The Chair's Award for Science and Engineering Excellence
This Award recognises teams who have made scientific or technological advances that contribute significantly to addressing a major challenge facing Australia.
Winner: Lumpy Skin Disease Research, Preparedness and Response Team
In 2022 lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV), an important transboundary viral disease of cattle, swept throughout Asia and reached Indonesia.
Australia is disease-free, but an incursion would cost at least $8 billion in lost revenue during the first year and uncalculatable costs to animal and human health and wellbeing.
Before 2022, live LSDV was not permitted in Australia. However, because of the imminent threat, the CSIRO Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) worked closely with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) to gain permission to import the virus.
Since its successful import, the LSDV research and diagnostic teams have worked relentlessly to ensure Australia and our near neighbours have the diagnostic tools, support networks and response strategies in place to detect and respond to a potential incursion.
The research portfolio is growing rapidly and ACDP is fast becoming recognised as one of the leading research facilities in the world for LSDV.
The Chief Executive Professional Development Award
This Award provides opportunities for people delivering support services to extend their professional development by gaining further experience related to their careers and work.
Winner: Rohit Gupta
Rohit has worked in CSIRO since 2018 as a Strategy Analyst. During this period, he has consistently demonstrated exceptional performance and strategic acumen to help the Executive Team (ET) enhance CSIRO's strategic planning, performance, and investment decision-making processes.
Notably, Rohit has been managing and delivering business critical projects such as:
- Equipping the Board and Management with the strategic insights enabling them to discuss CSIRO’s operating environment, key government priorities and agree on strategic direction and areas of priority.
- Project managing the design and delivery of the Corporate Plan, outlining strategy and performance measures resulting in a significantly more mature, easier to understand, compliant document.
- Project managing the Annual Performance and Investment Review (APaIR) process between 2020-23 which oversaw endorsement of organisation strategies, tracked the progress and performance of units achieving the strategic goals, and helped direct strategic investments in key areas during the same time period.
Moreover, his commitment to team development and collaboration embodies CSIRO’s values. Rohit’s consistent excellence and strategic contributions make him a deserving candidate for the Chief Executive Professional Development Award.
The CSIRO Trusted Award
This Award recognises and promotes significant contributions to enhancing our research and reputation as a trusted advisor, by engaging with and providing benefit to the Australian community.
Winner: The GenCost Team
The GenCost report is a collaboration of CSIRO and the Australian Electricity Market Operator (AEMO). It provides annual updates of the current and future cost of electricity generation, energy storage and hydrogen production technologies.
The quality and trust in GenCost has meant that it is the primary Australian source of energy technology cost information.
The collaboration reflects our shared desire for a set of electricity system costs data that enjoys strong electricity sector stakeholder support. The approach we take to engagement with stakeholders reflects our genuine desire to deliver a transparent process for updating cost information.
As a result of the openness of the process and strong stakeholder involvement, GenCost reports and data have been accepted as a trusted source of electricity generation cost data. The consultation draft and final reports regularly top the most downloaded publications from the CSIRO Publications Repository for several months following their release.
The Collaboration Award
This Award recognises and promotes the most outstanding cross-research unit projects, incorporating individuals from three or more Business Units, to resolve a significant challenge for CSIRO.
Winner: Australian Agriculture Drought Indicators Team
The Australian Agriculture Drought Indicators (AADI) Team has successfully developed a set of national indicators for measuring and forecasting the extent and severity of drought impacts in the Australian agricultural sector.
The AADI product is now a key resource for Federal Drought Policy advisors and other government organisations. It combines climate data with agricultural models to generate ‘outcome-based’ drought indicators translating climate data into specific agricultural impacts (crop yields, pasture growth and farm business outcomes). These indicators are forward looking (12-18 months) using both historical weather data and BOM seasonal forecasts, produced nationally at high resolution (5 km grid).
The core team is multi-organisational (CSIRO, ABARES, QDESI) and multidisciplinary (agricultural and climate modelers, agronomists, economists, data engineers, front end developers) and has produced a highly innovative product, unique in scope and purpose, with realised impact in Australian drought policy.
Industry partners: ABARES, Queensland Department of Environment, Science and Innovations (QDESI), Eratos.
The Delia Muller Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award
This Award provides opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to extend their professional development by gaining career training and experience. The award also recognises the extraordinary contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have made, and will continue to make, to all aspects of Australian life including culture, economy and science.
Winner: Torres Webb
Torres demonstrates a deep understanding of social dynamics and politics, fostering connections to country and community.
Committed to education, health, and wellbeing, he champions self-determination and economic empowerment for Indigenous Australians, creating connections to support science and technology.
Torres is recognised for his creative and entrepreneurial approach in organising significant events like "Reconciliation through Research". He supports CSIRO research units by fostering Indigenous engagement and partnerships, enhancing land and sea management through digital technologies and scientific research for the Ag2050 roadmap, new Indigenous led circular economy initiatives for the Ending Plastic waste mission and addressing mosquito borne disease to improve community health.
Torres' innovative approaches in communicating science across many stakeholders through community engagement, facilitation, and partnerships, deserves recognition. This award celebrates not only what Torres does, but the way he does it, providing opportunity for further development to amplify his positive impacts.
The CSIRO People Award
This Award recognises significant contribution and excellence from individuals and teams in the areas of workplace safety, wellbeing, diversity, inclusion and leadership.
Winner: Indigenous People Team
Increasing Indigenous employment at all levels and areas within CSIRO is needed to lift organisational capability and enable a workplace where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have sufficient mutual support and connection to foster thriving careers in science and research.
The Indigenous Talent team has effectively led across CSIRO to deliver outcomes since 2021 that establish the capability for CSIRO to meet these expectations and deliver on our Reconciliation Action Plan targets in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment.
They have: built an Indigenous Talent team; implemented the Indigenous Graduate program; developed, consulted, advocated and implemented the new 2022-2024 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Strategy; supported the establishment and management of Indigenous STEM scholarships at 12 key universities; lifted Indigenous employment numbers from 77 in 2021 to 163 in 2024 (1.6% to 2.46%); delivered a one-day training workshop on cultural safety for the CSIRO Leadership Team.
External contributors: Frank Gaffa, Lauren Singleton
The CSIRO Support Excellence Award
This Award recognises teams or individuals who support, through projects, initiatives or service delivery, the creation of value for our customers through innovation that delivers positive impact for Australia.
Winner: National Science Week 2023 team
In August 2023, a cross-disciplinary team delivered the most successful National Science Week (NSWk) campaign in CSIRO's history.
Targeting schools and linked to the theme “Innovation: Powering Future Industries”, we attracted a record 34,700 event registrations from students and teachers.
The strategically linked events helped position CSIRO at the centre of a conversation about STEM careers and education. We introduced thousands of students to CSIRO and provided inspiration for STEM pathways.
The team delivered impact at scale, engaging with educators to ensure offerings were useful and impactful. From robotics to marine science, space to genetics, we showcased the depth and breadth of CSIRO’s innovation, talent, and contribution to science. CSIRO's campaign reached 1.4 million accounts on social media, and employees engaged energetically with NSWk.
This success would have been impossible without the excellent, collaborative support from Communications, Education, IM&T, researchers, facility managers, and leadership.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Engagement Impact Excellence Award
This Award recognises a team that has created value and impact for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities with engagement, participation, service delivery and research services.
Winner: Indigenous Research Grants team
The Indigenous Research Grants Program ('Program') has enabled impactful Indigenous research by supporting innovative projects that will have effects beyond the project and benefit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities.
The Program has seen three successful grant rounds completed, over 35 successful applications, and AU$7 million in funding allocated.
For the second year running, the Program has independently been found to showcase best practice for a grants program where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are involved as research participants or business partners.
The Program is carefully structured and thoughtfully applied, aligning also with priority reforms of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, including: formal partnerships and shared decision-making; transforming government organisations; and shared access to data and information at a regional level.
Overall the Program has had a broad impact that supports culturally appropriate ways of doing science in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
The CSIRO Entrepreneurship Award
This Award promotes entrepreneurial approaches to customers by recognising teams or individuals that have turned an opportunity into reality through curiosity, adaptability and courage.
Winner: Virtual Irrigation Academy
Australian research and development can drive innovation for small holder farmers around the world, which brings lessons back for Australia. Knowing when to irrigate crops is fundamental to production. Applying excess water leaches nutrients, can contribute to low yields, salinity and waterlogging.
CSIRO developed the The Virtual Irrigation Academy a suite of simplified soil water and solute monitoring tools that give output as colours, which are thresholds for action. Sensors connected to mobile phones display data on-line as colour patterns, showing water and solute dynamics.
Colour, a universal language connects the knowledge of scientists and farmers into a unified learning system. Farmers understand and act on these colour patterns, leading to increased yields, savings in water and reduced conflict on irrigation schemes.
Now a CSIRO spinout, VIA Ltd has sold over 200,000 sensors in 20 countries, won the Water Changemaker Award at COP28, World Economic Forum and World Food Program prizes.
Industry partners: VIA Ltd, Solutech
The Sir Ian McLennan Impact from Science and Engineering Award
This Award honours one of the pioneers of Australian industry and perpetuates the kind of achievements Sir Ian McLennan promoted and encouraged from scientific research. The recipient team or individual will have demonstrated outstanding practical contributions to industry and created value for customers through innovation that delivers impact for Australia.
Winner: CSIRO Food and Feed Extrusion Team
For decades, extrusion has been more art than science for food and feed industries.
The extrusion team combined science and engineering principles to develop a digitally-enabled intelligent extrusion platform, significantly enhancing productivity and performance.
This platform has supported diverse industries, including plant-based consumer goods, vegetable waste upcycling, new dairy-based concepts, therapeutic pet food, nutrient-dense aquaculture, and sustainable dairy cow feed.
This innovation has resulted in the creation of new companies, including v2food and NutriV, leading to the establishment of three extrusion processing plants, creating over 200 regional jobs, and adding $700M in economic value.
Additionally, the team enabled expansion of product portfolios to more than 200 retail food/feed products.
By connecting the extrusion community nationally and internationally through a community of practice, they have facilitated skills uplift and innovation in food and feed production.
Industry partner:End Food Waste Australia
The CSIRO Award for Lifetime Achievement
This Award recognises individuals who have a record of sustained and meritorious achievements in science, technology and innovation or the support of science, technology and innovation.
Winner: Cecile Paris
Cecile Paris is nominated for her pivotal role as one of CSIRO’s earliest and sustained thought leaders in user-centred Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Cecile’s scientific contributions, at the intersection of user modelling and AI methods (e.g., in Natural Language Processing), have been highly influential, transforming industry and government, and in academia (360 refereed articles; 12,000 citations; h-index of 50).
Over Cecile’s ~30 years at CSIRO, she has shifted the AI discourse from automation to ensuring that humans are focal in AI research and has helped to position CSIRO as a major AI research centre, through her roles as Science Leader (2000s), Chief Scientist of Data61 (2017), and Collaborative Intelligence FSP Director (2019).
Her contributions are recognised with her 2016 election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW in 2019.
The Chair's Award for Science and Engineering Excellence
This Award recognises teams who have made scientific or technological advances that contribute significantly to addressing a major challenge facing Australia.
Winner: Lumpy Skin Disease Research, Preparedness and Response Team
In 2022 lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV), an important transboundary viral disease of cattle, swept throughout Asia and reached Indonesia.
Australia is disease-free, but an incursion would cost at least $8 billion in lost revenue during the first year and uncalculatable costs to animal and human health and wellbeing.
Before 2022, live LSDV was not permitted in Australia. However, because of the imminent threat, the CSIRO Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) worked closely with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) to gain permission to import the virus.
Since its successful import, the LSDV research and diagnostic teams have worked relentlessly to ensure Australia and our near neighbours have the diagnostic tools, support networks and response strategies in place to detect and respond to a potential incursion.
The research portfolio is growing rapidly and ACDP is fast becoming recognised as one of the leading research facilities in the world for LSDV.
The Chief Executive Professional Development Award
This Award provides opportunities for people delivering support services to extend their professional development by gaining further experience related to their careers and work.
Winner: Rohit Gupta
Rohit has worked in CSIRO since 2018 as a Strategy Analyst. During this period, he has consistently demonstrated exceptional performance and strategic acumen to help the Executive Team (ET) enhance CSIRO's strategic planning, performance, and investment decision-making processes.
Notably, Rohit has been managing and delivering business critical projects such as:
- Equipping the Board and Management with the strategic insights enabling them to discuss CSIRO’s operating environment, key government priorities and agree on strategic direction and areas of priority.
- Project managing the design and delivery of the Corporate Plan, outlining strategy and performance measures resulting in a significantly more mature, easier to understand, compliant document.
- Project managing the Annual Performance and Investment Review (APaIR) process between 2020-23 which oversaw endorsement of organisation strategies, tracked the progress and performance of units achieving the strategic goals, and helped direct strategic investments in key areas during the same time period.
Moreover, his commitment to team development and collaboration embodies CSIRO’s values. Rohit’s consistent excellence and strategic contributions make him a deserving candidate for the Chief Executive Professional Development Award.
The CSIRO Trusted Award
This Award recognises and promotes significant contributions to enhancing our research and reputation as a trusted advisor, by engaging with and providing benefit to the Australian community.
Winner: The GenCost Team
The GenCost report is a collaboration of CSIRO and the Australian Electricity Market Operator (AEMO). It provides annual updates of the current and future cost of electricity generation, energy storage and hydrogen production technologies.
The quality and trust in GenCost has meant that it is the primary Australian source of energy technology cost information.
The collaboration reflects our shared desire for a set of electricity system costs data that enjoys strong electricity sector stakeholder support. The approach we take to engagement with stakeholders reflects our genuine desire to deliver a transparent process for updating cost information.
As a result of the openness of the process and strong stakeholder involvement, GenCost reports and data have been accepted as a trusted source of electricity generation cost data. The consultation draft and final reports regularly top the most downloaded publications from the CSIRO Publications Repository for several months following their release.
The Collaboration Award
This Award recognises and promotes the most outstanding cross-research unit projects, incorporating individuals from three or more Business Units, to resolve a significant challenge for CSIRO.
Winner: Australian Agriculture Drought Indicators Team
The Australian Agriculture Drought Indicators (AADI) Team has successfully developed a set of national indicators for measuring and forecasting the extent and severity of drought impacts in the Australian agricultural sector.
The AADI product is now a key resource for Federal Drought Policy advisors and other government organisations. It combines climate data with agricultural models to generate ‘outcome-based’ drought indicators translating climate data into specific agricultural impacts (crop yields, pasture growth and farm business outcomes). These indicators are forward looking (12-18 months) using both historical weather data and BOM seasonal forecasts, produced nationally at high resolution (5 km grid).
The core team is multi-organisational (CSIRO, ABARES, QDESI) and multidisciplinary (agricultural and climate modelers, agronomists, economists, data engineers, front end developers) and has produced a highly innovative product, unique in scope and purpose, with realised impact in Australian drought policy.
Industry partners: ABARES, Queensland Department of Environment, Science and Innovations (QDESI), Eratos.
The Delia Muller Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award
This Award provides opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to extend their professional development by gaining career training and experience. The award also recognises the extraordinary contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have made, and will continue to make, to all aspects of Australian life including culture, economy and science.
Winner: Torres Webb
Torres demonstrates a deep understanding of social dynamics and politics, fostering connections to country and community.
Committed to education, health, and wellbeing, he champions self-determination and economic empowerment for Indigenous Australians, creating connections to support science and technology.
Torres is recognised for his creative and entrepreneurial approach in organising significant events like "Reconciliation through Research". He supports CSIRO research units by fostering Indigenous engagement and partnerships, enhancing land and sea management through digital technologies and scientific research for the Ag2050 roadmap, new Indigenous led circular economy initiatives for the Ending Plastic waste mission and addressing mosquito borne disease to improve community health.
Torres' innovative approaches in communicating science across many stakeholders through community engagement, facilitation, and partnerships, deserves recognition. This award celebrates not only what Torres does, but the way he does it, providing opportunity for further development to amplify his positive impacts.
The CSIRO People Award
This Award recognises significant contribution and excellence from individuals and teams in the areas of workplace safety, wellbeing, diversity, inclusion and leadership.
Winner: Indigenous People Team
Increasing Indigenous employment at all levels and areas within CSIRO is needed to lift organisational capability and enable a workplace where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have sufficient mutual support and connection to foster thriving careers in science and research.
The Indigenous Talent team has effectively led across CSIRO to deliver outcomes since 2021 that establish the capability for CSIRO to meet these expectations and deliver on our Reconciliation Action Plan targets in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment.
They have: built an Indigenous Talent team; implemented the Indigenous Graduate program; developed, consulted, advocated and implemented the new 2022-2024 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Strategy; supported the establishment and management of Indigenous STEM scholarships at 12 key universities; lifted Indigenous employment numbers from 77 in 2021 to 163 in 2024 (1.6% to 2.46%); delivered a one-day training workshop on cultural safety for the CSIRO Leadership Team.
External contributors: Frank Gaffa, Lauren Singleton
The CSIRO Support Excellence Award
This Award recognises teams or individuals who support, through projects, initiatives or service delivery, the creation of value for our customers through innovation that delivers positive impact for Australia.
Winner: National Science Week 2023 team
In August 2023, a cross-disciplinary team delivered the most successful National Science Week (NSWk) campaign in CSIRO's history.
Targeting schools and linked to the theme “Innovation: Powering Future Industries”, we attracted a record 34,700 event registrations from students and teachers.
The strategically linked events helped position CSIRO at the centre of a conversation about STEM careers and education. We introduced thousands of students to CSIRO and provided inspiration for STEM pathways.
The team delivered impact at scale, engaging with educators to ensure offerings were useful and impactful. From robotics to marine science, space to genetics, we showcased the depth and breadth of CSIRO’s innovation, talent, and contribution to science. CSIRO's campaign reached 1.4 million accounts on social media, and employees engaged energetically with NSWk.
This success would have been impossible without the excellent, collaborative support from Communications, Education, IM&T, researchers, facility managers, and leadership.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Engagement Impact Excellence Award
This Award recognises a team that has created value and impact for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities with engagement, participation, service delivery and research services.
Winner: Indigenous Research Grants team
The Indigenous Research Grants Program ('Program') has enabled impactful Indigenous research by supporting innovative projects that will have effects beyond the project and benefit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities.
The Program has seen three successful grant rounds completed, over 35 successful applications, and AU$7 million in funding allocated.
For the second year running, the Program has independently been found to showcase best practice for a grants program where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are involved as research participants or business partners.
The Program is carefully structured and thoughtfully applied, aligning also with priority reforms of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, including: formal partnerships and shared decision-making; transforming government organisations; and shared access to data and information at a regional level.
Overall the Program has had a broad impact that supports culturally appropriate ways of doing science in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
The CSIRO Entrepreneurship Award
This Award promotes entrepreneurial approaches to customers by recognising teams or individuals that have turned an opportunity into reality through curiosity, adaptability and courage.
Winner: Virtual Irrigation Academy
Australian research and development can drive innovation for small holder farmers around the world, which brings lessons back for Australia. Knowing when to irrigate crops is fundamental to production. Applying excess water leaches nutrients, can contribute to low yields, salinity and waterlogging.
CSIRO developed the The Virtual Irrigation Academy a suite of simplified soil water and solute monitoring tools that give output as colours, which are thresholds for action. Sensors connected to mobile phones display data on-line as colour patterns, showing water and solute dynamics.
Colour, a universal language connects the knowledge of scientists and farmers into a unified learning system. Farmers understand and act on these colour patterns, leading to increased yields, savings in water and reduced conflict on irrigation schemes.
Now a CSIRO spinout, VIA Ltd has sold over 200,000 sensors in 20 countries, won the Water Changemaker Award at COP28, World Economic Forum and World Food Program prizes.
Industry partners: VIA Ltd, Solutech
The Sir Ian McLennan Impact from Science and Engineering Award
This Award honours one of the pioneers of Australian industry and perpetuates the kind of achievements Sir Ian McLennan promoted and encouraged from scientific research. The recipient team or individual will have demonstrated outstanding practical contributions to industry and created value for customers through innovation that delivers impact for Australia.
Winner: CSIRO Food and Feed Extrusion Team
For decades, extrusion has been more art than science for food and feed industries.
The extrusion team combined science and engineering principles to develop a digitally-enabled intelligent extrusion platform, significantly enhancing productivity and performance.
This platform has supported diverse industries, including plant-based consumer goods, vegetable waste upcycling, new dairy-based concepts, therapeutic pet food, nutrient-dense aquaculture, and sustainable dairy cow feed.
This innovation has resulted in the creation of new companies, including v2food and NutriV, leading to the establishment of three extrusion processing plants, creating over 200 regional jobs, and adding $700M in economic value.
Additionally, the team enabled expansion of product portfolios to more than 200 retail food/feed products.
By connecting the extrusion community nationally and internationally through a community of practice, they have facilitated skills uplift and innovation in food and feed production.
Industry partner:End Food Waste Australia
The CSIRO Award for Lifetime Achievement
This Award recognises individuals who have a record of sustained and meritorious achievements in science, technology and innovation or the support of science, technology and innovation.
Winner: Cecile Paris
Cecile Paris is nominated for her pivotal role as one of CSIRO’s earliest and sustained thought leaders in user-centred Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Cecile’s scientific contributions, at the intersection of user modelling and AI methods (e.g., in Natural Language Processing), have been highly influential, transforming industry and government, and in academia (360 refereed articles; 12,000 citations; h-index of 50).
Over Cecile’s ~30 years at CSIRO, she has shifted the AI discourse from automation to ensuring that humans are focal in AI research and has helped to position CSIRO as a major AI research centre, through her roles as Science Leader (2000s), Chief Scientist of Data61 (2017), and Collaborative Intelligence FSP Director (2019).
Her contributions are recognised with her 2016 election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW in 2019.