Professor Richi Nayak is an internationally recognised data scientist with expertise in data and text mining (NLP), machine learning, and web intelligence. She is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Leader of the Complex Data Analysis Program at the Centre for Data Science, Queensland University of Technology.

Professor Nayak has successfully managed over 25 industry-related projects, attracting a total income exceeding $15M. Professor Nayak has a successful track-record of combining knowledge in her diverse areas of expertise to solve real-world problems encountered in the Social and Biological Sciences as well as Engineering. She has delivered innovative automated data-driven systems, built upon novel machine learning algorithms, which have been adopted by both industry and Government.

Professor Nayak was awarded the 2016 WiT (Women in Technology) Infotech Outstanding Achievement Award for exemplary service to the field of data analytics.