Bill Simpson-Young

Bill is co-founder and Chief Executive of Gradient Institute.

He has spent more than 25 years building teams of researchers, software engineers and product designers to develop novel techniques, technologies and products and get these into widespread use. He started as a software engineer and research assistant in machine learning (ML), working on the c4.5 software, one of the world’s first ML technologies used commercially.

He has led R&D for global technology companies (Canon and Unisys) and government-funded research institutions (CSIRO and NICTA) and been on the executive teams of three leading Australian science and technology organisations (Canon Information Systems Research Australia - CiSRA, NICTA and CSIRO’s Data61).

Before co-founding Gradient Institute, he was Director of Engineering and Design at Data61 where he led a team of 100 data scientists, engineers, user experience designers and product managers, developing new techniques, technologies and products. This included work in areas incuding ML (including ethically-aware ML), data privacy, computational law, geospatial systems and more.

He designed and taught a Masters course in IT Innovation at University of Sydney for seven years to 2016 covering topics such as technology life cycles, disruptive innovation, open innovation, open source strategies, organisational culture for innovation and innovation ecosystems.

Bill is on the Australian Government's interim AI expert group, the NSW Government's AI Review Committee and the Australian National University's Computing Advisory Board. He has also sat on several government data-related committees influencing approaches to data sharing, data privacy, data analytics and open data. He has degrees in computer science, history of art and cognitive science.