On The Cyber Side

Dr. Sue Keay is leading the nation into the future, one cyber system at a time.

- Anne-Frances Hutchinson

Dr Sue Keay may love robotics, but there’s nothing mechanical about her trailblazing vision for Australia’s technology future. Not only did she set up the world’s first robotic vision research centre, she is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and judges the James Dyson Awards and the Australian Museum Prizes. At present, she leads the Commonwealth Scientific and Industry Research Organization’s (CSIRO) Data61 Cyber-Physical Systems program.

We recently spoke with Dr Keay about CSIRO, blending science and business, and where the future may lead. “CSIRO, Australia’s national science research agency has been in existence for over 100 years,” she told VENTURE. “Its purpose is to solve the nation’s greatest challenges using innovative science, technology, and data. My involvement in it covers cyber-physical systems. I like to describe it as where the digital and physical worlds collide.”

Dr Keay leads the country’s largest group undertaking cyber-physical systems research, with 130 researchers and more than 70 PhD students contributing to the program. Participants include specialists in robotics and autonomous systems, distributed sensing systems, imaging and computer vision, and cybernetics, which, as Dr Keay put it, “is where the biological, mechanical, and digital all rush together.

“Cybernetics includes medical implants like pacemakers that have to be able to sense the electronic impulses in your heart and actually take action if those impulses are not keeping your heart beating at the right rate. That’s exactly what cybernetics is all about. It’s about being able to create something that can sense something happening in the physical realm, in this case the biological realm, and actually take action to correct if need be, keeping your heart beating at the right rate.”