I was admitted to the New South Wales Bar in 1956. Quite fortuitously and this owed nothing other than to good fortune my first brief was as a very junior junior to a team led by Sir Garfied Barwick appearing in the Privy Council. After that I developed a nice practice as a junior in commercial and constitutional matters in various Courts in Australia, Papua New Guinea with an occasional excursion to London to the Privy Council. In 1973 I took silk. In 1979 I was appointed as a Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in charge of the Commercial List and some years later was appointed the foundation Chief Judge of the Commercial Division which dealt with all commercial disputes as well as matters of corporate governance. I was fortunate enough to sit on a number of high profile commercial matters such as AWA, Alan Bond and other high flyers of the 1980s. As Chief Judge, I was an additional Judge of the Court of Appeal and sat on important matters such as Mareva Injunctions and similar issues of great commercial importance. I retired from the Court in 1993.

Peter Warne worked for Bankers Trust Australia Ltd for over 18 years and as Head of their Financial Markets Group for 11 years. When the investment banking business of BTA was sold to Macquarie Bank Ltd in 1999 Peter worked as a consultant to Macquarie for six months to assist with integration issues. Peter also holds a number of Board positions including the SFE, the Sydney Futures Exchange Clearing House, Austraclear, Australian Leisure and Entertainment Property Management, Next Financial and the Australian Office of Financial Management.

David Skellern worked in radioastronomy for 10 years and taught electronics at Sydney and Macquarie Universities for 16 years before coming to prominence in the IT industry through Radiata, which he co-founded in 1997. Built on joint research done by Macquarie University and the CSIRO, the company demonstrated the world’s first chip-set implementation of the 54 Mbit/s IEEE 802.11a High-Speed WLAN standard. Radiata was sold to US giant Cisco Systems in 2001 for $565 million.

Dr Skellern joined the Board of National ICT Australia in 2003 and became its Chief Executive Officer in 2005.

Thomas Jones developed the original version of SMARTS with Tim Cooper in the early to mid 1990s. After working on all the initial implementation projects throughout Asia, in 1999, he moved to London to establish the European business, selling the system and implementing it at many of Europes largest exchanges including OMX, SWX and LSE. Early in 2007, he returned to Sydney to take up the role of SMARTS Group CEO.

Tom has a First Class Honours Degree from the University of Sydney, and an MA from the University of London.

Andreas Furche's focus is on development and commercialisation of new technologies in capital markets, banking, and payments. His previous positions include Managing Director of DigiCash Asia/Pacific, and Director, Financial Services Sector, at Electronic Trading Concepts. He has authored a book on electronic payment systems and his research includes work on the security of international financial networks.

Peter Wolnizer is Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business and a Professor of Accounting at The University of Sydney, Australia.

Prior to taking up his current position in 1999, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law (1991-99) at Deakin University, where he was appointed as the Foundation Professor of Accounting and Finance in 1989.

Professor Wolnizer is the first Australian Dean to be appointed to the Board of Directors of the USA-based Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International). Appointed in 2006 to serve a three year term, he was recently reappointed for a further term of three years to 2011. He is a foundation member of the Council of the Association of Asia Pacific Business Schools, established in 2004.

Mark Bennett has been the CEO of NewSouth Innovations (NSi) since 2006 and has over 25 years experience in research commercialisation in the private and public sectors. For the last eight years Mark has worked at the interface between the academic world, industry and the investment community and prior to that was a successful CEO within the private sector, working for a subsidiaries of the Cagene Pacific (Florigene), an ag-biotech, and for the Forbio Group of companies.

Mark "jumped the fence" to the Business Liaison Office of the University of Sydney. While there, he formed a specialised business unit responsible for spin off company formation, management and investment capital raising. This resulted in the formation of over 16 new companies. He was appointed Acting Director of the Business Liaison Office, at the University of Sydney before joining NSi.

Aldo Martinez is a partner in AJM Advisory Services providing consulting services in financial industry regulation. Aldo has been in the securities industry for over 30 years. In March of 2008, he retired from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Regulation as a Vice President in the Division of Market Surveillance.

While at the NYSE Regulation, he worked in many aspects of Regulation as an Enforcement Attorney, Director of Regulatory Audit and coordinated the development of highly sophisticated insider trading detection and investigative systems. He also managed the Division's Market Trading analysts and attorneys and was responsible for options surveillance.

Aldo is currently an Adjunct Professor at St. Peter's College, NJ, teaching MBA courses on Derivatives and Investment Analysis.

As Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Research), Professor Brungs has responsibility for research policy development and general oversight of the University's research activities, postgraduate education, industry liaison, intellectual property and commercialisation.

Key responsibilities include:

The development and implementation of a research strategy which fulfils the UTS vision to be a world leading University of Technology.  In particular oversee UTS’s strategic research investments, research performance and ensuring excellence through skill building and support of research and academic staff.

Further promotion of research collaboration with industry and government and building strong linkages in the research and innovation sector nationally and internationally.

Continued enhancement of the quality of UTS postgraduate research education and the building of a vibrant research community.

Mary O’Kane is NSW Chief Scientist and Scientific Engineer and is Executive Chairman of Mary O’Kane & Associates Pty Ltd, a Sydney-based company that advises governments, universities and the private sector on innovation, research, education and development.

Professor O’Kane was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Adelaide from 1996-2001 and has served on many boards and committees in the public and private sectors, nationally and internationally.