He measured the edge, then had to command across it.

Dr Anthony Walker fought structural fires and commanded crews through 40°C-plus Canberra summers, earning a PhD in thermal physiology while still operational and placing core-temperature sensors inside his own crews. A Churchill Fellow with thirty-seven peer-reviewed publications, he has directed risk across an eighty-billion-dollar Defence program and now leads Optimised Human Performance, the consulting practice behind the keynote.

Dr Anthony Walker is Founder and Managing Director of Optimised Human Performance, a Canberra-based specialist consultancy delivering human systems integration, fatigue risk management, psychosocial hazard management, physical employment standards, ergonomics and process redesign to Defence, aviation, emergency services and resources organisations.

He holds a PhD in thermal and occupational physiology, with 37 research outputs, nearly 600 citations and an h-index of 12, and was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2016. Alongside that research record he brings 15 years of operational firefighting experience, including station officer command with ACT Fire and Rescue, which grounds his technical work in the realities of command decision-making under load.

Through The Crucible Method, OHP's proprietary Scan, Sprint and Build methodology, he works with organisations to engineer the human into systems that perform under pressure. He is a member of the national advisory board of Tactical and Occupational Performance Australia and is procurable through eight Australian Government panels.