Keynote Speakers

As generative AI becomes embedded in everyday problem-solving, engineering education faces a defining question: How do we prepare engineers who can work with powerful technologies while remaining deeply human-centred, ethical, and socially responsible? This keynote reframes AI not as a replacement for human intelligence, but as a collaborative tool serving humanity. This keynote introduces the CAC Co-Intelligence Framework, a practical model that guides both students and educators toward meaningful and responsible engagement with AI.

Participants will examine how students are already using AI in design, analysis, and learning, and why simply restricting or encouraging AI use is insufficient. Instead, the keynote offers a practical model for helping learners distinguish between constructive, human-advancing uses of AI and uses that undermine learning, agency, or ethical responsibility. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies for embedding co-intelligence into engineering curricula, ensuring graduates are not only technically proficient, but also prepared to design solutions for people, communities, and the planet.

Dr Sasha Nikolic is an Associate Professor at the University of Wollongong, holding a PhD in Engineering Education and a BE in Telecommunications. With a diverse background spanning industry roles in retail, electronics manufacturing, and IT, he transitioned to the university sector in 2006. He is the President of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) and a Senior Fellow of the Wollongong Academy of Tertiary Teaching and Learning Excellence. A Senior IEEE Member, Sasha has held prominent IEEE governance roles across the NSW Section, Education Society and the Australia Council.

Sasha is internationally recognised for his leadership in engineering education, receiving numerous accolades including Australian Awards for University Teaching Citations (2012, 2019), University of Wollongong Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning Awards (2011, 2018, 2025), AAEE Awards (2019, 2023, 2025), the IEEE NSW Outstanding Volunteer Award (2024), the SEFI Best Paper Award (2024), and a IEEE Education Society Meritorious Service Award (2023). He has also contributed to impactful research on Generative AI and academic integrity, and champions laboratory learning as a space for developing uniquely human capabilities in an AI-enhanced education system.

A key focus of his recent work is the role of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in reshaping education. Sasha leads collaborative, multi-institutional research that examines GenAI’s impact on academic integrity, curriculum design, assessment authenticity, ethics, and the evolving role of educators. His work highlights how GenAI is not only a technological disruptor but a catalyst for reimagining teaching and learning practices across engineering and higher education. Through the Australasian Artificial Intelligence in Engineering Education Centre (AAIEEC), which he founded and currently leads as President, Sasha coordinates national workshops, policy reviews, and research clusters that provide holistic oversight of the risks, opportunities, and human-centric competencies essential for thriving in AI-augmented learning environments. He is also a sought-after speaker and consultant on GenAI in education, offering research-driven insights through keynote addresses, professional development workshops, and strategy sessions for educators, institutions, and policymakers.

In our current VUCA world, we as humanity, regardless of our background or education, are on this world together, and therefore we must also work together to jointly face our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future and resolve challenges by optimally combining our respective talents, irrespective of our backgrounds.

Over the last two decades, an increasing awareness has arisen that no single (academic) discipline, including engineering, can work in isolation as a discipline or in isolation from the world in which academic disciplines operate. Once seen as unacademic or even unscientific, inter- cross- and transdisciplinary approaches are now taking center stage for humanity to tackle these challenges.

To be able to do so, not only requires mutual understanding of each other by those taking part, but it also requires additional (non-discipline specific) competencies and skills. As stated in the 2025 SEFI Skills position paper, these transferable and transdisciplinary skills give our future engineering graduates the tools to be able to apply their disciplinary knowledge and skills in these new settings and contribute their part to create a better world and all who are in it.

In her keynote, Gillian Saunders-Smits - experienced engineer, engineering educator, engineering education researcher, and lead editor of the SEFI Handbook on Teaching Transferable Competencies and Skills in Engineering – shares how - by, thru and with humanity - we can better prepare our students with transferable skills for their future. She will do this by highlighting practical educational examples from across the globe, amassed in the handbook, a transdisciplinary, collaborative team effort of more than 140 authors from 5 continents that will be launched during this keynote.

Gillian Saunders-Smits is an Associate Professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands with over 25 years of experience in teaching engineering (aerospace, mechanics, research methodology, and robotics) using active learning and an avid engineering education researcher. In addition, she has held various educational leadership roles developing bachelor, master and online programmes at TU Delft. Her current research focuses on competencies and skills for future engineers and their implementation in curricula using active learning. She is one of the lead editors of the SEFI Handbook on Teaching Transferable Competencies and Skills in Engineering that will be launched at the SEFI 2026 Annual Conference in Prague.