Dr Anisha Fernando

Dr Anisha Fernando is Discipline Lead - Tertiary Studies (Diploma of IT - Lecturer) at the South Australian Institute of Business and Technology (SAIBT, in partnership with the University of South Australia and Navitas). In this role, she works collaboratively with the SAIBT academic team in curriculum development and management of student outcomes and experience, in addition to lecturing and course-coordinating responsibilities.

As an educator, she has university teaching experience primarily with students who have diverse learning needs. She enjoys teaching and strives to create meaningful learning opportunities using student-centred learning methods, to empower students to take ownership of their learning no matter where they are at in their learning journey.

Anisha’s research interests focus on the societal effects of technology, specifically in the areas of data ethics, information privacy, innovation and technology design. She researches about the privacy expectations people associate with personal data and explores approaches towards embedding privacy values in the design of technology.

She is particularly interested in investigating the impact of technologies on people's quality of life, and the use of disruptive technologies to catalyse innovations for social good. She was also a research assistant for the Regional Innovation Systems in Northern Adelaide Project, in collaboration with the City of Salisbury.

She is passionate about raising awareness and communicating data ethics research to the general public. To this end, she collaborated, co-wrote and performed a science communication piece titled, ‘The Private Lives of Data’ for South Australia's National Science Week 2018, after winning a Perform Your Science Grant from the Inspiring South Australia program. She runs community workshops around data ethics literacy. She is involved in startup community efforts, being part of the winning team at Techstars Startup Weekend Adelaide 2019, hosted by UniSA's Innovation and Collaboration Centre.

She also currently serves as a member of the Australian Computer Society (ACS)’s Ethics Committee.

Ethics Commitee Member, Australian Computer Society (2019-2020)

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of South Australia

• Master of Business Information Systems University of South Australia

• Bachelor of Science in Information Systems with Business Management (Honours) University of Westminster

• ech Bachelor of Information Technology University of Colombo