NSW iAwards Ceremony 2026

Details

This is an invitation only event for AIIA members, judges, iAwards finalists, and their teams.

Join us in celebrating finalists in the NSW State iAwards Ceremony, a great showcase for New South Wales innovations with winners and merit recipients from the NSW State iAwards across ten categories progressing to the National iAwards later this year.

Enjoy networking with industry peers and presentations by Dr. Suresh Sood is a Chief Data Scientist, Strategic AI Advisor and Murray Hurps, Director of Entrepreneurship at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

While attendance is free for members, finalists and their teams, each attendee must have a valid ticket.

Keynote speaker

Dr. Suresh Sood

Chief Data Scientist, Strategic AI Advisor, Industry Fellow

Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII), UTS

Dr. Suresh Sood is a Chief Data Scientist, Strategic AI Advisor, Industry Fellow in the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII)at UTS, and academic board member with two higher education providers. Suresh has spent over three decades refusing to separate technology from its consequences, always going beyond capability to ask not what AI can do, but what it should do, for whom, and why it matters.

His UTS PhD was the first dissertation to publish Python code to extract human behaviour patterns from social media big data. He has worked at Reuters as Senior Vice President, Solutions and as Australia’s first data scientist at Chartered Accountants ANZ (CAANZ). Suresh has consistently chosen impact over novelty, co-creating the Master of Data Science & Innovation at UTS, embedding AI into Western Sydney University’s business curriculum, and mentoring the next generation of data scientists to ask harder questions about purpose, governance, and consequence. At AIIA, his talk will be making the case for exactly that.

Speaker

Murray Hurps

Director of Entrepreneurship

University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Murray Hurps is the Director of Entrepreneurship at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), where he leads the University’s work to inspire and support technology-enabled entrepreneurs.

Australia’s recovery needs job-ready graduates, productivity-boosting research, and new entrepreneurs spreading innovations, creating new jobs and driving our recovery. Murray’s work is enabling this critical third pillar of work at UTS. 

Through UTS Startups, Murray has helped build one of the largest communities of student-launched startups in Australia, supporting thousands of founders and strengthening the role universities play in driving innovation and economic growth.

Before joining UTS, Murray was CEO of Fishburners, Australia’s largest startup community. During his tenure he expanded Fishburners from a 100-desk coworking space into a 750-desk community across Sydney, Brisbane and Shanghai, supporting more than 500 startups. 

He is also the founder of Startup Muster, which for six years, produced the largest annual survey of the Australian startup ecosystem, analysing thousands of startups to better understand and strengthen the sector.

Murray previously founded FUELD, Westpac’s data-focused accelerator program, and has held numerous leadership roles supporting the Australian innovation ecosystem. These include serving as a Director of the Australian Information Industry Association and WorkVentures, Chair of Spark Festival, and Chair of the R&D Incentives Committee under Industry Innovation and Science Australia (IISA), advising the Australian Government on the Research and Development Tax Incentive.

Murray’s interest in entrepreneurship began early. At the age of 16 he founded Ad Muncher, an ad-blocking startup that operated for 14 years and reached a peak of 100 million active users. That experience shaped his mission to help more Australians understand and pursue the opportunities created by technology-enabled entrepreneurship, and for Australia to realise the benefits of this as well.

Thank you to our Host Sponsor