Emeritus Professor and ACS Fellow Jenny Edwards was already living her dream when she joined the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in 1976, kicking off a distinguished career that, 50 years later, saw her recognised with an AM in the 2026 King’s Birthday Honours list.  That distinction – awarded for “significant service to the information technology sector, and to tertiary education” – recognises Jenny’s contributions over a career that led her from programming the bus-sized SILLIAC computer to shaping AI education.  Jenny was also President of CORE from 2006-07.  Congratulations Jenny.

Read the full article  by the ACS at: https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2026/acs-fellow-jenny-edwards-welcomed-to-order-of-australia.html

Bob Kummerfeld had been at the University of Sydney since 1968, when he enrolled in Science. He did a new, small computing course introduced within Physics in 1969 by Dr Wallace, and continued to do all the available computing courses, with honours in 1972. He met Judy Kay; they married and they have been colleagues and collaborators through the decades.

He actually started on computers at age 8; and built a simple computing system out of old phone relays at age 15 (it won a state prize).

From 1972 he was a PhD student; his thesis was on compilers, completed in 1978, when he joined the staff as Lecturer. He worked closely on deployment of one of the earliest Unix systems in the country. His subsequent research included the development of networking protocols used in Australia before we joined the Internet with its protocols, and later he developed techniques for mulitmedia messaging and software defined networking. He played a crucial role in the development with Judy Kay of infrastructure for managing scrutable user models, and for working with tabletop interfaces. Bob has commercialised several of his research innovations. He also contributed hugely to the teaching in the Department and then School; he published some of these innovations. 

He served twice as Head of Department, and he led the School's participation in designing the space in the current J12 building.

He officially retired in 2013 but continued to do work in the School of CS until 2024, including delivering teaching in several units, and developing a lot of content, with videos for students to watch, for INFO1112.

Through these decades, Bob was a wonderful colleague, supporting students and staff with kindness, immense practical sense, and a deep commitment to the University and the field of computer science.

Written by: Alan Fekete, University of Sydney

Photo: 2024 - Bob with the page of the encyclopedia that inspired his interest in computers. 
Source: https://jkk.name/bob-kummerfeld-memorial/

It is with great sadness that I am writing to let CORE members know that Professor Lin Padgham has passed away this week, after a long illness.

Lin has provided extraordinary service to the Australasian Computing Community over an extended period. She served as CORE President in 2015 and 2016, and as Secretary/Treasurer for a number of years prior to that. She was awarded CORE’s John Hughes Distinguished Service Award in 2019.  She continued her valuable contribution as a co-opted member of the CORE executive until 2026.  Lin has also been a tireless champion of conference and journal rankings activities, working to create tools and processes that allow these to be supported in a scalable manner, and be based on measurable and useful attributes. She established the international consortium, ICORE, that now manages and funds this ranking activity.  Other contributions to the community have included terms served on the ARC Panel for Centres of Excellence and the ARC College of Experts. Within RMIT Lin served as Head of School, and initiated and led the Intelligent Agents Research group, internationally recognized as an active centre of high quality research in cognitive agents.

Lin’s generous contributions to the Computer Science community, her enthusiasm, and knowledge will be very much missed.

Published:  Rachel Cardell-Oliver, CORE President, 4 March 2026