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Kylie Ahern

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When you think about Artificial intelligence do you think ‘Terminator’? But AI is so much more than robots! It’s being used to protect the world’s most endangered animals.

Dr Sue Keay never expected to end up in robotics. It was a 2014 conversation with her sister, Andra Keay, a Silicon Valley-based robotics entrepreneur, that made her realise robotics was a way to have a greater impact on society. “I saw the potential and I was hooked,” Keay told The Brilliant.

Since then, Keay has created Australia’s first robotics roadmap, brought The Grace Hopper Celebration, the world’s largest gathering of women technologists, to Australia, and is the inaugural CEO of the Queensland AI hub.

Dr Syra Madad remembers watching the movie Outbreak, enthralled by watching Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo play doctors seeking a cure for a deadly, Ebola-like pandemic. Madad told her parents this would be her future career. “I was interested not just in infectious disease, but in highly infectious diseases,” she told The Brilliant.

Today Madad is the senior director of New York City’s (NYC) Health and Hospitals System-wide Special Pathogens Program, and a key figure in managing NYC’s response to infectious diseases like measles, Ebola—and Covid-19.