Meet our leadership team
Dr Ana Novak
Chief Executive Officer
Co-founder
Ana Novak is an Operations Research specialist with an extensive career in Defence Science & Technology, and industrial supply chain and inventory consulting. She holds an adjunct Professorial position at Deakin University, PhD in Operations Research from Melbourne University and B.E. (Hons) in IT & Telecommunications from Adelaide University. For her work in Defence, she was awarded Defence Gold and Bronze commendations, EUREKA Prize 2019 finalist in Data Science and Franz Edelman Award - INFORMS 2020 semi-finalist. Ana believes that in the heart of every good software is an algorithm that is serving a human need.
Brendan Hill
Technical Director
Co-founder
Brendan Hill has worked professionally for 20 years across the commercial, public and research sectors. Brendan’s commercial roles have included IT management, technical IT lead, software engineer and software architect. His expertise span AI, machine learning, optimisation, simulation, data analytics and bioinformatics. Brendan holds a B.Sc and M.Sc in mathematics from the University of Melbourne. Brendan has a life long passion for Generalised AI and hopes to one day makes a significant contribution in this space.
Daryl Antony
Software Engineering Partner
Common Code CEO & founder
Daryl Antony is a founder of Common Code, a decade old, Melbourne based company. He is ALGORA’s technology partner, whose staff are made up of coders, designers and strategy thinkers. Daryl overseas large variety of software projects providing technical and architectural input. He holds a B.Sc in Information Technology from Swinburne University.
Prof Bill Moran
Principal Researcher
Fellow AU Academy of Science
A Mathematician/Engineer and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Bill currently holds a Professorial position at the University of Melbourne. Between 2011 and 2013 he was Director of the Defence Science Institute at the University of Melbourne. His expertise lie in Optimisation, Sensor Management, Signal Processing, Radar, and various topics in Mathematics.
Meet our Software Experts
Brendan has decades of practical experience in software engineering and design. He has worked as a team lead, software architect, developer and database architect in a variety of projects ranging from business management software, scheduling software, simulation, visualisation, and algorithms.
Janis Lesinskis is a software developer, DevOps consultant and mathematician, and the co-founder of Scry Engineering. He holds a B.Sc in mathematics from the University of Melbourne.
Darren Frenkel is a Certified Scrum Master and full stack Software developer who has been an integral part of Common Code for over four years. As a developer, his main discipline is developing scalable web applications using Django, React and Redux. As a Scrum Master, he has provided guidance and direction by architecting and overseeing the development of API gateways and data migration across POS systems for a global retail brand.
Justin Arulnathan is a Software Developer and DevOps practitioner working with Django, Celery, RabbitMQ, PostgreSQL, Redis and Elasticsearch. Justin has refined his skills over a wide range of projects he specialises in online publications, implementing systems for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Content Management System (CMS) integration. He has extensive experience implementing reliable and cloud scalable solutions in AWS.
Nora has worked as a software consultant after completing a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and has since transitioned into development. She is able to strengthen teams with a keen ability to understand client requirements, communicate and precisely translate them to working and testable software solutions. As a developer Nora enjoys learning new skills, delivering diligent work and solving problems with simplicity and reliability.
Simeon has over 20 years of experience in software architecture, development and team leadership, building applications for small business, government, corporate and not-for-profit organisations. He has worked extensively on human-computer interaction testing tools, distributed content management platforms, and bespoke applications to address particular business needs. Simeon takes a detail-oriented approach to software development, balancing the competing goals of rapid feature development and performance analysis and optimisation while retaining a focus on business value and user experience.
Steve Roberts has 20 years experience in product development teams in roles as diverse as technical lead, product management, UX & UI design and people management. At Common Code Steve uses this breadth and depth of knowledge to help clients and teams navigate from idea to value creating software systems.
Patrick Robotham is a software and DevOps consultant specializing in cloud computing and machine learning. He holds a B.Sc in mathematics from the University of Melbourne.
CommonCode is a Melbourne based technology partner made up of 30+ coders, designers & product strategy thinkers. CommonCode specializes in bespoke Web Development, Development Teams and Digital Product Management & Design.
Meet our Scientific Consulting Team
Prof. BILL MORAN is a renowned expert in signal processing, radar, sensing and mathematics. He was a Dean at the University of Adelaide 1980-83, has worked over four continents, attracted over $15 million in research funding, visiting Professor at many Universities, key-note speaker at many conferences and published over 400 papers.
Prof. FRANÇOIS SOUMIS was a founder and first director of Institute for Data Valorisation (IVADO) in Montréal, Canada. He is a recipient of one of the highest awards handed out to the researchers by the government of Quebec, in recognition of his career, research results, leadership in scientific development and contribution to economic growth in Quebec. Prof Soumis is an expert in large-scale optimisation, dynamic optimisation, scheduling and transportation. His optimisation algorithms are implemented in more than 20 airlines, 500 urban bus systems and used to prepare the work schedules of many hundred thousands of workers.
Prof MICHEL GENDREAU has extensive experience is the application of operations research methods to a wide range of problem areas: transportation and logistics systems planning and operation, energy production and storage, healthcare, and telecommunications. He has published more than 350 papers and is the co-editor of eight books dealing with transportation planning and scheduling, as well as with metaheuristics. Prof. Gendreau was the Director of the Centre for Research on Transportation (formerly CRT and now CIRRELT) from 1999 to 2007. He was Editor in chief of Transportation Science from 2009 to 2014 and has been a member of the editorial board of several other journals. In 2015, Prof. Gendreau received the prestigious Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award of the Transportation Science & Logistics Society of INFORMS.
Prof. TERRY CAELLI is an expert in Computer Vision, Data Analytics, Machine Leering, Environmental Modelling and Sensing, as can be evidenced in over 300 publications and four books. He is a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (FIAPR) and of the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers (FIEEE).
A/Prof RAY WATSON is an expert in stochastic modelling and applied statistics. He has been consulting in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, and latterly with the Statistical Consulting Centre at the University of Melbourne for many years. The largest of these consulting projects was the MSA meat quality prediction project, for which the group was awarded the 2010 Australian Research Council Eureka Prize. He has extensive experience in research and teaching, with over 20 published textbooks.
Prof. JOHN HEARNE specialises in the use of quantitative techniques to solve management problems. This involves a wide range of mathematical techniques mainly centered around system dynamics and optimisation. The latter includes routing and scheduling problems. He has extensive experience in management problems relating to renewable natural resources. In recent years this has involved strategic and operational issues arising from wildfires as well as logistical problems faced by care-providers. He is a fellow of the Operations Research Society of South Africa( ORSSA) and Fellow of the Resource Modelling Association. He won Tom Rozwadowski Medal in 1992, 2000, and 2004 and EU Erasmus Mundus Fellowship in 2010 and 2014.
Dr XUEZHI WANG is a Senior Research Fellow in the school of science at RMIT University and School of Engineering at the University of Melbourne. He was awarded a PhD in Signal and Systems by the University of Melbourne in 2001. His research expertise ranges across many areas of radar and sonar signal processing, target tracking, navigation, image processing, information sensor networks, and statistical machine learning. He has a long history of work experience on a number of US DoD funded contracts as well as research contracts with Australian defence industry and the Defence Science, Technology Group (DSTG) Australia.
Prof SLOBODAN VUCETIC is a Director of Center for Hybrid Intelligence in United States. He is an expert in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Applied Machine Learning, Biomedical Informatics and Bioinformatics. He is interested in solving real-life data science problems through development of novel machine learning algorithms, as well as building software that has intelligent behavior and can enhance human capabilities. His research is driven by open data science problems in a wide array of disciplines such as Public Health, Biomedicine, Physical Sciences, Education, Marketing, Social Sciences, Traffic Engineering, and Industrial Engineering.
Dr. VURAL AKSAKALLI is a Senior Lecturer in Analytics in the School of Science at RMIT. He received a masters degree in operations research and industrial engineering at North Carolina State University, and his PhD in applied mathematics and statistics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. His current research interests are in machine learning and mathematical optimisation. He has strong industrial & consulting experience having worked in various data science roles in the USA for a number of years. Throughout his career, Dr. Vural was personally involved in the design and development of a number of commercial data analytics and machine learning products, including the following: Predictive Analytics, Lityx Optimizer and Blue Yonder Inventory Optimization.