People

People

The School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, features a diverse team of academics, professional staff, and adjunct professors. Combining academic expertise with real-world experience, our team ensures programs remain relevant, impactful, and aligned with industry and academic standards.

The School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, features a diverse team of academics, professional staff, and adjunct professors. Combining academic expertise with real-world experience, our team ensures programs remain relevant, impactful, and aligned with industry and academic standards.

Meet our people

The School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, features a diverse team of academics, professional staff, and adjunct professors. Combining academic expertise with real-world experience, our team ensures programs remain relevant, impactful, and aligned with industry and academic standards.

School Executive team

Kok-Leong Ong

Kok-Leong Ong

Interim Dean, Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain

  • Location City Campus Australia
  • Department College of Business and Law
Kok-Leong Ong is a Professor of Business Analytics in the College of Business & Law, RMIT University. He is currently working on a range of analytics projects making data actionable through analytics-2-business translation, automation, and applications. Kok-Leong Ong is currently a Professor of Business Analytics in the College of Business & Law, RMIT University. His research focuses on analytics and machine learning translation into practice within different business verticals, and the development of new techniques as required to meet individual business needs. As a result, Kok-Leong's research has had a strong focus on impact, where many of his works were ranked by Altmetric to be in the top 25% and 5% of research in their respective domains. He has received over $1.4m in research grants and serves in various conferences related to analytics, including the prestigious KDD and PAKDD. Kok-Leong is also well-known for his strategic leadership in programs. He was one of the members that started Australia's first degree in Business Analytics and led the development of La Trobe Business School's foray into Business Analytics from 2015 to 2019. From 2020, he contributed to the Business School's digital transformation program before joining RMIT in September 2021. He has won several teaching and service awards, including two VC's Teaching Award. In 2021, he was one of the four Australia-based academics to be named the Leading Data Academics by CDO Magazine. Check out Kok-Leong's research on Google Scholar, or connect with him on LinkedIn. My work focused on data and how it can be used to solve problems through the lens of using technology to translate data into actionable systems or workflows. Through data, I have worked on a range of vertical domains, including e-Commerce, public health, sports, urban studies, marketing and learning.
Professor Gillian Vesty

Professor Gillian Vesty

Deputy Dean Learning and Teaching, Accounting, Info Sys & Supply Chain; CoBL Assurance of Learning Coordinator

  • Location City Campus Australia
  • Department Accounting, Info Sys & Supply Chain
Gillian Vesty is a Professor and Deputy Dean L&T in the School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.  She is a member of CPA Australia, a Board Member of the Institute of Management Accountants, Australia and New Zealand and teaches in the field of management accounting.  With a healthcare sector background and 20 years’ experience as a Registered Nurse, Gillian’s research interests seek to align accounting with social impact research that address health and wellbeing challenges, taking a value-based healthcare perspective. Gillian is on the editorial board of Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal and is an active Board Member of Games for Change, Asia Pacific. Gillian’s work demonstrates that serious games are a powerful vehicle for addressing wicked problems and provide an important nexus between teaching and research.  Gillian has been involved in the design and development of a number of serious games, used across RMIT recently recognised by 2024 PieOneer Awards. 
Professor Babak Abbasi

Professor Babak Abbasi

Deputy Dean, Research & Innovation

  • Location City Campus Australia
  • Department Accounting, Info Sys & Supply Chain
Professor Babak Abbasi's research focuses on industry‐motivated quantitative modeling and decision making under uncertainty applied to health care delivery improvement, supply chain coordination, resources allocation, service operations management, and manufacturing. He was the recipient of RMIT Research Impact Award (Enterprise) in 2016 and RMIT Award for Excellence – Industry Engagement in Graduate Research in 2020. Professor Babak's teaching and research is in the area of Business Analytics, Decision Sciences, Operations Research, Machine Learning, Operations Management and Optimisation. His research investigates leveraging the broader context in mathematical modelling, machine learning and stochastic optimisation to improve decisions making in the businesses and not-for-profit organisations. He has advanced optimisation models and solution algorithms for practical problems such as inventory decisions in blood management, resource allocation in hospital including intensive care units (ICUs) and emergency departments, inventory transshipment decisions, resource allocation for emergency responses, allocation and scheduling of caregivers for home healthcare systems, and donor communication decisions in charities and not-for-profit organisations. Professor Babak's research has been published in reputable journals such as Decision Sciences, European Journal of Operational Research and INFORMS Journal of Applied Analytics. He is currently an associate editor for the Decision Sciences journal. Professor Babak has been involved in software development including: - SPSA-FSR (spFSR package in R): Feature Selection and Ranking by Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/spFSR/index.html). Developed by: Vural Aksakalli, Babak Abbasi, Yong KaiWong, Zeren D. Yenice- Date 2018 - It had over 8600 downloads till Sept 2020. - Teaching Game - Empty Container Relocation Problem. Developed by Babak Abbasi and Jaehyun Shin. Industry Experience The nature of Professor Babak's research is industry‐motivated and data-driven. He has worked with several industry partners including Australian Red Cross Blood Life, KPMG, The City of Melbourne, Geoscience Australia, Fonterra, and The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. Awards 2020 RMIT Award for Excellence; Industry Engagement in Graduate Research Award date: 2020 Recipients: Babak Abassi RMIT University Research Impact Award (Enterprise) Award date: 2016 Recipients: Babak Abassi Endeavour Fellowship Award Award date: 2009 Recipients: Babak Abassi Public and media engagements 2020 We modelled how a COVID vaccine roll-out would work. Heres what we found, The Conversation, 30th Nov 2020. Viewed more than 95k. 2020 Planning may cut late evacuation bushfire death toll. Australian Forests and Timber, 1st Nov 2016.
Associate Professor Meredith Tharapos

Associate Professor Meredith Tharapos

Head of Department, Accounting & Financial Planning

  • Location City Campus Australia
  • Department Accounting, Info Sys & Supply Chain
Meredith is an Associate Professor and Head of the Accounting Department at RMIT University.  Meredith’s research is broadly concerned with behavioural issues within the field of accounting, and includes educational, cultural and accountability aspects. Her research interests include cultural diversity management, student satisfaction, graduate employability, transnational education and accountability. Meredith’s award-winning student-centred teaching approach, underpinned by her research surrounding cultural intelligence, is based around the generation of a supportive and inclusive learning environment. She is passionate about creating active, applied and authentic educational experiences for her students. Meredith's teaching has been recognised through the receipt of numerous awards including an RMIT University Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning and an Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.   Meredith is the Australian Chair of the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ) Accounting Education Special Interest Group and was a previous convenor of the RMIT Accounting Educators’ Conference for six years. She holds editorial roles on several international accounting education journals. Meredith is an active member of accounting professional bodies CPA Australia and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CAANZ), and a fellow of CPA Australia.
Dr. Huan Vo-Tran

Dr. Huan Vo-Tran

Head of Department, Information Systems

  • Location City Campus Australia
  • Department Accounting, Info Sys & Supply Chain
Paul Howard James Childerhouse

Paul Howard James Childerhouse

Head of Department, Logistics and Supply Chain Management

  • Location City Campus Australia
  • Department Accounting, Info Sys & Supply Chain
Paul heads up the supply chain and logistics department at RMIT University. His current research focusses on supply chain network resilience and sustainability. Dr Childerhouse is best known for his research into demand chain management, supply chain uncertainty and integration. His empirical data collection and auditing approach has provided him with first-hand experience across a range of sectors, including construction, pharmaceutical, retail, automotive, pulp and paper, health, 3PL and food processing. Supply chain sustainability has become a major area of focus with several studies into the transformation of food supply chains in Southeast Asian and Australian. Paul has published over 60 peer reviewed articles in leading journals.
Adam Berryman

Adam Berryman

Senior Manager, Planning and Operations

Department of Accounting and Financial Planning

Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics

Department of Logistics and Supply Chain Management

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Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

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