{"id":565667,"date":"2026-03-26T13:27:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/565667\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T13:27:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:27:23","slug":"macquarie-university-appoints-interim-ai-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/565667\/","title":{"rendered":"Macquarie University appoints interim AI chief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Macquarie University has appointed an interim head of AI following Phil Laufenberg\u2019s departure to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itnews.com.au\/news\/macquarie-unis-ai-chief-heads-to-la-trobe-623997\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">take up a pro vice-chancellorship\u00a0with Victoria\u2019s La Trobe University<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>                                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"ContentPlaceHolder1_ucArticle_imgImage\" width=\"748\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774531643_888_ImageResizer.ashx.jpeg\" alt=\"Macquarie University appoints interim AI chief\"\/><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Image credit: Macquarie University.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p>The university has temporarily appointed the technical lead for its AI transformation program, Richard Watts-Seale, to the role, a spokesperson for the university said.<\/p>\n<p>The spokesperson said that Macquarie\u2019s AI adoption is not expected to be impacted by Laufenberg\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, Macquarie\u2019s chief information and digital officer, Jonathan Covell, and Eric Knight, its deputy vice-chancellor of people and operations, provide the university\u2019s overall AI strategy, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur AI program continues as planned, and we have new pilots afoot,\u201d Macquarie University\u2019s spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are grateful for the leadership and work Laufenberg has shown during his time at Macquarie. He has made a positive contribution to the University over the past 18 months in the role and we wish him well in his new role at La Trobe University,\u201d the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n<p>La Trobe lured Laufenberg from Macquarie with an offer of a pro vice-chancellorship position focused on the technology.<\/p>\n<p>Joining La Trobe from early next month, Laufenberg will take on dual titles: pro vice-chancellor artificial intelligence and chief artificial intelligence officer.<\/p>\n<p>The titles reflect his twin responsibilities overseeing both its strategy and technical deployment.<\/p>\n<p>At the time of his departure, Laufenberg was overseeing Macquarie\u2019s in-house development and deployment of ChatMQ, the university\u2019s open source-based generative AI assistant for its 3500 staff members.<\/p>\n<p>ChatMQ is a multi-model approach to generative AI that currently allows Macquarie\u2019s staff to choose from OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT models, which are hosted in Microsoft\u2019s Azure AI Foundry cloud, and Anthropic\u2019s Claude Sonnet varieties which are hosted in AWS Bedrock.<\/p>\n<p>The university also expects to add Google\u2019s Gemini to ChatMQ.<\/p>\n<p>La Trobe vice-chancellor Professor Theo Farrell said Laufenberg\u2019s appointment marked the start of a new phase in its transformation to becoming an \u201cAI-first\u201d university.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the past two years, we have upskilled staff, built a vibrant community of practice, piloted high-impact use cases, and tested secure agentic AI systems,\u201d Farrell said at the time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Laufenberg\u2019s] appointment ensures we have the leadership capability to translate our AI ambition into sustained institutional impact for our students, staff and communities,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Macquarie University has appointed an interim head of AI following Phil Laufenberg\u2019s departure to take up a pro&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-565667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}