Top AI minds in Australia to follow (2026)

Australia's AI industry in 2026

Australia's AI sector is a mix of university labs, a handful of fast-growing product companies and a large number of service firms that build AI into other businesses. Most small businesses have not yet taken it up in a serious way, which is where much of the growth is expected.

The Tech Council of Australia's October 2026 report, Accelerating AI Impact for SMEs, found that roughly a quarter of small and medium businesses use AI at all, and very few use it across the whole business. Uptake in regional areas runs at about half the city rate, and construction, hospitality and retail trail other sectors. The report's modelling suggests that wider use over the next five years could be worth tens of billions of dollars a year, and that a typical SME moving from no AI to broad use could gain about $136,000 a year in productivity. Treat both as scenarios rather than forecasts for any one business.

There is no shortage of suppliers. The National AI Centre's AI Directory, which lists Australian businesses that help others adopt, build or deploy AI, passed 1,000 entries when we checked on 1 November 2026. Firms apply to be listed, so it is a useful starting point rather than a full census. Victoria says Melbourne alone has 188 AI companies, and the state government is funding an AI career conversion program aimed at jobs in industries at risk from AI.

Federal policy has focused on testing and oversight rather than new laws. The Australian AI Safety Institute, one part of the National AI Plan, has a four-year budget of just under $30 million, AAP reported. Some local AI companies are also raising large rounds: Sydney's Harrison.ai raised a US$112 million Series C in 2025 (TechCrunch).

For a business choosing an AI partner, the practical message is that the field is crowded and uneven. The people above set much of the research and policy agenda, while our list of AI development companies covers the firms that do the build work.

The Australian AI people most worth following in 2026 include Toby Walsh of UNSW, AI engineer Kunal Miind, fast.ai and Answer.AI co-founder Jeremy Howard and Adelaide machine learning professor Anton van den Hengel. This guide profiles 12 researchers, founders and policy leaders based in Australia, with their current roles, sourced achievements and the profiles where you can follow their work.

1. Toby Walsh

Chief Scientist, UNSW AI Institute · Sydney

Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence, UNSW Sydney

Toby Walsh is an AI professor in Sydney known for his research on automated reasoning and his public work on AI ethics and autonomous weapons.

Achievements

• Elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the ACM, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the European Association for AI, as listed on his UNSW home page.
• Won the 2023 Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science (Wikipedia).
• Has written several books on AI for Black Inc., including Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI (2022) and Faking It: Artificial Intelligence in a Human World (2023) (bibliography).
• Helped release the 2015 open letter calling for a ban on offensive autonomous weapons, which drew more than 20,000 signatures. His campaigning later got him banned indefinitely from Russia.

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2. Kunal Miind

Founder and Lead AI Engineer, Vedametric and MIIND.BOT · Gold Coast

Alumnus, University of New South Wales

Kunal Miind is an AI engineer and author on the Gold Coast known for building distilled AI models and the hardware they run on, and for AI consulting with the Australian Defence Force and financial institutions.

Achievements

• A pioneering AI model creator and engineer, he set out his approach to building AI and machine-learning systems in AI System Blueprints (2022).
• Founded Vedametric and MIIND.BOT and leads their AI engineering. Vedametric, a government supplier, builds distilled AI models, robots, embedded hardware and secure software across Sydney, the Gold Coast and Brisbane.
• Consults to the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and financial institutions on AI, including financial modelling and conversational analysis.
• Has built fraud detection and machine learning models for clients including Philip Morris, Queensland Health and Australian Government agencies, and has published research in AI and machine learning (Google Scholar).

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3. Jeremy Howard

Founding CEO, Answer.AI, and co-founder, fast.ai · Brisbane

Honorary Professor, University of Queensland

Jeremy Howard is an AI researcher and entrepreneur in Brisbane known for fast.ai's free deep learning courses and the ULMFiT method for fine-tuning language models.

Achievements

• Co-wrote the 2018 ULMFiT paper with Sebastian Ruder, which showed how to fine-tune a pre-trained language model for new text classification tasks.
• Co-founded fast.ai with Rachel Thomas. It runs a free deep learning course and maintains the open-source fastai library.
• Launched Answer.AI with Eric Ries on 12 December 2023 as its founding CEO. The lab builds practical AI products from research.
• Was founding President and Chief Scientist of Kaggle and reached first place on its global competition leaderboard (jeremy.fast.ai).

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4. Anton van den Hengel

Co-founder, Metacognition, and Director, Centre for Augmented Reasoning · Adelaide

Professor of Machine Learning, Adelaide University

Anton van den Hengel is a machine learning professor in Adelaide known for founding the Australian Institute for Machine Learning and for his computer vision research.

Achievements

• Founded the Australian Institute for Machine Learning at the University of Adelaide in 2018 and directed it until 2022 (Wikipedia).
• Was Director of Applied Science at Amazon, where he set up the company's Australian machine learning research group (Wikipedia).
• Won a CVPR Best Paper prize and the Pearcey Award for Innovation in ICT in 2010, and was elected a Fellow of ATSE in 2020 (Wikipedia).
• Co-founded Metacognition, an Australian AI lab that adds reasoning and long-term memory to AI models. It raised $10 million in pre-seed funding led by Main Sequence in September 2026 (Forbes Australia).

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5. Rachel Thomas

Researcher, Answer.AI · Brisbane

Co-founder, fast.ai

Rachel Thomas is a data scientist and AI researcher in Brisbane known for co-founding fast.ai and for her work on applied data ethics.

Achievements

• Co-founded fast.ai with Jeremy Howard. It runs a free online course in deep learning for coders.
• Was the founding director of the Center for Applied Data Ethics at the University of San Francisco (fast.ai).
• Was named in a 2017 Forbes list of women leading research in artificial intelligence (Wikipedia).
• Wrote Answer.AI's March 2026 piece on the risks and limits of AI in the life sciences, which looks at how poor data, weak error-checking and missing domain expertise can undermine results.

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6. Lisa Given

Distinguished Professor and Director, Centre for Human-AI Information Environments · Melbourne

RMIT University

Lisa Given is an information science professor in Melbourne known for research on how people find, judge and use information, including through AI tools.

Achievements

• Has directed RMIT's Centre for Human-AI Information Environments, which she co-founded, since 2024 (RMIT profile).
• Directs RMIT's Social Change Enabling Impact Platform (RMIT).
• Is a former President of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (RMIT).
• Has served on the Australian Research Council's College of Experts (RMIT).

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7. Ed Santow

Industry Professor, Responsible Technology, and Director, Policy & Governance, Human Technology Institute · Sydney

University of Technology Sydney

Ed Santow is a human rights lawyer and professor in Sydney known for his work on AI regulation and responsible technology.

Achievements

• Was Australia's Human Rights Commissioner from 2016 to 2021, where he led the Commission's work on AI and new technology (UTS profile).
• Co-founded the Human Technology Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, which he leads with Nicholas Davis and Sally Cripps (UTS).
• Was appointed to the federal government's Artificial Intelligence Expert Group in 2024 (UTS news).
• Chairs the NSW Government AI Review Committee (UTS).

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8. Jean Burgess

Distinguished Professor of Digital Media and Director, QUT GenAI Lab · Brisbane

Queensland University of Technology

Jean Burgess is a digital media professor in Brisbane known for leading QUT's GenAI Lab and for research on how people use digital platforms and generative AI.

Achievements

• Has directed the QUT GenAI Lab, which studies the social and cultural challenges of generative AI, since 2024 (QUT).
• Is an Associate Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S).
• Founded QUT's Digital Media Research Centre and directed it from 2015 to 2020 (Wikipedia).
• Co-wrote YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture (2009) with Joshua Green, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2021 (Wikipedia).

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9. Marek Kowalkiewicz

Professor and Chair in Digital Economy, QUT Business School · Brisbane

Queensland University of Technology

Marek Kowalkiewicz is a digital economy professor in Brisbane known for his research on AI in business and his book The Economy of Algorithms.

Achievements

• His book The Economy of Algorithms: AI and the Rise of the Digital Minions (2024) won the Technology category of the 2024 Australian Business Book Awards (QUT profile).
• Was a founding research manager of SAP's machine learning lab in Singapore and a research fellow at Microsoft Research Asia (QUT).
• Was appointed PwC Chair in Digital Economy at QUT in 2015 and founded the university's Centre for the Digital Economy in 2020 (Wikipedia).
• Co-wrote When Bots Evaluate Humans, a 2026 MIS Quarterly paper on how handing decisions to bots reshapes authority at work.

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10. Hussein Abbass

Professor, School of Systems and Computing · Canberra

UNSW Canberra

Hussein Abbass is an AI professor in Canberra known for research on human-machine teaming, AI-enabled swarms and trusted autonomy.

Achievements

• Founded IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence and was its first editor-in-chief (UNSW profile).
• Was named an IEEE Fellow in 2020 for contributions to evolutionary learning and optimisation (Wikipedia).
• Researches AI-enabled swarm systems, human-machine teaming, machine education and AI assurance at UNSW Canberra (UNSW).
• Has researched Jingulu, an Aboriginal Australian language, and its uses for artificial intelligence (Wikipedia).

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11. Nicholas Davis

Industry Professor, Emerging Technology, and Director, Strategy & Operations, Human Technology Institute · Sydney

University of Technology Sydney

Nicholas Davis is a technology governance expert in Sydney known for co-leading the Human Technology Institute at UTS and for his work on responsible AI in business.

Achievements

• Co-leads the Human Technology Institute at UTS with Ed Santow, which works to build Australia's capability in ethical and responsible AI (UTS profile).
• Was Head of Society and Innovation and a member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum from 2015 to 2019, where he developed its Fourth Industrial Revolution theme (UTS).
• Co-wrote Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018) with Klaus Schwab (Penguin).
• Co-wrote the Human Technology Institute's May 2023 report The State of AI Governance in Australia with Lauren Solomon, written for company directors and senior executives.

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12. Nicolas Suzor

Professor, School of Law, and Member, Oversight Board · Brisbane

Queensland University of Technology

Nicolas Suzor is a law professor in Brisbane known for research on platform governance and automated systems, and for his seat on the Oversight Board.

Achievements

• Is a member of the Oversight Board, which makes binding decisions on what content Facebook and Instagram should allow or remove.
• Wrote Lawless: The Secret Rules That Govern Our Digital Lives (Cambridge University Press, 2019) (QUT ePrints).
• Is a Chief Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (QUT profile).
• Co-wrote a 2025 paper in Law, Innovation and Technology on where fault lies for AI harms across the AI value chain.

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How we chose

Everyone on this page meets four tests:

• Public, verifiable work in AI. Achievements link to an official bio, university page, publisher, Wikipedia or a major media report wherever a public source exists.
• Based in Australia. Australians whose main role is overseas are not included.
• Active in 2026. Everyone holds a current role. We checked titles against the most recent official source we could find, because several people in Australian AI changed jobs in 2025 or 2026.
• A mix of fields. The list covers research, industry, engineering, and AI ethics, law and policy, rather than twelve people from one part of the field.

The numbering is for navigation, not a strict ranking. It makes the page easier to scan and to link to a single profile, and the order should not be read as a score. X and Instagram links appear only where a university page, the person's own site or a reliable publication links to the account, and every profile has at least two ways to follow the person. We left people out when we could not confirm their current role.

Common questions

Photo credits

• Toby Walsh: photo by Avobronte, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
• Kunal Miind: photo supplied by Kunal Miind
• Jeremy Howard: photo by Hr0207, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
• Anton van den Hengel: photo by DataCircuit 22, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
• Rachel Thomas: photo by The Linux Foundation, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
• Lisa Given: photo by Mrkellar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
• Ed Santow: photo by World Economic Forum / Stephen Porter, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr (cropped)
• Jean Burgess: photo by Ivo Näpflin (liftconferencephotos), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr (cropped)
• Marek Kowalkiewicz: photo by Marvin Fox Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
• Hussein Abbass: photo by Abbasswiki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
• Nicholas Davis: photo by ITU Pictures (R. Farrell), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
• Nicolas Suzor: photo by Sebastiaan ter Burg, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)