Shoal Group’s Emma Comino wins 2025 John Mitchell Early Career Innovator Award
Shoal Group is proud to announce that Modelling & Simulation Analyst, Emma Comino, has been awarded the 2025 John Mitchell Early Career Innovator Award by Simulation Australasia. Presented last night at the Australasian Simulation Congress Awards Dinner & Presentations, the award recognises outstanding innovation in modelling and simulation by an early career professional that delivers benefit to the person’s workplace, co-workers, and capabilities, to create lasting value for industry and end users.
Since graduating with a Bachelor of Mathematics (Honours) from the University of Queensland in 2021, Emma has made outstanding contributions to the modelling and simulation profession, playing a pivotal role in advancing simulation capability at Shoal Group. Her most notable innovation is leading the development of the Defence Asset Placement SIMulator (DAPSIM), a Python-based modelling tool that applies mathematical optimisation to various defence scenarios. DAPSIM enables simulation-based evaluations, improving both the speed and effectiveness of decision-making without the cost of physical deployment.
Emma’s technical achievements are reinforced by a strong academic foundation. She has co-authored several peer-reviewed papers, including:
- ‘Optimising Asset Placement in IAMD’, presented at the 2025 Australian International Aerospace Congress (AIAC21) in Melbourne
- ‘Koopman Expectation for Range Safety Assurance’, also presented at AIAC21
- ‘Optimising the unpredictability of a ballistic missile’, presented at the International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM2023).
In addition to software innovation and academic research, Emma has made significant contributions to Defence client projects, working on software architecture, data modelling, containerisation, and user interface design. Her work is helping to accelerate the development of data-driven tools and simulation models critical to Australia’s sovereign defence capability.
“This award is well deserved recognition of Emma’s talent and leadership,” says Shoal CEO, Shaun Wilson. “Emma represents the next generation of systems thinkers; curious, highly capable, technically minded and purpose driven. Her work is already shaping the future of defence simulation.”
Emma’s award adds to Shoal’s history of excellence in modelling and simulation. Shoal was previously awarded the 2021 Simulation Australasia Project Innovation Award. Two Shoalers have also received individual Simulation Australasia honours; Jawahar Bhalla won the 2021 Ray Page Lifetime Simulation Achievement Award, and Mat Gardiner (now a former Shoaler), was the 2021 recipient of the John Mitchell Early Career Innovator Award.
About Shoal
Shoal is complex systems design company. We use Systems Engineering combined with Modelling, Simulation and Analysis to help our clients define, analyse, decide, optimise, and deliver technology-intensive projects in complex environments across Defence, Space, Transport, Energy and Infrastructure.
More: shoalgroup.com
Media contact
Shaun Wilson
CEO and Founder, Shoal Group
+61 438 394 288
[email protected]
