CSIRO's Data61 Transport Team members join EY

Five AI specialists from CSIRO's Data61 Transport Team are to join EY's digital twin practice, where they will build models initially for the transport, energy and mining sectors.

Over the next week Dr Khoa Nguyen, Dr Dilusha Weeraddana, Dr Chen Cai, Benjamin Itzstein and Chao Li will progressively join the global consulting giant, under the leadership of EY associate partner Jeff Sharp.

Sharp joined EY in October last year from Transurban.

He told iTnews that he pitched EY to invest in the Data61 team after working with them "on several projects over the last five or six years.”

“I joined EY about seven months ago, but was really keen to continue working with this team and could see some opportunities for them to grow beyond what they do at Data61, and be able to commercialise more of their technologies," Sharp said.

“We're really keen to leverage what this team bring in terms of simulating systems and how they behave, to then provide greater insights for our clients.”

The team will immediately work on "a large pipeline opportunities … across multimodal transport networks.

“But they've also got expertise in energy, utilities, mining," he said. "There’s a whole lot of use cases that we want to get this team started on.”

The new team will also augment EY's existing 600-strong data and analytics function, providing additional expertise.

Digital twins are used to provide an overview and to simulate changes to complex physical structures, from the flow of vehicles and people across a city, through to how a structure is behaving and its future maintenance needs. They offer "the next level of intelligence in understanding how systems are behaving," Sharp said.

Sharp added the talent acquisition is a “a real vote of confidence in the digital twins and sector” from EY.

EY described the move as part of an internal growth strategy to make better use of artificial intelligence.

Sharp said EY is “always looking to grow” its internal teams, however this deal was “really focused on client needs”.