The national council of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) has elected seven ICT professionals to Fellows in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the industry.

The Fellowships were announced at a council meeting in Canberra attended by ICT Minister, Helen Coonan, and Shadow ICT Mininster, Stephen Conroy.

ACS president Philip Argy, said the Fellowships recognize the high level of talented ICT professionals in Australia, pointing out that three of the seven Fellows are women.

Argy also took the opportunity to thank outgoing ACS CEO Dennis Furini, for his contribution to the ICT community.

Fellows went to David Mackay and Elspeth McKay of Victoria, Professor Zbigniew Michaelewicz and Jan Seruga of South Australia, Professor Robyn Owens and Anthony Rosser of Western Australia as well as Dr Leonilla Warne of the ACT.

Dr Mackay has made a distinguished contribution to the field of ICT education and research in Australia. Through his early work he also made a contribution to industry working at the forefront of electronic data interchange (EDI). This led to its early adoption in the automotive industry and the extension of these principles into supply chain management. Dr McKay has made a distinguished contribution to the field of ICT education and open learning systems. She has achieved substantive results in learning models and practice appropriate to e-Learning requirements, focussing most recently on the overarching importance of context-driven human-computer interaction (HCI) processes for effective learning. She is the author and editor of chapters and books in instructional design and practice related to Web-based education. In his short time in Australia since 2004, Professor Michalewicz has had an impact nationally on both the IT industry and IT education with his innovation in the teaching and application of Adaptive Business Intelligence (ABI). ABI has been accepted into the Australian curriculum working with the ACS. Professor Owens is the vice-chancellor (Research & Research Training) at the University of Western Australia. She has made significant contributions in a number of fields, including: computer vision; technology for advancing university processes to world-class practices; and the advancement of women in computer science. Rosser has made a distinguished contribution to integrating ICT development within industry and government in WA. He is a founding member of the ICT Industry Collaboration Centre and principal author for the highly recognised APT systems methodology which is in use worldwide.

He was instrumental in establishing one of the largest data repositories in Australia for a consortium of several global and Australian petroleum industry corporations and the WA Government. Dr Seruga has developed particular expertise in the specialisation of network security which is relevant to the current government agenda of national security as well as to the wider business community. He holds appointments on the Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research and the Business Academics Research Network. He is director of the board at the International Academy for Information Management. Dr Warne has made a distinguished contribution in ICT through her research work with DSTOand is recognised as an expert in the area of network-centric warfare.