Distinguished Professor, Director of the 3A Institute and Florence McKenzie Chair at the Australian National University, and a Vice President and Senior Fellow at Intel

What drew you to working in your chosen field?

From a young age my mother had drilled into my brother and me that "if you could see a better world, you were morally obligated to help bring it into existence". When I left my tenure-track job at Stanford University to join Intel back in the late 1990s, I did so because I believed at Intel I could actively work to change the world. At Intel, I was able to put people back into the conversation to help shape a different set of narratives about people and technology. This made it possible to think about intersections of technology and specific cultures, and to use those insights to drive new forms of innovation and technology development.

Which of your many career achievements do you feel is your greatest and/or most exciting?

That would be what I am doing currently with my team at the 3A Institute, which is building a new applied science around the management of artificial intelligence, data, and technology and their impact on humanity. When we mapped out our timeline to create this new applied science, we imagined standing up the first educational program in 2022, but over the course of this year, we've realised the world needs the new applied science now and so we are pushing ourselves to create it in an even more accelerated timeframe. And I am happy to say with the help of my team we are doing just that. I am truly grateful to my team and the overwhelming response to what we're trying to do and we're really excited about the next 12 months and taking it through to 2022.

What would you say is the currently the biggest challenge facing the international cyber community?

I think one of the biggest challenges that we continue to face is that we still haven't yet found a solution to the "human" problem. Which is to say that we always think security is a technology challenge, but really it is a human one too. We cannot design humans out, and we seem to be quite stubborn in terms of our willingness to adopt and adapt to the new things, so how do we find ways to make security scale across both traditional computer platforms? And what does it mean to think about security in the 21st century? Is it a fixed thing? A sliding scale? Is it about safety? Or privacy? Or trust? And who should provide it? And for whom? And when? I think we have yet to find the right questions, let alone the right answers or solutions.

How could Australia further engage with our international partners to harness the opportunities of the digital age?

Build relationships, great partnerships, genuinely understand what other institutions, countries, etc. want and the challenges they are facing. It isn't a one size fits all world.