Welcoming Prof Duffy to our podcast, for a broad-ranging but very thought-provoking discussion on speak about space and spatial. This episode is a teaser for his keynote presentation at Locate21, where he will speak on this in much more detail. As he says – awareness within the academic and industrial sectors of the benefits of Space is at an all-time high and yet, still, far fewer are aware of the sector than use the products from it. The success of Space and Spatial is how ubiquitous it has become. That very success is itself a challenge, and to ensure the greater benefits from new technologies into the future we must ensure the wider community is informed of these developments. He will explore the awe-inspiring possibilities that these future developments present as AI is deployed across constellations of nanosatellites that fuse SAR and ultra-wideband hyperspectral sensors, all underpinned with 10cm (or better!) precision positioning and ground-sensors. However, handling that data, equity of access and privacy challenges inherent in constant surveillance are all challenges that we as a community must address to realise those possibilities.
Prof Duffy is the Director of Swinburne’s Space Technology and Industry Institute, finding novel uses for astrophysical knowledge in aiding business and society on Earth. In particular, he leverages his experience of creating and visualising large supercomputer astrophysics simulations to explore Remote Sensing opportunities. Alan was recently named Academic of the Year in the 2020 Australian Space Awards. He is also the Swinburne Node Leader in the new national ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics and a Chief Investigator of SABRE, the world’s first dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere, at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory.