Dr Alex Zelinsky's scientific career includes working as a computer scientist, a systems engineer and a roboticist. His career spans innovation, science and technology, research and development, commercial start-ups and education. As Chief Defence Scientist he leads the Defence Science and Technology program within the Department of Defence.

Prior to joining Defence, Dr Zelinsky was Group Executive for Information Sciences at the CSIRO. Dr Zelinsky was Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Seeing Machines, a high-technology company developing computer vision systems.