Dr. John Vial

Originally a startup looking into using acoustic sensing as a predictor of fixed plant equipment failure. Soundelve is now a general purpose product company.

Project management and technical leadership of a small robotics team. Core product is Magneto, a spider-inspired small Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) and Inspection robot with eletro-magnetic feet. Magneto is able to walk up walls and into confined spaces. Its goal is to help remove the need for working at heights. Magneto has applications to Oil & GAS FPSO's, mining equipment inspections. Unlike drones, Magneto is able to maintain stability, holding still while conducting a NDT inspection. My role is to help guide the product and its software components (Robotics Operating System based) to deliver against the commercial outcomes of Nexxis. I also designed and implemented a robotics testing regime to benchmark the system and provide a basis of design for future improvements. I also coordinate collaboration between the software and mechanical & electronic engineering teams, as well as encouraging the adoption of Agile best engineering practices across the company.

Using AI to build cool stuff in mining.

Leading and building teams to deliver world class Artificial Intelligence solutions. - Provided a technical lens on strategic AI initiatives for the business - Mentoring and coaching of Data Leads, AI Engineers, Data Scientists and Developers - Influencing and communicating with senior management around the benefits of AI initiatives, required budgets and project status. - Operating within an agile project management framework to allow fast delivery and high rates of communication and stakeholder management. - Product ownership of the Machine Learning Platform, a self-service platform to enable development of AI & Machine Learning tools across the business. - Vendor management (AWS) and budgets for our Machine Learning Platform toolsets. Providing technical leadership and project management across a broad range of Machine Learning Problems such as: - predictive maintenance of rail cars and heavy vehicles, - industrial IoT for rail interactions, - energy demand modelling of industrial facilities to enable renewable generation, - statistical simulation based hydrogen facility cost-benefit analysis, - small scale environmental predictions to help reduce dust impacts from operations, - use of OCR text extraction to reduce hours of manual data entry on site, and - prediction of geological factors relevant for ore processing and digging. Also responsible for leading the Snowflake Data Warehouse Team. Which involves: - Leading teams of Data Engineers and Data Architects, - Ensuring high availability and ease of access to our data systems, - Shaping and guiding the platform roadmap and resourcing, and - Writing budget proposals and explaining the benefits of Data to senior management.

First technical engineering hire for the autonomy team. Evaluated existing and emerging global technology for autonomous systems. Wrote high level design documents to guide engineering teams for the construction of both an autonomous light vehicle and an off-board control and coordination system. Worked with vendors and built an engineering team from the ground up to deliver against both initiatives. Included hiring of robotics engineers, developers and architects for a fully rounded team. Guided the team to deliver a precision mapping solution to enable rapid roll-out of autonomy in new environments. Led the team through a large restructure and change of strategy in a fast pace, highly dynamic environment. Successfully repositioned the team to deliver against our re-aligned business priorities. Investigated business cases and opportunities for robotics across the iron ore mining logistics chain.

Running weekly meetings to grow a community of machine learning experts in Perth.

What's in a name. Project 412 is about bringing automotive autonomy to the mining industry through collaboration and joint ventures, in that way it is a project. 412 is Pittsburgh's number, it's an old steel town that has reinvented itself as tech centre and home to automotive industry's autonomy effort.

We are an ad-technology startup looking to help advertisers take advantage of emerging platforms by re-purposing their existing video assets. http://upright.media

My role involves understanding the research interests and directions of the researchers inside Data61 (a CSIRO business unit) and attempting to match those interests with the needs of CSIRO's business customers. Success for me is when our researchers solve important problems that give our business customers a huge competitive advantage.

Applied Machine Learning Research. NICTA was incorporated into Data61, a new business unit of CSIRO. As a researcher I explored solutions to: Find patterns in Australian banking data. Identify entities in large government databases. Recommend students to suitable internship jobs. Analyse industrial processing pipelines for improved performance.

PhD in Robotics, studying the application of Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping as the system reaches the limit of its storage capacity.

Coursework on Global Strategy, IP Management, Innovation Theory and New Business Opportunities

Bachelor of Electrical Engineering, learning about computers and systems as well as running several clubs and societies such as the IEEE and IET branches.