Media Release

Thursday, 2 September 2004

Michael Haddy, a 32-year-old South Australian IT professional who works at the cutting edge in the development of battlefield systems, is the inaugural winner of the EDS Defence Scholarship.

Worth $8,000, the scholarship will pay the tuition fee for Mr Haddy to undertake post-graduate studies with the University of Adelaide's Education Centre for Innovation and Commercialisation (ECIC) that could lead to a Masters qualification.

Mr Haddy's company, Innovation Science http://www.innovationscience.com/ works closely with Australia's Defence Science & Technology Organisation (DSTO) in Adelaide.

It has won export defence contracts in Canada and the United Kingdom where it is helping to evaluate new and replacement combat systems for its Ministry of Defence, as well as for the Australian Navy.

Mr Haddy said the scholarship had come at an ideal time for Innovation Science because it planned to launch a product on the mass market over the next 12 to 18 months.

"The University is allowing me to use this as a real-life commercialisation project, so the scholarship will be much more than an academic exercise," he said.

Scholarship selection panel chair Vice-Admiral David Shackleton (Retired) said Mr Haddy was a very worthy winner of the scholarship.

"Here we have a young South Australian software systems architect who has already shown great initiative and enterprise in bringing his skills to bear in the defence sector.

"This scholarship will enable him to undertake further studies that are practical and relevant to building business success out of brilliant ideas - which are always needed in today's high-tech world of defence systems."