Plucked for the 2006 Young Tall Poppy Award
Dr Doug Aberdeen, a CSL adjunct who is working with National ICT Australia (NICTA) was recently nominated for the prestigious 2006 Young Tall Poppy Award by Professor John Richards, Director of the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science.
Doug won the ACT/ NSW Award for his efforts in developing hands-on and practical workshops that focus on information & communication technology for Year 9/10 high school students
From: Connections, Spring 2006
Dr Doug Aberdeen, a CSL adjunct who is working with National ICT Australia (NICTA) was recently nominated for the prestigious 2006 Young Tall Poppy Award by Professor John Richards, Director of the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science.
"I am delighted to announce that Doug won the ACT/ NSW Award for his efforts in developing hands-on and practical workshops that focus on information & communication technology for Year 9/10 high school students," said Professor Richards.
In addition to his accomplished academic career Doug has managed to combine an impressive record of peer-reviewed papers in computer science journals and conference proceedings with an array of prestigious academic prizes and awards.
After completing his PhD at the ANU in 2003, Doug was snapped up by the newly formed centre of excellence, National ICT Australia (NICTA), for a three-year postdoctoral position. Earlier this year he was promoted to Senior Researcher in the Statistical Machine Learning Program at NICTA where he is an integral part of the research team and where he contributes significantly to the supervision of research students at the ANU.
"Doug has a phenomenal appetite for tackling extra- curricula activities, like the NICTA Taskforces, for which he won the award," says Professor Richards.
In 2004 Doug was one of the early career researchers that helped to establish a new outreach activity for secondary students in the ACT and he has subsequently gone on to lead the Statistical Machine Learning Team to design and deliver quality workshops in engineering and computer science for the three years since. The Taskforces were the brainchild of retiring Dr Bruce Millar who saw the need for the ANU to become part of the maths/science continuum from high school through to undergraduate and PhD studies. Doug was one of his first recruits into the program.
"I've been concerned that too many kids are turning their backs on science and maths education at the first possible chance, closing career doors that are very difficult to re-open. I am lucky to have an employer that encourages outreach activities. So for the last three years I have been devising and performing fun shows for Year 9/10 students," says Doug. Doug couldn't do this without the enthusiastic support of several PhD and Honours students from the College that he manages to gather together in his team each year.
"We all hope to infuse a little computer science passion into high school students, so that they do give a second thought to a science career. "What differentiates true computer science from information technology, what excites me from day- to-day, is the potential to influence a fundamental shift in what machines are capable of, and how we interact with them."
Doug and his teams are about to roll out two new workshops in ACT high schools in robotics and computer vision.
If you would like a NICTA Taskforce to visit your school in November/ December, contact Katherine Pierce on 6125 6221 or email Katharine. Pierce@nicta.com.au
