About

An advisor and pracademic. Hands-on in the classroom and the boardroom. Across code, design and policy.

Dr. Michael D'Rosario

Background

I'm an innovation-sector leader and academic with over 20 years across IT consulting, ModelOps, and executive education, including roles at the University of Adelaide, Deakin University, the University of Oxford and the University of Melbourne. I hold a PhD in Innovation Policy from Deakin University, was awarded the Alfred Deakin Medal for academic excellence, and have led postgraduate and MBA programs in strategy, economics, leadership, AI and quantitative research methods.

I'm a pracademic by design: an advisor who still writes the code, builds the model, and shapes the policy brief, not just the strategy around it. That hands-on habit runs alongside a research practice, co-authoring papers, submissions and curricula with colleagues across universities, government and industry, so the frameworks I teach are the same ones I ship.

My work sits across three practices that reinforce each other: building software that performs at the highest standard, designing the ethical and governance scaffolding around it, and teaching the reasoning behind both. I've carried that combination into organisations where the cost of getting it wrong isn't hypothetical: internet governance bodies, anti-corruption watchdogs, legal services, and family-violence research, including my current work leading research into the risks AI and agentic systems pose to children and vulnerable people.

Qualifications

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning

PhD, Econometrics

MA, Philosophy

Graduate Certificate in International and Community Development

Graduate Certificate in Higher Education

Bachelor of Commerce (Economics), Honours

Diploma of Sustainability (Sustainability Reporting & Measurement)

Asialink Fellowship

Approach

Hands-on, not just advisory

I still write the code and build the models myself, so the advice I give is grounded in what's actually feasible to ship.

Ethics as a design constraint, not a review step

Ethical review works best as an input to architecture and product decisions, not a compliance pass at the end.

Policy and engineering, spoken fluently in both directions

Translating between policy intent and technical implementation so neither side loses what actually matters.

Co-authoring, not consulting from a distance

Papers, submissions and curricula built alongside the people who'll use them, not handed down after the fact.

Teaching as a way of stress-testing ideas

Classroom and client work inform each other. The questions research students, postgraduates and executive learners at Oxford and LSE ask sharpen the frameworks I bring to clients, and vice versa.

Have a project, talk, or program in mind?

Available for software development, ethical systems design, speaking, training and consulting.

Get in touch