Discover the future of artificial intelligence at the NextGen AI Conference, hosted by the AI Development Group.
Now in its second year, the conference brings together innovators, researchers, founders, and industry leaders to share ideas, foster collaborations, and showcase the next wave of AI breakthroughs. The program features keynote presentations from academic and industry experts, panel discussions on investment, innovation, and responsible AI, and a live pitch session spotlighting emerging startups.
This year’s program also includes a curated poster showcase and networking reception, offering attendees a valuable opportunity to connect, exchange ideas, and explore new collaborations within Victoria’s growing AI ecosystem.
Eduard Hovy
Prof. Eduard Hovy is Executive Director of Melbourne Connect at the University of Melbourne and Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. With a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University and honorary doctorates from UNED and the University of Antwerp, Eduard’s pioneering work in natural language processing spans text summarization, machine translation evaluation, and social media analytics. He is an ACL Fellow and maintains extensive international collaborations from his base in Melbourne, Australia.
Peter Xing
Peter is a Cloud & AI Specialist for Education at Microsoft, focusing on Azure OpenAI and Fabric. Peter works with organisations across Higher Education, Vocational Education & Training and K-12 schools including Universities, TAFEs and Polytechnics as well as Departments and Ministries of Education. He helps key stakeholders prioritise AI use cases that have the biggest impact on their organisation, and identifies opportunities to resource and accelerate projects via Microsoft's capabilities and partner ecosystem, from proof of concepts to pilots and production.
Ran Sun
Ran is an AI technology executive, with 15 years of leadership in digital transformation and AI projects across major organizations, such as ANZ Bank and Deloitte. As the Partner of AI Consulting Group, Ran helps business executives harness cutting-edge AI technologies for tangible business value. Her passion is to implement Generative AI, Computer Vision, Data Management solutions and AI Governance for business to drive automation, efficiency, and industry innovation.
Kirsty Purcell
Kirsty leads the team behind the magic of AI-powered design generation: the core infrastructure that brought Canva's groundbreaking "Design with AI" feature to life at Canva Create 2025, putting the power of generative design into the hands of millions worldwide. With over a decade in software development across IBM, startups, and scale-ups, she's passionate about building teams that ship ambitious technology while maintaining their sanity. Based in Melbourne, she focuses on the intersection of technical excellence, people leadership, and sustainable delivery in fast-paced environments.
Sam Richardson
I’m a brand strategist turned tech founder, with over a decade of experience shaping communities and digital presence for Australia’s leading lifestyle brands including David Jones, L’Oréal and Jackalope Hotels. Butter is the most important thing I’ve built yet. I bootstrapped Butter across brand, product, experience and growth; designing the app, leading community, and getting it into people’s hands. After two years of working on it alongside consulting, I made the leap to full-time founder to take it where it needs to go. Butter's designed to help young adults form intentional, real-world friendships.
Fina Xue
With a background in medicine and over five years of experience at the intersection of healthcare and technology, I bring a unique perspective to digital health innovation. I previously worked in the medical department at ByteDance before relocating to Melbourne in early 2024 to co-found my current venture. Our startup has since secured seed funding from Square Peg and received strong support from Invest Victoria, Austrade, and ANDHealth throughout our journey.
Buddhi Jayatilleke
Buddhi Jayatilleke is the Chief Data Scientist and a founding member of Sapia.ai, a leading AI recruitment platform used by ASX and FTSE-listed companies to enable fair, scalable hiring through structured, text-based interviews. He leads the development of Sapia’s core innovations, including the AI-scored Chat Interview and SAIGE, a generative AI model that evaluates candidates based on job-relevant competencies. Prior to Sapia.ai, he was the first Lead Data Scientist at Culture Amp, where he led the development of machine learning systems that extracted actionable insights from employee feedback to drive organisational improvement. He has also held senior research fellow roles at leading Australian universities, with research interests spanning intelligent agents, natural language processing, people analytics, and AI ethics. Buddhi holds a PhD in Computer Science from RMIT University and a Master’s in Software Systems Engineering from the University of Melbourne.
