Official Event Advisory Panel
Quest Events would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the official event advisory panel who contributed their valuable time and expertise to ensure the agenda for this event is timely and relevant for all stakeholders.
Neil Kavanagh
Chief Science & Technology Manager
Woodside Energy
Neil joined Woodside in 1999 and has 26 years of oil & gas industry experience. In his current role he is responsible for - the what, how and who of technology development in oil and gas and LNG with a focus on technology-enabled growth.
Previous Woodside roles have included:
- Development Assurance Leader,
- Completions and Subsea Manager,
- Well Integrity Authority,
- Production Technologist --Deepwater Oil
Previous Industry Roles:
- Production Technologist, Australia, Shell Development, Melbourne
- Asset Manager and Production Support, PDO, Oman
- Offshore Campaign Coordinator, Brunei Shell Petroleum
- Explosion Protection Engineer, Shell Expro, Aberdeen
- Graduate Field Engineer, N Sea, Shell Expro, Aberdeen
Education - Engineering Manufacture and Mgt, B Sc (Hons), B Eng (Hons) , Manchester, UK. Interests – connecting new ideas with opportunity and trying new things with new people in new places. Outside work - Organic farmer, musician, father of four, married to Annie. Originates from Leeds, Yorkshire, UK
Satyam Priyadarshy
Chief Data Scientist
Halliburton
Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy is the Chief Data Scientist at Halliburton. Previously, he was the VP of Data Science at Acxiom Corporation. He is a well-recognised global leader in areas of Big Data and Data Science. Prior to Acxiom, he was the Chief Knowledge Officer and VP of Analytics at Network Solutions (now web.com). A direct report to the Chairman and CEO of Network Solutions and a member of the senior leadership team, Dr. Priyadarshy provided strategic leadership to improve products and services. He led the transformation of the main revenue channel the, ecommerce storefront, from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 technologies. Dr, Priyadarshy has breadth of scientific knowledge, in-depth technology experience and extensive business acumen.
Dr. Priyadarshy is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches Advanced Analytics and E-Commerce Strategy. Prior to that he was Adjunct Professor at the School of Management, George Mason University.
He is also a Senior Fellow, at the International Cyber Security Center at George Mason University.
Recently, he was named at one of the top 50 candidates in the country for nomination to corporate board, as Digital Director, by The Agenda Digital 50, the Financial Times Publication.
Dr. Priyadarshy has held various academic and research positions at various universities and institutes including Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, The University of Pittsburgh, The University of Sydney, Australia, and IIT Bombay, India. He has been a principal and co- investigator of multiple High Performance Supercomputing Projects.
Dr. Priyadarshy obtained his MBA from Virginia Tech and Ph.D. from IIT Bombay. He is a member of IEEE, ACM, ACS, and Phi Lambda Upsilon. He is also President-Elect of the DC chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs, one of the world's largest entrepreneur networks). He is also a board member of various educational institutes and emerging technology companies.
Kym Bills
Chief Executive Officer
Western Australian Energy Research Alliance (WA:ERA)
Since August 2011 Kym Bills has been the CEO of the Western Australian Energy Research Alliance (WA:ERA) comprising the CSIRO, Curtin University and The University of Western Australia. He has been a Board Member of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) since 2009.
Before moving to Perth, Kym held a number of senior Federal Public Service roles including as Foundation Executive Director of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) from 1999 to 2009. In 2009 Kym Bills and WA:ERA Chairman David Agostini were tasked by the Commonwealth and Western Australian Ministers to investigate and review the Varanus Island gas pipeline explosions and associated regulatory frameworks. Immediately before WA:ERA, Kym was Project Director for the National Mine Safety Framework project from 2009-2011. Kym holds degrees from 5 universities in Australia and the UK and is a fellow of 7 professional bodies.
Lesley Wyborn
Adjunct Fellow, National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) Facility
Australian National University
Lesley Wyborn is an adjunct fellow at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) Facility at the Australian National University (ANU). After a career of 42 years in Geoscience Australia (GA), she has a strong background in developing relational database management systems and related analytics. Her focus in the last 25 years has been on developing real time interoperability between distributed data repositories. From 2010 she led the uptake of High Performance Computing (HPC) and High Performance Data (HPD) technologies in GA using what is currently the world’s 38th largest Supercomputer at the NCI Facility at ANU. Use cases that were transitioned for GA to HPC included satellite, potential field geophysics, and hazards modelling. She is a deputy chair of the Australian Academy of Science ‘Data for Science Committee' and internationally she is on the Executive Committee of the American Geophysical Union Earth and Space Science Informatics Group and is associated with the National Science Foundation Geoinformatics for Geochemistry and EarthCube Projects. In June 2014 she was awarded an Australian Government Public Service Medal for her sustained national and international leadership in integrated geoscience data management and analytics.