Distinguished Researcher
Canberra Research Laboratory

For my full biography and other information, please visit my homepage at RSISE in ANU. 

I was the first employee of NICTA.

In 2000, I chaired a Working Party of the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC) that recommended the urgent establishment of a publicly funded research organisation in Information and COmmunications Technologies. In early 2001, the government committed itself to that course, and announced a competition for approximately $130M. I led a bid team put together by the major partners, ANU, UNSW, ACT Government and NSW Government. In 2002, we were interviewed and in May 2002 it was announced that our proposal was the winner. I served as Interim CEO of NICTA until May 2003, when I became Chief Scientist. I finished as Chief Scientist in September 2006 and became Distinguished Researcher. 

Since October 2005, I have led a project from the NICTA side between DSTO and NICTA. This project, SWARM, for short, is studying the use of formations of Unmanned Airborne Vehicles, especially for target localization. The project scope ranges from dealing with operational problems, such as what should happen when GPS connections are lost, and how should one maintain formation shape of slow vehicles being buffeted by wind, to more fundamental problems, such as what variables need to be sensed and what need to be controlled to ensure that a formation moves as a cohesive whole, with each vehicle generating its own controls with very little message-passing between vehicles.

My NICTA colleagues in this project are Baris Fidan, Guoqiang Mao and Brad Yu and the main DSTO scientists with whom we are working are Sam Drake, Hatem Hmam, Garry Newsam and Anthony Finn.