Managing Laboratory Director
Neville Roach Laboratory (Kensington), Sydney

Dr Terry Percival was awarded a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and a PhD from the University of Sydney, in 1977 and 1985 respectively.  The first ten years of his research career was spent in the design and construction of microwave-receiving systems for radio telescopes, including the Fleurs Telescope, the Australia Telescope, and the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico.  He also worked at the National Measurement Laboratory performing research into high Tc superconductors, satellite navigation, and time and frequency standards.

In 1987, he joined OTC Australia, where he led research and development groups working on the development of submarine optical fibre communications systems and thin-route satellite communications systems including the development of a new international standard called Digital DAMANet.

He joined CSIRO in 1991 and led a research team working on broadband wireless communications systems and high speed wireless Local Area Networks (LANs). The resulting patented technology forms part of the IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN standard.  This technology was successfully commercialised via a start-up company called Radiata Communications, which was later acquired by Cisco Systems. During this time he was also a visiting professorial fellow at Macquarie University.

In 1996, Dr Percival established new mobile communications and telecommunications networking research groups at CSIRO.  Based upon this research, he performed numerous collaborative research projects with telecommunications carriers, end users, and equipment vendors.

In 2000, he created and was Director of the Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy (CeNTIE), which was successful in bidding for $14 million funding under the Advanced Networks Program to build the next generation research network in Australia with a roll-out cost of $44 million.  Projects under CeNTIE included the rollout of the trans-continental Gigabit Foundation Network, development of networked virtual reality surgical training systems, the deployment of a Film Post Production Research Network, programmable networking technology, and the deployment of a Virtual Critical Care system for remote emergency care in collaboration with Wentworth Area Health Service.

In June 2004 he joined National ICT Australia as the Director of the Sydney Research Laboratory at Kensington. In January 2007 he became NICTA's Managing Laboratory Director.