarded at the Westpac Women of Influence Awards.
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AUT Profile

Keynote speaker: Natalie de Boursac
Google Strategy & Insights MANAGER

Natalie spent time at Google in South-East Asia before joining the New Zealand team where she now leads the Government, CPG, Travel & F&B accounts. 
Natalie is British & Turkish by blood, but spent her entire childhood in South East Asia (Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore) before attending Hamilton College, in New York, where she earned a BA in International Political Economics. 

Title: Digitizing the Classroom. 

DR Robin Hankin
​Senior lecturer at AUT

​Robin Hankin is a mathematician specializing in computational statistics.  His first degree was in pure and applied mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge.  After working in the UK's Health and Safety Executive studying major industrial hazards, Robin returned to Cambridge for a PhD in fluid mechanics, specializing in stratified atmospheric diffusion. 
He then worked at The University of Auckland as a lecturer in environmental science, publishing in the field of industrial risk assessment.  After returning to Cambridge to study uncertainty in global climate change as a senior research associate, Robin is now a senior lecturer at AUT. 
His current research portfolio includes game theory, the unit-sum constraint, and likelihood-based methods in the analysis of competitive situations.
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AUT Profile

Subash chandra k
Curriculum leader of mathematics and statistics at Ormiston Senior College

Subash aims to inspire the next generation of creators and innovators. He says his students inspire him to constantly question his teaching pedagogies and push himself towards the future. He constantly pursues meaningful and contextual tasks to increase student engagement due to the wide variety of learning styles among his students. He is driven by the understanding that his students need to be prepared for the future.  Subash is Curriculum Leader of Mathematics and Statistics at Ormiston Senior College.  He is the recipient of the National Excellence in Teaching Awards in 2018, a recipient of the 2017 Margaret and John Kalman Charitable Trust Mathematics Teaching Prize and the 2017 Jim Campbell Award for Teaching Excellence in Mathematics.  Subash is also the inaugural ASG Space Camp Teacher Ambassador for New Zealand.  He is the owner of the YouTube channel InfinityPlusOne.

Workshop: High School Math with Superhero Robots

susana tomaz
STEAM PROGRAMME COORDINATOR

​Susana coordinates the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Maths) programme at Westlake Girls School and is a School Lead at the Pupuke Kahui Ako (Community of Learning).  Susana has been working with a team of teachers to redesign the curriculum, cultivate learner agency and expose students to authentic meaningful STEAM learning opportunities in and beyond the classroom.

Shafeel Mohammed & CONNOR TAYLOr
Graduate business INTELLIGENCE Developer's at AUT

Shafeel Mohammed is a Graduate Business Intelligence Developer at AUT with a wide range of skills which consists of databases, data analysis, Microsoft PowerApps/Flow and programming.

​Demonstration: Build your own low-code, cross-platform app in less than an hour ​
Connor Taylor is a Graduate Business Intelligence Developer at AUT. He recently graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Information Systems with an emphasis in mathematics and data analysis.
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​Demonstration: Build your own low-code, cross-platform app in less than an hour ​

Tanya gray
FREELANCE JAVA SCRIPT DEVELOPER at plexture

Tanya is a freelance JavaScript developer, currently developing analytics dashboards at Plexure. She has a history of teaching programming in high schools, and a passion for the web which she loves to share with anyone who will listen.
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Workshop 1: Responsive web design
Workshop 2: Databases with Python

​Tim Davison
AUT'S STRATEGY & PLANNING TEAM

​Tim Davison began working in AUT’s Strategy & Planning team about six years ago. Tim is responsible for business intelligence at AUT and has won multiple accolades for his work in emerging technologies, including the 2014 and 2016 Microsoft Innovation Supreme Awards. Tim is the co-chair of AUT’s all-staff network, Kin, which aims to build connections and collaborations between staff on campus.

Workshop: Build your own Chatbot

Tyne Crow
​SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHER AND PHD STUDENT, UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

​Tyne Crow is a secondary teacher on sabbatical from Pakuranga College and currently a professional teaching fellow in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland. He has taught programming at NCEA level in schools and is currently undertaking a doctoral project related to aspects of programming education in the context of the NZC and NCEA.

Workshop: Activities for Developing Programs and the Logic Behind Them
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