Perth Data Engineering meetup - May 2026

Hey all, please join us for our May Perth Data Eng meetup. Join us for an engaging session filled with exciting discussions and networking opportunities.
Don't miss out—RSVP to secure your spot. A big shout-out to Cloud Shuttle for the venue and catering! 🎉

🍕 Catering: Cloud Shuttle
🏢 Location: The Shoe Bar
💬 Join our Slack Group here: Data Engineers Slack Channel

Schedule:
- 5:30: Doors Open / Pizza 🍕
- 6:00: Welcome
- 6.10pm: 1st Talk
- 6.40pm: 2nd Talk
- 7.10pm: Networking
- 7.30pm: Doors Close

Speakers:
🎤 Anupiya Nugaliyadde, Senior Engineering Manager AI/ML and Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Qoria and Murdoch University
Talk: Beyond the Black Box: Designing ML Pipelines That Explain Themselves
Summary: The AI industry and academia have spent years solving explainability and building tools that only data scientists can read.
SHAP values, integrated gradients, saliency maps; impressive under the hood, but hand one to a business stakeholder or end user and watch their eyes glaze over. In this talk, we'll look at what human-understandable explainability actually means, and the explanation formats that get it right.
We'll cover:
• Why feature importance scores fail non-technical audiences
• Counterfactuals: the explanation format humans already think in
• Natural language reason codes and audience-aware explanation design
• What the EU AI Act means for "meaningful explanations" in production
Whether you're a data engineer, ML practitioner, or just someone who ships models to real users this talk will change how you think about what a good explanation actually is.
Bio: Dr. Anupiya Nugaliyadde is an AI engineer and practitioner based in Perth, Western Australia. He is Senior Engineering Manager AI/ML at Qoria, leading enterprise AI solutions, and Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Murdoch University, where he applies his engineering experience to Explainable AI, Deep Learning, and Generative AI research.
He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Murdoch University, has built and shipped AI systems across industry and academia, and is the creator of the Long Term Memory (LTM) Network. In a previous role, he led the team that won local and international awards, recognising excellence in ICT innovation. He has also authored multiple research papers bridging deep learning theory and real-world applications.
He is a recipient of the ACS WA 1962 Medal (2020).

🎤 Jonathan Dingle, Head of Data, Fintech Services
Talk: Farewell Power BI
Summary: Importance of a robust, intuitive data foundation that can support analytics
Bio: Almost 30 years leading data / BI teams globally, most recently focused on contemporary platforms and innovating cutting edge solutions

If you'd like to present at future meetups, please submit your talk here!
Remember to bring along some great questions! See you all there...