2023 Pearcey Hall of Fame
The Pearcey Foundation announced that Richard White and Professor Jean Armstrong were elevated to the Pearcey Hall of Fame. The presentations were made as part of the 2023 Pearcey National Awards gala dinner on Monday 30 October 2023 in Sydney.
The Pearcey Hall of Fame is an individual award that recognises a distinguished lifetime of achievement and contribution to the development and growth of the Australian ICT industry.
David and Aidan Tudehope
(See 2023 Pearcey Medal)
Richard White
Richard White is a successful Sydney-based businessman who has built a globally significant logistics company from scratch.
He could be classified as the classic baby-boomer, born in the mid 1950’s, educated at Hurstville Public School and then drifted into the
music industry. A mean guitarist himself, he started a guitar repair business (working for such famous groups as Midnight Oil, AC/DC)
followed by a stage lighting business. That is where his curiosity about IT got the better of him. He sold his lighting business to his
main competitor and stayed as R&D manager for a while.
In the mid 1980’s Richard joined Clear, a distributor of Unisys Computer Systems, and entered what was main-stream computing back then. He then started his own IT consulting firm, Real Tech Systems Integration, and entered the world of logistics. This company is still operating but ‘morphed’ into Wisetech Global (which he started in early 90’s) as he became aware of the challenges logistics companies have when managing goods and information across supply chains.
Initially focused on the Australian domestic market, Richard observed that the productivity inside logistics companies was remarkably low, they were usually fragmented and still rooted in the pre-Internet age. Having made a success in the local scene, Richard enrolled at the University of Technology Sydney Business School to gain an MBA in IT Management (2000-2002). This experience made him aware of the global opportunity for his company which he set about redirecting. The result can only be described as a fantastic success with a current valuation in excess of $16 Billion. Richard’s constant focus on innovation and being brave enough to make big changes is what makes WiseTech a world leader. In fact, WiseTech is the world’s largest ICT Logistics software vendor and is based in Sydney, Richard’s stated goal from the outset.
A strong supporter of the place of Australia in the tech world, his plans are to continue his campaign to become the dominant software solution for the global logistics industry from Australia. Richard regularly participates in, and sponsors, events in the IT sector. He has said that this is about giving back to the community that helped pave the way to his success. Richard’s altruism extends to the Pearcey Foundation, along with a number of other industry groups. He has supported the Pearcey NSW Entrepreneur Award for some years and offers prize money to ICT undergraduates at our annual Pitching Competition. Likewise, Richard supports, financially as well as in person, the annual National Computer Science Summer School for students in Years 10-12, as well as the Girls Programming Network. He has worked for a long time with the ACS Foundation on the BIG Day In and the BIG Day in Junior – these programs have reached some 30,000 students so far. Richard has sponsored several cooperative scholarship programs with his alma mater, UTS, and with UNSW, including involvement with the 2019 RoboCup International Competition.
Professor Jean Armstrong
Jean Armstrong received the BSc (First Class Honours) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh in 1974,
the MSc in Digital Techniques from Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh), in 1980, and a PhD in Digital Communications from Monash University
in 1993. From 1974-1977 she worked as a Design Engineer at Hewlett-Packard Ltd., Scotland. In 1977 she was appointed a Lecturer in
Electrical Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Since then, she has held a range of academic positions at the University
of Melbourne and La Trobe University, and she is currently a Professor at Monash University.
Professor Armstrong is an internationally acknowledged expert in the field of high-speed data transmission and digital communication. She has published numerous papers on wireless and optical communications, including over seventy on aspects of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. Her work in this field has led to a number of commercialised patents, and to this world leading technology being commercialised in Australia. Professor Armstrong has been the recipient of numerous awards including, Institution of Engineers, Australia, Engineering 2000 Award, she shared the Peter Doherty Prize for the best commercialisation opportunity in Australia in 2006, and in 2014 the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award.
She served on the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts from 2012 to 2014 and the ARC Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Research Evaluation Committee in 2015. She is currently an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications and was previously an Associate Editor for IEEE Communications Letters. Jean is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (FIEEE) and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia (FIEAust).
In addition to her substantial research, teaching and supervision work, Jean Armstrong has helped to improve curriculum planning processes,
developed more gender inclusive engineering role models, worked to change policies that disadvantage female engineers doing post-graduate
and academic work and helped to initiate the Australasian Women in Engineering Forum. Her 20-year contribution in these fields was
recognised in 1996 by Engineers Australia through its Personal Initiative Award. Professor Jean Armstrong has remained a trailblazer, both
through her encouragement of women to see engineering as a career option and through her record of research excellence.
