Rita Arrigo, Deputy Director of the Centre for Industrial AI Research & Innovation at RMIT

CIARI Deputy Director, Rita Arrigo, is not new to DIF, having featured as a speaker for the Blockchain Day in 2018 and the Women in Innovation Forum in 2019. Rita believes that events such as DIF are important for industry development.

“DIFVIC is a unique opportunity to learn from your colleagues that you would not traditionally be sharing with. It is the powerful stuff that comes from networking that we have been so sadly lacking over the pandemic. The Digital Innovations Festival is an opportunity to connect again and see and hear about some of the latest initiatives in digital innovation. I have recently joined RMIT, after 5 years at Microsoft as a Digital Advisor and am super excited to be launching CIAIRI at DIFVic.”   

Rita is a renowned digital strategist with a reputation for her ability to lead digital transformation projects in the public and private sectors. As well as her deep technical skills, her digital insights and communication skills have made her a sought-after digital speaker, commentator, broadcaster and mentor across the IT sector and into the broader leadership community.

A Monash Alumni, having graduated from engineering and computing in 1989, Rita entered the technology industry and moved into hardware sales for a large Hewlett Packard reseller. In 1995 she witnessed the dawn of the internet, and with like-minded friends launched Australia’s first internet cafe in St Kilda. During this time, she presented and produced Byte Into It, a 3RRR radio show focused on embracing technology. Her passion for future transformation was ignited and she went on to grow some of Australia’s largest digital agencies.

As Microsoft’s Industry Digital Strategist Rita has supported clients to understand how new technologies including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) can be applied to sectors including transport, education and urban planning and how new IT solutions can work towards building Smart Cities, higher citizen engagement and support sustainable development and environmental stewardship.

“I believe in making our lives more human and reinventing our working lives to embrace a lifelong learning inclusive culture powered by data to drive new levels of human experiences.” - Rita Arrigo

This way of design thinking aligns with the vision of CIAIRI that centres ‘the human as a user of these exciting tools and all that they offer, rather than replacing the human all-together.’ As Deputy Director of CIAIRI, Rita is focused on industry engagement, driven capability in Autonomous Decision Systems, ML, Computer Vision and Mixed Reality.

RMIT launches new AI Centre as part of DIF 2021

RMIT launched their Centre for Industrial AI Research and Innovation (CIARI) as part of the Digital Innovations Festival this year.

CIARI plan to empower Australian industry to embrace the rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence research and innovation. They will help transform Australia’s industries including food, agriculture, energy, health, FinTech, defence, emergency services, transportation and smart city development.

CIARI Director, Professor Juerg von Kaenel said the Centre would bring national and global industry partners together with leading AI experts and researchers to ensure Australia’s businesses were gaining the full benefits offered by AI technologies.

“We are looking forward to working with our industry partners to bring AI from a future promise of nirvana to a pragmatic approach that will solve today's business needs.” Professor Juerg von Kaenel

CIARI Director of Research, Professor John Thangarajah said the Centre would build on RMIT’s extensive AI expertise and experience. Deputy Director Rita Arrigo hopes the panel will demystify AI.

“RMIT is on a journey with industry to drive digital innovation in Australia and CIAIRI forms part of a critical ecosystem of industry connected hubs to enable this digital transformation. Our panel of experts with myself as MC, hopes to demystify AI as the next frontier for humans and machines and provide real examples about how this tool is already fundamentally impacting both our society, and us as humans.” Rita Arrigo

CIAIRI will celebrate the launch with a panel of experts discussing the objective ‘To demystify AI as a tool that will augment us as human and bring many years of societal innovation.’ Tune in to hear amazing ways we are using AI today & the new AI coming, Deep Learning, Human Machine Teaching, AI in IoT, autonomous everything & The metaverse.

Watch the Launch of the RMIT Centre for Industrial AI Research and Innovation (CIAIRI) on DIF on Demand here.

CIAIRI Open Day 2022

Immerse yourself in AI for a day at CIAIRI's inaugural Open Day in early February next year.  

Attend showcases, workshops, demonstrations from AI in Health, and Agent Oriented programming for Autonomous Systems.

Learn about going beyond supervised deep learning, AI and Mixed Reality to Interactive storytelling. This day will provide a deep dive into AI and the possibilities across industry.

CIAIRI Open Day Tuesday 1 February 2022 at the RMIT University Storey Hall on Swanston Street.