Intern: David Scerri, RMIT University
Industry Partner: Joe Forbes, Founder, Biarri
Academic Mentor: Professor Lin Padgham, RMIT
Smart phone shopping has grown 101 per cent in the last year. Australians spend an average of $285 a week online, with this growth tipped to increase, e-commerce activity needs a revamp. Australia Post knows first-hand the consequences of the online shopping trend, so they approached PwC and Biarri to help optimise their parcel network.
Biarri, an Australian company, uses innovative mathematical thinking to solve complex business problems, and are fast becoming a global leader in the application of mathematics to industry.
Having heard of APR.Intern’s successful track record of placing research expertise – often unattainable and hidden in the academic world – within industry, Biarri engaged Cate Ballard and her team to find them a suitable candidate. The short-term research focussed contracts offered by APR.Intern give businesses access to untapped resources from leading Australian universities.
Dave Scerri was a PhD candidate at RMIT, armed with a background in computer science and mathematics. His experience in modelling and simulation gave Biarri confidence in his ability to help tackle the network design challenge.
‘My experience with Biarri as an APR.Intern allowed me to apply my research to real-world problems to understand how mathematics can be usefully applied in industry. And now I get to do this every day, as my internship culminated in a full time job,’ Dave said.
By incorporating further intricacies and complexities into Biarri’s cutting-edge network models, Dave enabled Biarri to extend its reach and offer mathematical solutions to other commercial enterprises.
‘The APR.Intern program allows Biarri to tap into a talented pool of Mathematics PhD graduates. The interns let us target a range of R&D projects quickly and cheaply,’ said Joe Forbes, Founder, Biarri.
APR.Intern continues to be a leader in solving the short term research needs of Australian businesses. Leveraging its unique access to young, innovative Australian researchers through AMSI’s member institutions.
