Management team
David Wright
Group Chief Executive Officer
Dr Michael Aitken AM
Founder and Chief Scientist
David Jonas
Head of Market Quality – Health
Dr Shan Ji
Chief Information Officer
Ann Leduc
Head of Regulatory Practice
Dr Andrew Lepone
Head of Education and Partnerships
Dr Vito Mollica
Head of Market Quality – Finance
Dr Steve Clark
Head of Scholarships and Training
Lee-Ann Breger
Head of Partner Relations – Health
A/Prof. Federico Girosi
Head of Research – Health
Jodi Watson
Chief Financial Officer
Dr Jeff Wong
Head of Energy Market Research
A/Prof. Elvira Sojli
Head of Digital Currency Research
David Wright, Group Chief Executive Officer
David leads CMCRC’s finance, legal, HR and operations teams and is responsible for the overall design and delivery of CMCRC's strategy. He is also the Company Secretary and General Counsel for the CMCRC Group Companies. David’s career has encompassed academia, telecommunications, IT, government research and start-ups, both in Australia and internationally. He has served in C-suite positions at firms including Macquarie University, NICTA and T3 Communications.
Prior to joining CMCRC, David founded education strategy and design firm HECG, one of 10 start-ups with which he has been involved. These include education accessibility not-for- profit, the Global Access Project, and a public affairs and investment firm, Aqua Ventures (formerly Wright Corporate Group). David holds a BComm and LLB from the University of Canberra and a GDLP from the Australian National University. He is admitted to practise as a Barrister and Solicitor in the High Court of Australia and Supreme Court of the ACT.
Dr Michael Aitken AM, Founder and Chief Scientist
Mike was the driving force behind the establishment of the Securities Industry Research Centre of Asia Pacific (www.sirca.org.au) in 1997 and the CMCRC in 2001. Mike's first venture into the world of commercial enterprise came with the development of the Reuters Tick History Service. This service ingests more than two million transactions a second from the world’s financial markets and makes it available to the commercial and academic enterprise, with the former funding the later. Following this early work, he then established the SMARTS Group, a private Australian company that set the standard in real-time security market surveillance and was sold to NASDAQ in 2010. With some of the returns from the SMARTS sale, Mike established Capital Market Technologies (CMT), which is now investing in start-up enterprises that enhance market transparency, with a view to increasing the fairness and efficiency of a range of different marketplaces. This currently includes investments in mortgage (www.dealmax.com.au), supply chain (www.ordermentum.com), building management (www.cimenviro.com) and digital currency trading marketplaces (www.digi.cash). More recently, he has moved from securities to health markets with his groundbreaking work in the detection of fraud in the health and general insurance markets (www.loricahealth.com). Associated with his work in these areas, Mike has established an expert witness business (Capital Markets Consulting), providing specialist services for legal cases involving insider trading, market manipulation and continuous disclosure breaches. He was also a key force behind a recoveries practice in the health domain. His latest venture (Market Quality Dashboard – http://www.mqdashboard.com) addresses the efficacy of security market design. Similar work is underway in the health domain as Mike spearheads a broadening of focus from fraud detection to the efficacy of health intervention. Mike has a PhD from the University of New South Wales and First Class Honours and Masters Degrees from Massey University (NZ). In recognition of his contributions to business and academia, he was awarded the Business and Higher Education Round table Award for Outstanding Achievement in Collaboration in Education and Training in 1999. In 2010, Mike was named Ernst and Young (EY) ICT Entrepreneur of the Year, as well as NSW and Prime Minister Exporter of the Year. In recognition of his significant service to the education, business and finance sectors of the nation, Mike was inducted as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2014. In 2016 he was awarded the Prime Minister’s prize for Innovation in Science. Mike's career achievements are featured in Who's Who in Australia.
David Jonas, Head of Market Quality – Health
David leads the CMCRC's Health Market Quality research, development and commercialisation program, which he started in 2013. He was the founding CEO of CMCRC's healthcare solutions subsidiary, Lorica Health, a position he held for six years. He remains on the Lorica Health Board. David formerly served as Chief Operating Officer of CMCRC and Chief Executive Officer of Capital Markets Technologies.
David is a non-executive director of Infoxchange, a major provider of technology to the not-for-profit sector and social welfare agencies of governments. He founded and led Australia's largest privately held electronic commerce consulting firm, Electronic Trading Concepts (ETC), which was acquire by Securenet (now part of Verizon) in 2000. His groundbreaking involvement in electronic commerce has seen him appointed to a range of Australian and European Union Government bodies. David's background includes seven years as Chief Technology Offiver of a large multinational group of companies.
Dr Shan Ji, Chief Information Officer
Shan leads the activities of the central development team at the CMCRC. Prior to this, Shan was Lead Business Analyst at SMARTS Group International, the world-leading provider of securities markets surveillance technology. He also pursued research in securities market manipulation and in maintaining market integrity, and was awarded a PhD in Finance from the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) in Finance from the University of Western Australia.
Ann Leduc, Head of Regulatory Practice
Ann leads CMCRC's regulatory practice and consulting activities, building on her wide-ranging experience in capital markets.Ann was the founding Secretary-General of the CSA, the council of securities regulators in Canada. In addition to her regulatory experience, she led the management and trading of bond and currency portfolios for some of the largest Canadian banking institutions and pension funds, as well as teaching finance at McGill University. Ann holds an MBA from York University, a BA in Economics from McGill University and is fluent in English and French.
Dr Andrew Lepone, Head of Education and Partnerships
Andrew has a PhD from the University of Sydney and First Class Honours from the University of Wollongong. He is currently Professor in Finance and Accounting at Macquarie University Graduate School of Management. He is actively involved in industry-oriented research in equity and futures market microstructure, particularly related to the areas of market design and market quality, for which he has won significant government grants.
Dr Vito Mollica, Head of Market Quality – Finance
Vito leads the CMCRC’s Finance Market Quality program, which covers foreign exchange, derivative, real estate, equities, digital currency and OTC markets. He is the Director of Higher Degree Research at Macquarie University Graduate School of Management. Vito has provided policy advice around the over-the-counter swap markets for residential real estate for the Australian Financial Markets Association and to the Financial Services Council in response to regulatory proposals surrounding issues of dark pools and minimum ticks. His research has contributed to the development of a patented index methodology that tracks the performance of Australian residential real estate.
Vito was a foundation member of a real estate funds management group and a senior research analyst. He received a PhD and Joint 1st Class Honours (Accounting & Finance) from the University of Sydney, and was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship.
Dr Steve Clark, Head of Scholarships and Training
Steve leads the Health and Finance PhD Scholarships and Training program at CMCRC. He manages all matters associated with the financial administration and management of scholarship students, postdoctoral researchers and academic supervisors between the CMCRC and university partners. He manages the CMCRC PhD Training Program to prepare students for industry engagement, including the development, implementation and delivery of blended and eLearning courses. He provides strategic leadership on the governance and policies for the PhD program, including reporting to the CMCRC Board and Commonwealth Government.
Before joining the CMCRC, Steve was Academic Adviser eLearning at the Sydney Business School, The University of Sydney, Academic Fellow in Learning and Teaching at UNSW Arts and Design (College of Fine Arts, UNSW), and Academic Adviser and Developer in eLearning at the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. Steve received a PhD in Design Computing and Cognition from The Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, The University of Sydney, a Masters of Fine Arts from University of NSW, and Masters of Education in Technology in Learning and Teaching from The University of Wollongong.
Lee-Ann Breger, Head of Partner Relations – Health
Lee-Ann heads partner relations in the Health Market Quality Program, drawing on her experience in deploying transformational technologies at some of the largest Australasian public and private institutions, including Medibank, Australia Post, the Auckland District Health Board and the Auckland Regional Public Health Service. She leads the development of over 20 projects within the CMCRC Health Market Quality Program, combining the collective efforts of our industry and academic partners in delivering research on the efficacy and integrity of health interventions that fuel the technology solutions developed by CMCRC.
A/Prof. Federico Girosi, Head of Research – Health
Federico is an Associate Professor in Population Health at the School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, and a health economist and data scientist whose interests span a wide range of topics. He is currently working in collaboration with federal and state organisations, as well with the private sector, on projects that apply data analytics to the solution of problems of immediate interest.
Examples of Federico's current projects include the development of a microsimulation for the prediction of health and healthcare utilisation under different policy scenarios, the detection of clusters and anomalies in health trajectories, the design of customisable catchment areas and the analysis of the role of chronic conditions in the DRG hospital payment system.
Federico is also a Chief Investigator in three NHMRC sponsored projects: two that study ways to manage ear infections in urban Aboriginal children and one that looks at immediate versus delayed care for gestational diabetes diagnosed at booking. He is also involved in research in the burden of eating disorders and in the evaluation of labor and birth programs.
Federico earned a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University in 2003, and worked at the RAND Corporation in the US for eight years. His best-known RAND project was the development of the COMPARE microsimulation, which was used to evaluate the impact of health care reform commonly known as “Obamacare”. He also holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Genoa, Italy, and conducted research for 10 years at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in machine learning and computer vision. Federico has been published in a number of peer-reviewed international journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, Nature, Science and the Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is also co-author, with Gary King, of Demographic Forecasting, published by Princeton University Press in 2008.
Jodi Watson, Chief Financial Officer
Jodi is a qualified CPA with over 20 years' experience in public practice and corporate accounting roles. Jodi’s corporate experience has been in the IT sector, holding Chief Financial Officer positions at SMARTS Group, SIRCA and a small technology investment business over the last 14 years. At SMARTS Group, a global stock market surveillance company, Jodi was responsible for all accounting and finance functions, providing strategic advice to management and Board reporting. Over a six-year period, the company grew to 130 staff in five countries, and was later acquired by NASDAQ OMX in the US. Prior to her corporate roles, Jodi worked for many years in a medium-sized accounting firm.
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Dr Jeff Wong, Head of Market Quality – Energy
Jeff leads the CMCRC’s Energy Markets Research Centre and is responsible for engaging with government, regulators and industry stakeholders to enable evidence based decisions. He previously worked for Singapore Exchange and held senior positions in the funds management industry. His research outcomes have contributed to a better understanding of the complex relationship between cross-border exchanges and assisted in shaping the rules and regulations governing securities market design. Using his experience in financial and other markets, Jeff seeks to incorporate advance techniques into energy markets to optimise security and reliability.
Jeff has a PhD and Honours from the University of Sydney, won significant government funding (from Australian Research Council) and consulted with the NSW government on energy research projects.
A/Prof. Elvira Sojli, Head of Market Quality – Digital Currency
Elvira is an Associate Professor of Finance and a Scientia Fellow at the University of New South Wales. Previously, she was Associate Professor of Finance at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Fellow of the Duisenberg School of Finance. Elvira’s backgrounds spans accounting, finance and economics, with a PhD in Finance, MSc in Economics and Finance (with Distinction), both from University of Warwick, and a BSc in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics. She has worked extensively with central banks, like Norges Bank and Bank of Canada, on exchange rate modeling and market microstructure research. Elvira has a distinguished track record of publishing in top finance and economics journals and of presenting at leading finance and economics conferences.