Cormac Purcell, Program Director Trillium Technologies

Frontier Development Lab: engaging industry and accelerating interdisciplinary research for human good.

Abstract

Frontier Development Lab (FDL) is a year-long accelerated research program centred on an 8-week intensive research sprint. The program brings together interdisciplinary teams to solve carefully chosen challenges by applying artificial intelligence to remote sensing data. FDL has been running since 2015 in partnership with leading public and private organisations that include: NASA, ESA, The SETI Institute, Oxford University, Google, NVIDIA and Lockheed Martin. Outcomes are high-impact and open-source - anybody can build on the results. In this presentation I will showcase some of FDL’s recent successes, including the first FDL-affiliated program in Australia on bushfires. I will also talk about my personal journey from academia to industry, and share some insight on better engagement between the two worlds.

Bio

Cormac is a 18-year veteran of the academic world, recently making the transition to industry. He was a lecturer at Macquarie University specialising in radio astronomy and the interstellar medium. After some adventures in interdisciplinary science, he is now program director at Trillium Technologies Australia, working on a diverse projects involving bushfires, sharks and machine learning.