The Innovation Team
Dr Ashesh Mahidadia
Founder and CEO
Ashesh's main research interest is in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with a focus on building intelligent systems that solve challenging business problems. He holds a PhD degree in Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning and Knowledge-based systems).
He has worked as a consultant to large Australian companies (finance, insurance, etc.), and has received an international award for his innovative customer-centric solution. He was a Senior Researcher in the Personalisation Group, in the Smart Services CRC that developed an innovative people-to-people recommender system that has been successfully used (since 2012) by one of the largest social networking websites in Australia.
Computer Scientist and Innovative Business Strategist who quickly grasps business problems and develops bespoke intelligent solutions by strategically exploiting advanced information technologies, available business knowledge and data to create new business opportunities.
Ashesh Mahidadia has worked as an academic for 22 years, and has held a wide range of academic positions at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
He founded smartAcademic in 2013, with the aim to add "intelligence" to the way businesses operate.
The Team
The team lead by Ashesh is a dynamic team of highly talented software engineers. The innovation team comprises of IT experts who are passionate about the latest technology, including high performance computing, cloud computing, analytics, knowledge-based systems, advanced user interface designs, agile software development, etc.
The innovation team has a global reach, allowing it to harness the power of software expertise worldwide. This also makes it possible to quickly develop innovative solutions, and importantly offer them at competitive prices.
Advisory Panel
Dr Eric Martin
Eric Martin has been working as an academic for the last 15 years at the University of New South Wales. One of his PhD students, Ori Allon, developed innovative software for improved search which was acquired by Google. Eric Martin was scientific advisor for Julpan, a start-up company of Ori Allon to extract information from tweets, until the company was sold to Twitter. He is now scientific advisor for Inferess, a new San Francisco based start-up company.
Professor Paul Compton
Paul's research has focussed largely on knowledge acquisition, enabling knowledge bases to be built and maintained while in use. This research has been commercialised by a number of companies, and in particular technology based on his research is widely used to provide clinical advice for diagnostic laboratory reports.
Paul Compton is an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales. He has been head of the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales and also associate dean research for the Faculty of Engineering and a member of the Academic Board and the Council of the University.
Professor Ashwin Srinivasan
Ashwin Srinivasan is a visiting Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, UK, and a Professor at IIIT-D, India. Ashwin was a member of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory, where he was involved in pioneering applications of Inductive Logic Programming systems to difficult real-world problems in molecular biology and chemistry. He was a Research Staff Member at the IBM Research (India). He is a co-founder of PharmaDM, a global provider of drug discovery data analysis solutions.
Dr John Shepherd
John Shepherd has worked as an academic for the last 24 years in higher education in Australia. He also has a long-standing interest in the effective application of technology for improving higher education. In recent years, he has successfully led the development many IT systems that are very well received by users in the higher education in Australia.
Dr Geoff Whale
Geoff Whale held academic and professional positions for the last 33 years at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He has designed, implemented and supported a large number of academic administrative tools and systems in the areas of assessment, timetabling, student records management and data analysis and conversion, as well as many of the central staff web services.