David Travers
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David John Travers is a businessman from Sydney, Australia.
Education[edit]
Travers attended Cleve Area School and then Flinders University and Harvard University. His family arrived in Australia from Kilkenny, Ireland and Normandy, France in 1848.[1] After five generations of farming, Travers' father encouraged him to leave the farm and obtain a tertiary education.[2]
Career[edit]
Travers began his career as a cadet journalist at Fairfax Media in 1988. He left in 1998, to become Chief of Staff to the South Australian Liberal Deputy Premier Hon Graham Ingerson. After Ingerson resigned for misleading Parliament, Travers won a job in the State's public service. When Labor Party leader Mike Rann became Premier, following the 2002 State Election, he tasked Travers with establishing Carnegie Mellon University, Australia. Travers moved to London in 2006 as Deputy Agent-General for South Australia working under Agents General Maurice de Rohan OBE and then Bill Muirhead.[3]
After meeting University College London Provost Malcolm Grant in early 2007, he convinced UCL to join CMU in establishing an overseas campus in Adelaide. In 2010, Sir Malcolm appointed Travers as both CEO of its new UCL Australia and a governor of its UCL's Qatar board in Doha. He quit UCL in early 2015[4] after the new Provost Michael Arthur (physician) unexpectedly announced plans to close the international campus program.
He is currently the chairman of Scope Global.[5] He was the founding chairman of Sundrop Farms, which brought private equity firm KKR into Australian horticulture in 2014.
Travers is a pioneer in the sector of agricultural technology having transferred technology, know-how and IP from the defence sector, and mainly generation four of distribute ledger and blockchain, and combining that with IoT, cloud and mobile, to provide a trusted, verifiable system where records are geolocated, time stamped and immutable to ensure commercial reproductability to agribusinesses on a global scale.[6]
Political views[edit]
Travers supports the deregulation of Australia's tertiary education sector[7] and has encouraged debate on the future possibility of nuclear power in Australia.[8] Travers has said that "nuclear energy must form part of the future [energy] solution, but gas and renewables must play a part in this transition, so politicians need to get serious, show some courage and take responsibility for leading this debate, not shutting it down."[9] Under Travers' leadership, UCL Australia's researchers investigated nuclear fuel leasing potential[10] and the possibility of nuclear submarines for Australia.[11] He believes that Australia should do more with its "natural advantages" including increasing "support for plant functional genome, GMO, nano manipulation of seeds, nano-technology for interactive agricultural chemicals, or chemical release packaging.".[9] He spent an unknown amount of time with the Silicon Quantum Computing company at UNSW.[citation needed]
Honours[edit]
Travers is a former Young South Australian of the Year and Young Australian of the Year finalist. News Limited listed him as one of Australia's top 40 future leaders.[12]
References[edit]
- ^ Swiggum, Sue. "Passenger List - Storm Cloud, Plymouth to Adelaide, 1858". www.theshipslist.com. Retrieved 7 October 2017.
- ^ Travers, David (22 December 2014). "Occasional Address, UniSA Graduation Ceremony Adelaide Convention Centre, 22 December 2014" (PDF). University of South Australia. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
- ^ "Mr David Travers". Home. Retrieved 24 August 2022.
- ^ "UCL's Adelaide boss leaves abruptly". www.theaustralian.com.au. 11 February 2015. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
- ^ "Our Board – Scope Global". www.scopeglobal.com. Retrieved 7 October 2017.
- ^ "Wine benefits from hi-tech skills | The Australian". 12 November 2020. Retrieved 14 July 2021.
- ^ Trounson, Andrew (9 July 2014). "UCL 'running ruler' over local expansion". The Australian. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
- ^ McGuire, Michael (28 July 2013). "Top 100 ideas to grow South Australia". The Advertiser. Retrieved 30 May 2015.
- ^ a b "The Critical Decade - The time for adaption is now". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- ^ "Inaugural UCL Research Tasting Night a great success!". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
- ^ "2014 annual report". www.ucl.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 23 June 2015. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
- ^ UniSA. "The University of South Australia: Home". www.unisa.edu.au. Retrieved 7 October 2017.