Hosts
Dr Faten (Faye) Zaibak
Chief Operating Officer, ARC Future Digital Manufacturing Hub, Swinburne University of Technology.
Accomplished, values-driven research operations leader with 28 years of experience across Australia’s university, health, and research sectors. PhD-qualified scientist, with expertise spanning gene therapy, biosafety, clinical trials governance, and research operations. Combines strategic foresight with hands-on operational expertise to establish and lead high-performing programs, including ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hubs.
Recognised for transforming governance and operational systems, strengthening research integrity, and fostering partnerships across academia, industry, and government. A trusted advisor and collaborative leader with a deep understanding of the full research lifecycle.
Committed to equity, diversity, and empowerment, with a passion for advancing education and research impact.
Professor Dimitrios Georgakopoulos
Director, ARC Future Digital Manufacturing Hub, & Head of the IoT Laboratory, Swinburne University of Technology.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos is the Director of the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Future Digital Manufacturing (digitalmanufacturing.com.au) and Computer Science Professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. Before that he served as Research Director at CSIRO’s ICT Centre (where he led Australia’s largest Computer Science/Computing research program), and as Professor at RMIT University.
Earlier, Dimitrios held senior research and management positions in major industrial laboratories in the USA, including Telcordia Technologies (currently Ericsson USA); Microelectronics and Computer Corporation (MCC); GTE Laboratories (currently Verizon); and Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). Dimitrios has authored 325 articles in IoT, AI, process automation, and data management that have received approximately 25,000 citations. His research in these areas has been awarded with $77M of external research grants/contracts. According to Elsevier’s science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators, he is in the 2% of the top-cited authors globally (top 1% if self-citations are excluded) in both career and 2025 rankings.
In addition, Dimitrios has led several major multi-organizational and cross-disciplinary research initiatives in social services, digital agriculture, water management, and defense that received over $100M of research funding from the Australian and USA governments. Dimitrios has received 18 awards that include, the 2023 National iAward for Government & Public Sector Solution of Year from the Australian Information Industry Association’s, several best paper awards from CORE A*/A flagship conferences, the 2018 Vice-Chancelor’s Research award, and three industry awards that include the 2013 Black Duck Open Source Rookie of the Year Award.
Speakers
Sharbani Dhar
Director, DotInfinity
Sharbani is the Founder and CEO of DotInfinity, a Melbourne-based product, design and AI advisory that helps organisations turn complex challenges into human-centred, scalable AI-enabled product startegy. She is the recipient of the ISG Digital Titan Award, acknowledging her impact on digital transformation and responsible technology adoption.
Beyond advisory work, Sharbani leads cross border innovation initiatives between Australia and India, connecting established enterprises, industry leaders and government stakeholders to accelerate market entry, manufacturing partnerships, supply chain diversification and deep tech commercialisation across the region. Through curated CXO delegations, executive roundtables and bilateral industry programs, she supports mature organisations in building Asia capability and unlocking structured growth opportunities across APAC.
With a career spanning government, telecommunications, financial services and enterprise technology, Sharbani specialises in navigating complexity, aligning stakeholders and delivering customer-centric innovation at scale. As a member of the ARC Future Digital Manufacturing Hub, she brings her expertise in strategic design, emerging technologies and responsible AI to the manufacturing sector, supporting the translation of advanced digital capability into real-world industry impact.
She is an active voice in Australia’s technology community through her writing in the Australian Financial Review, Canberra times and her podcast Cask & Convos, which spotlights product and innovation leaders shaping the future.
Dr Kaneez Fizza
Research Fellow, ARC Future Digital Manufacturing Hub, Swinburne University of Technology.
Dr Fizza’s research spans the Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0, applied AI, distributed systems, fog and edge computing, and data analytics, with a focus on developing novel digital solutions to real-world industry challenges. She completed her PhD at Swinburne in 2023, investigating the quality of autonomous IoT applications with minimal human intervention. Prior to this, she undertook a Master’s by Research at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, proposing scheduling algorithms for heterogeneous fog and edge networks.
As an emerging leader, she has published in leading journals. Her recent work includes the creation of a real-world wearable IoT dataset for human operator activity recognition in meat-processing production lines, supporting safer workplaces, better training, and productivity improvements. She also co-developed an inexpensive AI-powered IoT sensor for continuous farm-to-factory milk quality monitoring, enabling real-time measurement of protein and fat in milk to optimize supply chains and reduce waste. Through her research, Dr. Fizza advances scalable, intelligent IoT systems that bridge emerging technologies with practical industry applications, particularly in digital manufacturing.
Professor Shazia Sadiq FTSE
Shazia is Deputy Head of School – Strategic Partnerships, Director of the ARC Training Centre on Information Resilience and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Queensland.
Shazia’s research focuses on responsible data management, improving data quality, scalable data curation and cleaning, bias mitigation in advanced analytics, and enabling agile, data-driven organisations.
She has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers and secured more than $20 million in research funding. Her work has received major honours including a Test-of-Time award for Business Process Compliance, the Queensland Government’s Best Use of Data award, the Women in Tech Distinguished Researcher Award, and multiple best paper awards.
A dedicated educator for two decades, she received a UQ teaching excellence award and led the creation of UQ’s Master of Data Science program to address skills shortages. She currently convenes UQ’s AI Research Network and leads the University’s AI strategy and capability development.
She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and has held national leadership roles with the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Research Council College of Experts.
Professor Helen Huang
Discipline Leader, Data Science, University of Queensland & Program Leader in AI, ARC Future Digital Manufacturing Hub
Dr. Huang is a Professor and ARC Future Fellow in School of ITEE, The University of Queensland. She received her BSc degree from Department of Computer Science, Tsinghua University, China, and her PhD in Computer Science from School of ITEE, The University of Queensland in 2001 and 2007 respectively. Dr. Huang’s research interests mainly include multimedia indexing and search, social data analysis and knowledge discovery. She has published 200+ papers in prestigious venues and is currently an Associate Editor of The VLDB Journal, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), Pattern Recognition Journal, etc and also a member of the VLDB Endowment Board of Trustees.
