Professor Eliathamby Ambikairajah, Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Enterprise provides strategic leadership support to the President and Vice-Chancellor and, where appropriate, to the University Council, on all aspects of the University's enterprise and innovation agenda.
Driving a significantly enhanced culture of innovation in the University, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Enterprise works with a wide range of University staff in Faculties, Schools and central administrative units to realise the University's innovation goals.
The Division of Enterprise has carriage of "Delivering from Research Excellence" and "Knowledge Exchange for Social Progress on Economic Prosperity" as part of UNSW's 2025 Strategy.
The programs which will assist in delivering against these initiatives are listed in UNSW's Innovation Statement.
This comprises five main thematic areas:
- Attracting and Nurturing Skills
- Embedding and Empowering an Innovation Culture
- Creating and Growing Partnerships with Industry
- Building Infrastructure
- Forging long-term partnerships for Innovation
This provides the strategic framework for the Division’s activities in support of the broader UNSW research community.
The Division’s goals are to:
- double UNSW's knowledge exchange revenue in the next five years
- through broad partnership with research organisations, industry and government, help transform Australia's economic base
Biography
Professor Eliathamby Ambikairajah (Ambi) is the Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor Enterprise at UNSW Sydney, and provides strategic leadership support to the President and Vice-Chancellor and, where appropriate, to the University Council, on all aspects of the University's enterprise and innovation agenda.
Professor Ambikairajah has worked at UNSW Sydney for over 20 years, including 10 years as Head of School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. He established the School as the top Electrical Engineering school in Australia and among the top 50 in the world. He conceived and implemented major changes to degree programs and oversaw a 5-year refurbishment project which produced world-class, cutting-edge laboratories and teaching facilities.
Professor Ambikairajah has enjoyed a strong academic career, having authored or co-authored over 300 research papers, won numerous grants and received the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence and also the UNSW Excellence in Senior Leadership Award. His research interests include speaker and language recognition, emotion detection and biomedical signal processing. For his contributions to speaker recognition research, he was a Faculty Associate with the Institute of Infocomm Research (A*STAR), Singapore in 2009-2018, and is currently an Advisory Board member of the AI Speech Lab at AI Singapore. As a leader, he has successfully driven major international collaborations and in 2019 was the recipient of the People’s Choice Award as part of the UNSW President’s Awards.
Location and Contact Details
General Enquiries
| Phone | +61 2 9385 2155 |
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Location
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Address
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| Office of the DVC (Enterprise) | Office of the DVC (Enterprise) |
| Chancellery Building | Chancellery Building |
| UNSW Kensington Campus | UNSW Kensington Campus |
| Closest Gate: Gate 9, High St | Closest Gate: Gate 9, High St |
Executive Staff Contacts
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Name
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Position
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Phone / Email
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Professor Eliathamby Ambikairajah |
Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Enterprise |
T: +61 2 9385 4002 E: e.ambikairajah@unsw.edu.au
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| Nalisa Mam | Executive Assistant |
T: +61 2 9385 2155 E: Nalisa.Mam@unsw.edu.au
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| Quintra Rijnders | Director Operations |
T: +61 2 9385 2342 E: q.rijnders@unsw.edu.au
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Dianne Sheedy
|
Executive Officer |
T: +61 2 938 2228 E: dianne.sheedy@unsw.edu.au |
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Warwick Dawson
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Director, Knowledge Exchange |
T: +61 2 9385 7929 E: w.dawson@unsw.edu.au |
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David Burt
|
Director, Entrepreneurship
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T: +61 2 9385 6525 E: david.burt@unsw.edu.au |
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Vinita Chanan
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Director, Alliances |
E: vinita.chanan@unsw.edu.au |
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Brooke Griffin
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Executive Director, UNSW Precincts |
E: brooke.griffin@unsw.edu.au |
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Elizabeth Grinston
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General Counsel, Legal |
T: +61 2 9385 3609 E: e.grinston@unsw.edu.au |
For further information please visit our Enterprise website.