SA Sundowner – AI in Practice: Stories of Real World AI Impact – from Healthcare to Formula 1

Keynote speaker

A/Prof Marc Agzarian

Associate Professor

South Australian Medical Imaging, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University

Associate Professor Marc Agzarian is the Clinical Director of South Australia Medical Imaging (SAMI), the single public sector medical imaging service in South Australia encompassing radiology and nuclear medicine services. SAMI operates across 10 public hospitals and employs 165 radiologists and nuclear medicine physicians and 79 registrars and fellows.

Marc is also Head of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) at SAMI Flinders Medical Centre and has had a long-term affiliation with the College of Medicine & Public Health at Flinders University. He was previously the Campus Clinical Head of SAMI Flinders Medical Centre for nearly 10 years.

Marc completed his medical degree with honours at Flinders University in 1997 and was awarded the University Medal. He undertook his intern and resident medical officer years at Flinders Medical Centre and Repatriation General Hospital. After a three-year journey through psychiatry training, he “saw the light” and commenced radiology training at Flinders Medical Centre in 2003. Marc concluded his radiology training with an MRI Fellowship at Flinders Medical Centre in 2007. He commenced working as a consultant radiologist at Flinders Medical Centre in 2008, becoming Head of MRI in 2011 and Clinical Director of SAMI in 2017.

Over the past five years, Marc has collaborated on a number of research projects involving the application of machine learning to radiology.

Speakers

Johan Verjans

Associate Professor

Australian Institute of Machine Learning

A/Prof Johan Verjans is a clinician-scientist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital with a research focus on cross-disciplinary translational research. In his role as a deputy director at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), a world-renowned institute in Machine Learning, and as platform leader AI at SAHMRI, he combines experience in molecular medicine and clinical research with vast experience working with engineers for advanced imaging techniques, and computer scientists to apply machine learning to medical problems to translate research into the clinic.

He graduated in medicine from Maastricht University (MD-PhD) after being awarded the DiPalma Fellowship to work with the renowned Prof Narula in Philadelphia and UC Irvine. During cardiology training, he was awarded a prestigious Rubicon Fellowship by the Dutch Science Foundation to complete a post-doctoral fellowship at MGH/Harvard Medical School, followed by a clinician-scientist award at the University Medical Centre Utrecht during his cardiology training. He was recruited by the University of Adelaide in 2017 and was in 2022 recipient of the University’s Future Industry Making Fellowship.

Since then, he has formed the Medical Machine Learning group at AIML and used his combined clinical, biomedical and technical expertise to lead a rapidly growing group of clinicians, biomedical researchers and computer scientists with the objective of making the University of Adelaide a global leader in AI in Healthcare. The group has grown to over 25 members, won international technology challenges and has contracts with pharma and technology companies such as GSK, Roche, Siemens Healthineers and Medtronic. A testament to their diligence, their institute was distinguished as the AI Centre in Medicine of the Year in 2022 by the AI Global Summit.

A significant achievement is that his team won the global Medical VQA challenge (NIH), which used precursors of the current ChatGPT.

Caleb Sawade

Partner, Optimal Reality

Deloitte and previously Maclaren F1 Technologies

Caleb is a Partner in our Industrial Technologies group and leads the Optimal Reality Product offering. His background is in Mechatronics, spending time working in the Automotive and Motorsport industries.

Optimal Reality is Deloitte’s digital twin and simulation platform where Caleb is the Technical Authority and lead for that product. He has overseen the growth of Optimal Reality from idea through to productionised platform with a focus on solving some of the worlds wicked optimisation and prediction problems.

With a PhD, funded by McLaren and UK Sport, focused on robotics and cognitive neuroscience to accelerate athlete learning for Olympic programs. Caleb’s PhD research focused on bringing Cognitive Neuroscience and Robotics together to develop simulation systems to accelerate learning of Elite athletes for Team GB. The work led directly to multiple Olympic medals.

A strong track record for combining AI with Simulation to solve novel business problems. After returning from the UK where he led the Data Science and Simulation group within McLaren, he’s worked across Automotive, Public Transport, Manufacturing, and Health industries and passionate about bringing technology advancements to Australian organisations.

Thank you to our Gold Sponsor