Dr Cathy Foley is a physicist and commenced her term as Australia’s ninth chief scientist in January 2021. Before that she had a long and distinguished career at CSIRO, where she was appointed chief scientist in August 2018 – only the second woman in that role.

Over the course of her career, she has made significant contributions to the understanding of semiconductors and high-temperature superconductors. Her work led to the development of field-deployable superconducting devices that locate valuable mineral deposits by detecting minute magnetic fields (ten million times weaker than the Earth’s field).

Dr Vikram Sharma is a quantum physicist and the founder and CEO of Canberra-based QuintessenceLabs, which is a world leader in the quantum cybersecurity industry. Vikram is a dual MSc holder – in computer science (from ANU), and management (from Stanford University, California). His doctorate in quantum physics was also awarded by ANU.

Dr Johan Verjans is a cardiologist who combines clinical and research work. He’s deputy director, Medical Machine Learning, at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning; a senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide attached to South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute; an associate investigator at Adelaide Uni’s Centre for Nanoscale Biophotonics; and a consultant cardiologist at Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Our guests join moderator Tory Shepherd, an Adelaide-based journalist and broadcaster, to discuss what AI is, its certain prevalence in our future, the variety of real-world applications for which it’s already used, and future applications, both already in development and as yet only imagined

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