Chief Defence Scientist and Chief Executive of Defence Science and Technology Organisation
Dr Alex Zelinsky is the Chief Defence Scientist of Australia and Chief Executive of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). DSTO is the Australian Government's lead agency charged with applying science and technology to protect and defend Australia and its national interests. In his role at DSTO, Alex leads a team of more than 2,600 scientists and engineers. He is also an internationally recognised scientist who has provided leadership to the high technology community.
Alex began his engineering career as a cadet at BHP (Port-Kembla) while studying at University of Wollongong (UOW) in 1978. He subsequently joined UOW's academic staff teaching computer science while completing his PhD studies. Alex then became a Professor at the Australian National University, before co-founding Seeing Machines in 2000, a high-technology company that developed computer vision systems and was listed on the London Stock Exchange. He joined CSIRO in 2004 where he was group executive of Information Sciences and member of the CSIRO executive team, before joining DSTO in 2012.
Alex's achievements have been recognised with numerous science and industry awards. In 2009, Engineers Australia (EA) honoured him as Professional Engineer of the Year and he has been included in EA's list of the 100 most influential engineers since then. In addition, the World Economic Forum named him a Technology Pioneer in 2004, 2004 and 2005.
