2022 Winners and Finalists
Technology Innovation Impact Award Winner
For a Swinburne alum whose exceptional endeavour has resulted in significant impact through technology and entrepreneurial innovation, demonstrating Swinburne’s vision of bringing people and technology together to build a better world.
Tristan Sternson
Tristan is CEO of ARQ Group, a digital technology solutions business, providing advisory, experience and design, and engineering and managed services since it was established in September 2019. In just three years, the 2001 IT graduate has transformed ARQ Group into one of Australia’s greatest business turnaround stories; recently being acquired for $290 million.
Finalists
Dr Gráinne Oates
Dr Oates is a Swinburne business alum, educator, entrepreneur and CEO who is revolutionising education and training through a multi-award-winning gamified app called Quitch.
In 2015, while working as a Swinburne accounting lecturer, Dr Oates decided to do something about her biggest challenge: engaging and retaining distracted students struggling with their course content yet always glued to their phones. Dr Oates devised an idea to harness the very thing distracting her students. The solution was Quitch: a gamified, mobile e-learning app that changes the way learners engage with knowledge.
Erwin Estigarribia
Erwin is the Chief Operations Officer of InterVenn Biosciences. InterVenn Biosciences is the developer of an artificial intelligence (AI) platform which detects cancer.
The company uses its AI platform to identify patient-specific cancer biomarkers and then uses those to develop liquid biopsy tests to both detect cancer and determine how well each patient will respond to available treatments.
Erwin’s aspiration is to detect cancer and other life-ending diseases early and change the conversation from “this drug saved my life” to “this test saved my life”.
The George and Ethel Swinburne Social Impact Award Winner
For a Swinburne alum who has demonstrated Swinburne’s passion for providing opportunities for all, irrespective of wealth, privilege, age, gender or race, making a real difference to the world we live in.
Andrew-James (AJ) Williams-Tchen
Andrew-James (AJ) is of Wiradjuri / Wotjobulak background and founded the Girraway Ganyi Consultancy, an Aboriginal-owned consultancy offering Indigenous cultural awareness and mental health first aid (MHFA) workshops and mentoring programs to schools, community groups and national and state-run organisations.
Finalists
Sosina Wogayehu OAM
Sosina Wogayehu is founder and CEO of Ethio Circus Entertainment.
The organisation provides training and employment opportunities for the youth of Ethiopia to protect them from homelessness and substance abuse.
Jen Sharpe
Founder of communications agency Think HQ, an award-winning agency that seeks to harness communications as a force for positive impact. Think HQ now boasts 80 staff from 14 different countries, speaking 20 different languages. Two in three of Think HQ’s staff are women.
Innovative Planet Impact Award Winner
For a Swinburne alum whose exceptional endeavour has resulted in significant impact in local and/or global environmental sustainability.
Christopher and Gabrielle Tylor
Christopher and Gabrielle are co-founders and Directors of exci, a commercial early bushfire detection system. exci uses proprietary artificial intelligence to detect bushfires as early as one minute after ignition, compared to the usual detection time of 90 minutes. It’s estimated that exci could save Australia $8.6 billion over the next 30 years in disaster response spending by detecting bushfires in rapid time.
Finalists
Ts. Dr Hj. Muhammad Khusairy Bin Bakri
Ts. Dr Hj. Muhammad Khusairy Bin Bakri is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Washington State University.
Driven by concerns about ongoing logging activities impact on our forests’ capacity to absorb carbon dioxide emissions, Dr Bakri is a global advocate for industries around the world to turn to bamboo-friendly products. Dr Bakri’s products have been commercialised. He is considered an expert in his field, having co-authored and edited over 150 publications.
Peter Murray
Peter is a Ngurrara Traditional Owner from the Great Sandy Desert, and the CEO of Yanunijarra Aboriginal Corporation, an organisation working to improve the lives of Aboriginal locals, along with the environmental health of the Kimberly region.
At Yanunijarra, Peter manages a team of 13 Aboriginal rangers who carry out conservation and land management work, keeping sites healthy through traditional methods of burning, cultural maintenance, monitoring water quality depth and more.
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Past winners and finalists
Learn more about our past winners and finalists.
