Emerging Leader
The CAUDIT Award for Emerging Leader celebrates outstanding leadership achievements. The award seeks to recognise an emerging leader in IT within the higher education and research sector who has demonstrated leadership and vision to their colleagues. They may have ‘gone out on a limb’ or supported a collective effort to lead their team to achieve more than they have previously, or led a new initiative through to success, or introduced some significant positive change.
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Emerging Leader Recipient
In establishing Deakin’s GIFT City campus, Greg navigated the complexities of procuring hardware in another country, compounded by the unique challenges of operating in a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). His leadership involved
supporting his team in their respective areas and removing roadblocks to ensure effective delivery. This required close collaboration with international vendors and integrators like NTT DATA and Dell to meet stringent
standards. Additionally, Greg worked with Indian authorities on customs imports, ensuring compliance with SEZ regulations and GST exemptions. He facilitated clear communication channels to support his team, held regular
progress meetings, and provided timely solutions to emerging challenges. He coordinated efforts across diverse functions, such as Cybersecurity, Networks, End-User computing and AV systems, ensuring everyone had the
resources and guidance to excel. By addressing logistical hurdles and fostering a collaborative environment, Greg empowered his team to focus on their expertise and deliver high-quality results. His proactive leadership and problem-solving ensured the successful setup of our campus infrastructure within the tight 12-month window, reflecting Deakin’s standards and values.
Excellence in Research Support
The CAUDIT Award for Excellence in Research Support recognises excellence in the application or innovative use of digital technology in support of research activities within the membership. What has been done that has had a positive impact on how research is undertaken? Any aspect of research support can be considered here - whether it be governance, research infrastructure or individual research projects.
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Excellence in Research Support Recipient
Our ITS team has collaborated with RMIT's RACE (RMIT AWS Cloud Supercomputing) to pioneer Australia's first dedicated commercial cloud supercomputing facility. Through partnerships with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AARNet, we've combined industry-leading cloud capabilities with advanced fibre network technologies, providing unparalleled connectivity and cloud HPC processing power to our researchers, students, and industry partners. Launched in October 2022, our joint initiative quickly gained traction, onboarding nearly 600 researchers and PhD students in 18 months. Together, we're enabling research excellence by leveraging cutting-edge cloud technologies and serving as an incubator for new partnerships across industry, government, and academia. In 2023, we introduced the Service Workbench solution, transforming cloud capabilities into an accessible, self-service portal for our research community, allowing ideas and solutions to be tested up to 100 times faster than existing on-site servers.
Enhancing the Student Experience
The CAUDIT Award for Enhancing the Student Experience recognises creative initiatives and innovative developments which have resulted in increased academic success rates across a broad cross-section of the higher education student demographic. The award seeks to celebrate individuals or IT teams whose project outcomes have addressed some of the challenges faced by students and helped improve student success.
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Enhancing the Student Experience Recipient
In late 2023, we provided Monash University students with an innovative way to plan their course and re-enrol for 2024. Transforming the enrolment experience, we developed an AI-powered, fully interactive course planning tool, resulting in a one-click enrolment, in the right course of study. From within one system and without the need to reference materials from across multiple websites, students can re-enrol using real-time, personalised enrolment and course planning advice based on their academic record, career aspirations, and personal interests. Features include access to current course progression, select majors and minors, and the ability to easily move units within and between course options being considered. Previously, enrolment (and re-enrolment) was a lengthy process, involving paper-based course plans and online handbooks, leading to a number of phone call enquiries. This created uncertainty about what units students could take, and whether the units selected would allow them to graduate.
Operational Excellence
The CAUDIT Award for Operational Excellence celebrates achievements in transforming and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of either part or the whole of the organisation. Size isn’t what is important here, it’s outcomes and impact.
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Operational Excellence Recipient
The Admissions Review fusion team was initiated to identify opportunities to rapidly optimise the application and admission assessment processes at the University, in order to maximise conversion of applicants to accepted offers. The key drivers for the project were twofold. Firstly, the significant volume of applications in the Admissions backlog (over 4,400, of which 88% were international). And secondly, application processing times (an average of 40 days for initial assessment), resulting in delays in communicating back to applicants regarding actions required to allow full assessment. Included in the applications backlog was a range of ineligible and/or incomplete applications. A key area of focus was the fact that Admissions Officers had to manually open and review every application to determine next steps to allow full assessment. The project team was made up of several Fusion teams, including the Student Systems, CRM, Integration and Analytics teams, working in close collaboration with the Product Owner from the Admissions Team. These team adopted an agile approach to delivery, implementing a series of enhancements and innovative solutions delivered iteratively over multiple two-week sprints, with an objective of delivering maximum value in the shortest possible timeframe.
CAUDIT acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands where we live, learn and work. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and celebrate the stories, culture and traditions of all First Nations people.