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Dr Tom Townsend

Dr Tom Townsend

Senior Lecturer
UNSW Canberra
School of Professional Studies

Tom is an experienced IT leader who is passionate about technology and higher education. With 20 years’ experience in the higher education sector, predominantly in professional roles and with experience as a consultant, working across federal government, Tom has established himself as an adaptable and dependable IT leader. Tom brings this professional experience to his academic role, allowing him to cut across a number of disciplines through his experience developing strategies and providing broad technical and architectural advice, leading teams, and collaborating effectively to digital transformations and positive organisational outcomes.

Some career highlights include designing and leading a program of work to help Australian National University recover from a serious cyber incident, leading the development of a wide variety of strategies for Australian universities and federal government departments, and the successful delivery of several transformation programs.
  • Books | 2010
    Townsend TG, 2010, Microsoft Hyper-V Tfm
  • Journal articles | 2023
    Yang S; Barlow M; Townsend T; Liu X; Samarasinghe D; Lakshika E; Moy G; Lynar T; Turnbull B, 2023, 'Reinforcement Learning Agents Playing Ticket to Ride-A Complex Imperfect Information Board Game With Delayed Rewards', IEEE Access, 11, pp. 60737 - 60757,
    Journal articles | 2021
    Samarasinghe Widana Arachchige D; Barlow M; Lakshika E; Lynar T; Moustafa N; Townsend T; Turnbull B, 2021, 'A Data Driven Review of Board Game Design and Interactions of Their Mechanics', IEEE Access, 9, pp. 114051 - 114069,
    Journal articles | 2017
    Townsend T; Mohammadian M, 2017, 'Implementing green IT through virtualisation: A case study', Journal of Telecommunication, Electronic and Computer Engineering, 9, pp. 51 - 56
  • Conference Papers | 2019
    Townsend T; Mohammadian M; John B, 2019, 'Efficient Use of Data Centres-Factors Affecting Service Availability in Large Organisations based on IT and Data Centre Selection', in 2019 4th International Conference on Information Systems and Computer Networks, ISCON 2019, pp. 773 - 781,

Tom prides himself on broad experience and a cross-disciplinary foundation which enables an experienced backed ability to think ‘outside the box’. From a research perspective Tom has experience with both qualitative and quantitative research methods which have been valuable in an academic and professional context. Between 2020 and 2023, Tom worked as a part of a cross-disciplinary research team on two projects, “From Boardgame to Wargame – Game Design for Real-World AI-Enabled Analysis” and “Model Abstraction for Military Wargaming”. The projects have several aspects, bridging AI (Reinforcement Learning), Simulation, Serious Games, Wargaming, and drawing in aspects from across Computer Science and Design Science. 

Tom's PhD research took a Design Science approach to explore the relationship between IT infrastructure and data centres within the context of services availability. Presenting a series of models and recommendations for the deployment of highly available IT systems by taking a mixed method approach including modelling, scenarios, semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis.

My Teaching

Tom is an Education Focused (EF) academic in the field of Cyber Security. Currently teaching mostly into online postgraduate programs, namely a Graduate Certificate in Cyber Security Leadership and the Master of Cyber Security (Online). In addition to teaching, Tom is actively involved in program leadership as well as course development. Tom most enjoys engaging in the intersection within Cyber Security between Computer Science, Social Sciences and Management.