NICTA-developed programming course for secondary students wins iAward, plus Merit award for NICTA femtocell modem

An online programming course for high school students, developed by NICTA and the University of Sydney, has won the e-learning category of the prestigious Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) iAwards. In addition to the win, NICTA’s Canberra Research Laboratory’s InterfereX team won a Merit award in the Research and Development category of the iAwards.

Dr John Judge, NICTA Senior Research Engineer, accepted the e-learning iAward at a ceremony held at the Crown Palladium in Melbourne last night. “I am really excited to accept this award on behalf of NICTA and the University of Sydney,” he said. “We developed the embedded programming course to encourage students to develop software that can make an impact in the real world. It is a great way for them to learn important programming skills and have fun at the same time.”

By inspiring students to learn about ICT in an exciting way, this award-winning programming course is helping solve a difficult and important problem in information and communications technology – the supply of skilled IT professionals for the digital economy.

The five-week course is one of three programming streams offered in the annual National Computer Science School (NCSS) Challenge. It is supported by industry cluster Embedded Systems Australia (ESA) and sponsored by Altium (Gold sponsor), the NSW Department of Industry and Investment and Cargowise.

The InterfereX team received a Merit award in the Research and Development category of the iAwards for their wireless femtocell modem demonstrator.

Femtocells are indoor wireless access points for cellular wireless that connect to the telephone network via a home or office broadband connection. Radio interference from other 3G connections is recognised as one of the top issues in femtocell networks. This technology, developed for the WCDMA standard, addresses such interference.

NICTA InterfereX Project Leader Dr Mark Reed accepted the award. “I am thrilled to win this Merit award,” said Dr Reed. “Years of research went into developing the modem and I am confident that the technology will find a prominent place in the emerging femtocell market.” InterfereX has sought to pre-empt one of the key emerging technical issues with femtocell deployment, namely interference. “Australia’s NBN promises to massively increase backhaul bandwidth from desktops, but we now live very much in a mobile world so connecting from your 3G and 4G wireless devices to the NBN remains a critical missing link,” said Dr Reed.

The iAwards is the AIIA’s innovation awards program. The AIIA hosts the iAwards as the Australian member of the Asia-Pacific ICT Alliance Awards (APICTA).

Document(s):NICTA-developed programming course for secondary students wins iAwar, plus Merit award for NICTA femtocell modem
Contact: Dorothy Kennedy
Ph: +61 2 9376 2098 or +61 488 229 687
Email: dorothy.kennedy@nicta.com.au