Pawsey Champion Program

The Program is an advocacy program developed by the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre to engage with key members of Australia’s research communities and scientific domains in an endeavour to accelerate the Nation’s scientific capability and discovery.

The primary goal of the program is to enhance Pawsey’s national profile, increase awareness and usage of the facility and its services; and understand the Australian research community’s needs, changes in the landscape or dynamics, and any relevant information or engagements that would be of interest to Pawsey.

By connecting with your local Champion, you will have a direct line of communication with the staff at Pawsey – this is your opportunity to provide the Centre with community insights, training and education requests, feedback on systems and services, and inform the future technology and requirements of your communities and/or research domains.

The Program also opens the Champion’s research institutions to Pawsey’s Fast Track Access Scheme: https://pawsey.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/US/pages/184778753/Fast+Track+Access+Scheme

This scheme is an accelerated way for researchers to access Australia’s most powerful High Performance Computing infrastructure for public research.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre plays a crucial role in enabling important research at scale through expertise in supercomputing, data, cloud services, and visualisation. The Centre is committed to supporting Australian scientific advancement and is dedicated to providing the necessary resources and infrastructure to researchers, for leading-edge innovation and science. At Pawsey, we empower Australian researchers to accelerate scientific discovery through advanced technology and expert support.

To stay up-to-date with Pawsey programs, training and events, sign up to be a Pawsey Friend: https://pawsey.org.au/pawsey-friends/ and to connect with a Pawsey Champion, please email champions@pawsey.org.au.

Meet your champion

Adelaide

Mike Roach – Senior Research Fellow in Bioinformatics, Flinders University

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-j-roach/

Senior Research Fellow in Bioinformatics at the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI), passionate about research software engineering in High Performance Computing (HPC) environments, with expertise in genomics, metagenomics, drug discovery, and most recently Single Cell and Spatial-Omics technologies.

Queensland

Jake Bradford-Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebradford/

Jake Bradford is an early-career academic in the School of Computer Science at the Queensland University of Technology.

His research focuses on bioinformatics and data science, with a particular emphasis on CRISPR technologies and their applications.

He is also passionate about leveraging high-performance computing to advance his work. Alongside research, he teaches cloud computing to undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Victoria

Melissa Kozul- Lecturer, University of Melbourne

https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-kozul-49858827/

Melissa completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2018. Following postdoctoral appointments at NTNU, Norway and at the University of Melbourne, she commenced the role of Lecturer in Power Generation & Propulsion in 2024.

Melissa’s research expertise is in the high-fidelity numerical simulation of fundamental turbulent flows critical to the performance and stability of key energy and transport technologies. Her most recent work focuses on high-fidelity simulation of turbomachinery flows, specifically the complex air flow around the blades of axial compressors and turbines.

To enable this work, Melissa has extensive supercomputing experience; her latest simulations were undertaken on 100’s of GPUs working in parallel.

Juliana Villa- Research Community Specialist, Monash eResearch Centre

http://www.linkedin.com/in/julianavilla-ortiz

Juliana joined the research sector in 2018, working for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Advanced Molecular Imaging as a Senior Project Coordinator (Centre Operations). Her experience includes strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, governance, amplifying the Centre’s research impacts and outputs, and managing the full application process for funding. Juliana has over a decade of experience in project management, customer retention, and stakeholder management, spanning both the Australian research sector and the international education sector.

Juliana has extensive experience working with NCRIS Capabilities, having managed an ARDC project—Australian Characterisation Commons at Scale (ACCS)—and played a key role in the management and operations of other projects, including SeRP and HeSANDA. Currently, she is the Research Community Specialist for Monash eResearch, working closely with the research community to understand their digital and infrastructural challenges and support their needs.

Western Australia

Prachi Dave – Mechatronics Engineering student, Curtin University

https://www.linkedin.com/in/prachi-dave-4b7a5b235

Prachi is in their final year of Mechatronics Engineering at Curtin University. She had the privilege to be the president of the Women in Engineering Curtin Division club in 2024 where her team promoted women and other minority groups in engineering by holding various networking events and bridging the gap between students and industry.

Prachi was also an intern at Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre over the summer of 2023/24 and worked with SKAO and CSIRO, learning all about supercomputers and radio astronomy.

Prachi has recently completed a Mechatronics Engineering internship at Rio Tinto, learning about Australia’s mining industry.

Gayatri Aniruddha – Associate Lecturer, Department of Computer Science & Software Engineering, The University of Western Australia

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gayatri0397

Since January 2026, Gayatri has been working as an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, at the University of Western Australia (UWA).

Before this, Gayatri worked as a Project Officer in the Data Intensive Astronomy (DIA) team at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), based at their UWA node in Perth.

She recently completed a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Astronomy at the Curtin University node of ICRAR, graduating in September 2024. Her thesis focused on developing test versions of high-time-resolution GPU imaging software tailored for low-frequency radio telescopes such as the Engineering Development Array 2 (EDA2).

She also holds a master’s in data science from Monash University, which she completed in July 2021.

Sean Buckley – Lecturer in Molecular Ecology/Environmental Management, Edith Cowan University

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-buckley-b9a3a9176/

Sean is a lecturer in Molecular Ecology and conservation/ecological geneticist based within the Molecular Ecology and Evolution Group in the School of Science.

He has a research focus on integrating insights from genetics into applied and direct conservation management actions, including conservation translocations and reintroductions.

Sean does not consider himself limited by taxonomy and loves to dabble with all kinds of critters (great and small), with past and ongoing projects on threatened freshwater fishes, marsupials, birds and reptiles.

Sean is a passionate teacher across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate topics including conservation and ecological genetics, ecological processes and wildlife management.

An avid science communicator, Sean also runs the independent scientific blog The G-CAT, which aims to disseminate complex aspects of conservation, ecology, and the usage of genetics in these fields to a wider (non-scientific) audience.

Siobhon Egan – Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Murdoch University

https://www.linkedin.com/in/siobhon-egan/

As an early career researcher at Murdoch University, I work across projects in human and veterinary health. My research is focused on understanding the interactions at the host‐microbe axis using a range of ‐omic technologies in the context of ageing and infectious disease. I completed my PhD in 2022, investigating the role of ticks (Ixodida) and associated vector‐borne microbes (bacteria and protozoa) in Australian wildlife. In 2023 I attended the 72nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting supported by the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) and 2021 I was awarded the Sinnecker‐Kunz Award for early career researchers.