Panel Event – Sciences Alumni Network

Dr Judy Halliday

Dr Judy Halliday is the Chief Operating Officer of the Office of the South Australian Chief Entrepreneur in the Department for Innovation and Skills. In this role, she is responsible for supporting the Chief Entrepreneur and the Entrepreneurship Advisory Board, as well as delivering on the Government’s commitment to growing entrepreneurship and supporting start-up and scale up business in South Australia. She is also responsible for delivering the Startup Hub at Lot Fourteen.

Judy has more than 25 years’ executive and management experience in entrepreneurship and innovation as an inventor, founder, investor, academic and industry professional in the private and public sectors. She has published in academic peer reviewed journals and has been a successful applicant in competitive grant programs as both an academic researcher and as an industry partner. She is an inventor on granted patents and has been involved in raising millions of dollars for multiple start-up companies. She has negotiated multi-million-dollar licensing transactions and collaboration agreements in the development of early stage technologies. Judy has extensive experience in strategy development and implementation and been a non-executive director of 7 start-up companies and is currently a member of several Advisory Boards. She has been a member of venture fund investment committees for the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund and Uniseed.

Adjunct Professor Jeremy Thompson

Jeremy Thompson is an Adjunct Professor, The University of Adelaide and is the Chief Scientific Officer for two start-up companies, Fertilis Pty Ltd (est. 2019) and ART Lab Solutions Pty Ltd (est. 2017).  He has held positions within several scientific societies, and received awards from the Society for Reproductive Biology and the International Society for Embryo Technology.  

He has worked as a clinical IVF Laboratory Director (Repromed, 2000-2004), but thereafter an NHMRC-funded researcher until his retirement in 2021.  His research interests span from medium development for IVM and embryo culture, to inventing new medical devices for IVF clinics to equip them with tools that improve laboratory performance.  He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers and reviews, and is consistently asked to speak both nationally and internationally.

Corri Baker

Corri Baker is a boundary spanner, meaning she works at the interface of institutions and knowledge. She collaborates with technical specialists, policy experts, the community, regulators, and industry to solve complex problems and achieve outcomes. For the past 15 years, Corri has worked in cross sector roles in higher education and government as well as starting up and running her own business.

Corri has a science research background and applies this experience in her current and prior roles which have involved strategic planning, stakeholder relations and engagement, policy research and review, project facilitation and case management, public relations and ministerial advice. She has also worked in communications, media, marketing, science communication, university teaching, and grant writing. Many projects she has worked on were partnerships with universities, NGO’s, and industry, from BHP to Sea Shepherd.  

Corri currently works for the South Australian Department of Energy and Mining, where she facilitates and leads the development of major State-wide mineral resource projects from scoping through to commercial operations.

Dr Sam Darvishi

Sam has a Bachelor's and Master’s degree in Electronic Engineering, and a PhD in Neural Engineering graduating in 2016 from The University of Adelaide. His research on brain-computer interfaces (BCI) started in 2006, where he proposed a novel machine learning method for BCIs in his Master’s degree thesis. During his PhD work, he researched using BCIs and robotics to recover hand movement for stroke survivors. Following the completion of his PhD in 2016, he won an Endeavour Fellowship and joined the Department of Neuroprosthetics & Functional Neurosurgery at the University of Tubingen, Germany.

He established RehabSwift Pty Ltd in June 2018 to commercialise his research on restorative BCIs. RehabSwift are alumni of MedTech Actuator Program, and have been able to successfully raise funds via venture capitalists and federal government grants.

He previously established and managed two successful companies. The first company (Neshat Abi Darya) was established in 1999 to design and manufacture bulk material handling equipment and was sold in 2006 and is still running. The second company (Idehkavan) was established in 2008 to design and fabricate embedded systems for real-time locating systems. Idehkavan successfully implemented a few projects and was closed down in 2012, when its founder decided to pursue his research on brain-computer interfaces.