STEM Careers | Alex Rohl - Data Scientist

Alex always knew that he wanted to do something involving maths, he just wasn’t quite sure what. He completed internships in various sectors—energy, health, mining and even astrophysics— but it was only when he was placed in the Cyber Mission Assurance team at DSTG as part of the Defence Graduate Program that things really resonated.

In his role, Alex supports Defence’s ability to anticipate, withstand, recover from and adapt to compromises of its military systems that use, or are enabled by, cyber resources.

His work uses machine learning to ensure that military activities and missions can prevail through a cyberattack, keeping Australia one step ahead of its adversaries.

A particularly enjoyable aspect of his work is the fact that the video game, Artemis: Space Bridge Simulator, provides an ideal platform on which to test some of his ideas by using the player data captured by the network.

One of the best things about his role is working in a multi-disciplinary team.

‘The people in my team come from a wide range of backgrounds. We have people with maths degrees like myself, people with physics degrees, computer science degrees and people with backgrounds in cyber security.

‘It’s a huge mix of research areas coming together to achieve a common goal. The passion that each person brings to this problem is fantastic.’