Macquarie University appoints interim AI chief

Macquarie University has appointed an interim head of AI following Phil Laufenberg’s departure to take up a pro vice-chancellorship with Victoria’s La Trobe University.

Image credit: Macquarie University.

The university has temporarily appointed the technical lead for its AI transformation program, Richard Watts-Seale, to the role, a spokesperson for the university said.

The spokesperson said that Macquarie’s AI adoption is not expected to be impacted by Laufenberg’s departure.

Currently, Macquarie’s chief information and digital officer, Jonathan Covell, and Eric Knight, its deputy vice-chancellor of people and operations, provide the university’s overall AI strategy, the spokesperson said.

“Our AI program continues as planned, and we have new pilots afoot,” Macquarie University’s spokesperson said.

“We are grateful for the leadership and work Laufenberg has shown during his time at Macquarie. He has made a positive contribution to the University over the past 18 months in the role and we wish him well in his new role at La Trobe University,” the spokesperson added.

La Trobe lured Laufenberg from Macquarie with an offer of a pro vice-chancellorship position focused on the technology.

Joining La Trobe from early next month, Laufenberg will take on dual titles: pro vice-chancellor artificial intelligence and chief artificial intelligence officer.

The titles reflect his twin responsibilities overseeing both its strategy and technical deployment.

At the time of his departure, Laufenberg was overseeing Macquarie’s in-house development and deployment of ChatMQ, the university’s open source-based generative AI assistant for its 3500 staff members.

ChatMQ is a multi-model approach to generative AI that currently allows Macquarie’s staff to choose from OpenAI’s ChatGPT models, which are hosted in Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry cloud, and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet varieties which are hosted in AWS Bedrock.

The university also expects to add Google’s Gemini to ChatMQ.

La Trobe vice-chancellor Professor Theo Farrell said Laufenberg’s appointment marked the start of a new phase in its transformation to becoming an “AI-first” university.

“Over the past two years, we have upskilled staff, built a vibrant community of practice, piloted high-impact use cases, and tested secure agentic AI systems,” Farrell said at the time.

“[Laufenberg’s] appointment ensures we have the leadership capability to translate our AI ambition into sustained institutional impact for our students, staff and communities," he added.