Marek Kowalkiewicz (born 21 July 1978[citation needed]) is a Polish-Australian computer scientist. He is a professor and chair in digital economy at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), where he focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) and digital transformation strategies for government and industry.[1] He performs all of his research in 30-day "research innovation sprints", an award-winning concept he pioneered at QUT in 2015.[2][3] Kowalkiewicz's research sprints are designed to create and accelerate industry-focused research outcomes by combining the commercial philosophy of Google's five-day design sprint with the rigour of academic research.[4]
Kowalkiewicz joined QUT from Silicon Valley where he led global innovation teams for SAP. He was a Research Manager at SAP's Machine Learning Lab in Singapore,[5] global research program lead at SAP Research Australia, and a research fellow at Microsoft Research Asia.
He is the author of the book The Economy of Algorithms: Rise of the Digital Minions, published by La Trobe University Press in March 2024.[6] The book has received multiple awards for its contribution to the rapidly evolving field of AI.[7][8]
Education
Poznań University of Economics and Business
Kowalkiewicz received a Master of Business Information Systems from Poznań University of Economics and Business (PUEB) in Poland in 2002.[9] He completed his PhD in Information Systems at PUEB in 2006, graduating summa cum laude. Kowalkiewicz's research area was in extracting content from websites; his dissertation was titled "Information Extraction and Aggregation for Business Entities".[10]
Before receiving his PhD in 2006, Kowalkiewicz relocated to Beijing to become a research fellow at Microsoft Research Asia, where he built a location detection system for Windows Live Spaces, a functionality that was later introduced in blog searches.[12]
SAP Research Australia
In 2007, he joined SAP Research Australia as senior researcher and development expert leading teams of developers and researchers in various projects including the 2010 launch of the first SAP app in the AppStore, AUS Traffic,[13] which led to SAP's focus on mobile apps and Apple partnership. He also led the IdeaWall project (previously known as InnoBoard),[14] a remote collaboration app that helped distributed teams work with physical and virtual post-it notes, a concept still used in some internal SAP applications.
While at SAP Research, Kowalkiewicz was appointed Global Research Program Manager, User Experience, where he established a global user experience research team and program.
He also led a global series of SAP InnoJam[15] hackathons which promoted the use of SAP technologies by startups, and won SAP TechEd DemoJams in Las Vegas[14] and Bangalore[16] with demonstrations of augmented reality (AR) in enterprise systems.
SAP Singapore
In April 2012, Kowalkiewicz moved to Singapore to help establish SAP Research's Asia-Pacific Japan (APJ) headquarters. As research manager and head of developer outreach for APJ, he created SAP's first machine learning research lab.[5]
SAP Americas
In 2014, he was appointed senior director, products and innovation, at SAP Americas in Palo Alto, California. Kowalkiewicz was global content and strategy lead for SAP's largest internal conference series, d-kom,[17] where he designed and launched its annual, global developer kick-off event for more than 25,000 attendees. He also built a network of makerspaces for SAP developers, introducing AR/VR, 3D printing, and robotics.
Kowalkiewicz was an SAP mentor in their SAP Influencer Program from 2013 to 2018.[18] According to SAP's website, SAP Mentors are "Top influencers in the SAP ecosystem, representing customers, partners, and consultants."[19]
QUT and chair in digital economy
In 2015, Kowalkiewicz was appointed professor and PwC Chair in Digital Economy[20][1] at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). This joint venture between QUT,[21] PwC,[22] Brisbane Marketing[23] and the Queensland Government was a five-year research initiative that enabled collaboration between industry, academia and government and was tasked with "designing digital transformation strategies for complex economic and social challenges".[24]
In 2016, Kowalkiewicz was a member of the Opportunities for Personalised Transport Review Taskforce guiding the Queensland Government on developing new ride-sharing regulation.[25] The newDemocracy Foundation[26] ranked the regulation, dubbed "Legalising Uber," as one of the leading evidence-based policy initiatives of the year following reports by Per Capita and the Institute of Public Affairs.[27][28]
From 2016 - 2019, Kowalkiewicz was Research Theme Lead: Embracing the Digital Age.[29]
In 2020, Kowalkiewicz co-founded his Queensland AI Hub[30] in collaboration with Queensland's government, universities and industry leaders.[31] The AI Hub was established during the COVID-19 crisis to improve Queensland's AI capability.[32]
In 2020, Kowalkiewicz established a QUT Centre for the Digital Economy, as its founding director.[24] In 2022, the Centre was merged with the very similar QUT's Centre for Future Enterprise,[33] and Kowalkiewicz carries out its "Algorithmic Enterprise" research.[34]
^Bongiovanni, Ivano; Townson, Peter; Kowalkiewicz, Marek (March 10, 2023). "Bridging the academia-industry gap through design thinking: Research innovation sprints". Research Handbook on Design Thinking. Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 102–126. ISBN9781802203134 – via www.elgaronline.com.
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