Scientific Director
Canberra Laboratory

Professor Bob Williamson is the Scientific Director at NICTA. In this role he is responsible for the oversight of NICTA’s research. This includes:

• Representing NICTA in external forums and promoting and publicising research in general 
• Development and promulgation of policies and procedures relating to research management 
• On-going review of research quality Chairing the Research Management Coordination Committee (RMCC) 
• Advising the Chief Executive Officer through the Research Strategy Group on strategic research directions 
• Monitoring ethical standards and research quality including quality of research appointments 
• Interacting with the Project Management Office to ensure efficient research management processes.

Professor Williamson received a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the Queensland University of Technology in 1984 and a Masters of Engineering Science (Electrical Engineering) from the University of Queensland in 1986. In 1990 he obtained a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Queensland.

He joined the Australian National University as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Systems Engineering in 1990 and held a series of appointments before becoming a professor and head of the Computer Sciences Laboratory, Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering at the Australian National University.

From 2003 to early 2006 Professor Williamson was the Director of NICTA’s Canberra Research Laboratory. In 2006 he was appointed as NICTA's Scientific Director.

Professor Williamson was  previously Vice President of the Association for Computational Learning Theory and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Machine Learning Research.

He is an advisory board member of the Australian Communications Research Network, a director of Epicorp, a member of the advisory board of the National Institute of Informatics (japan) and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. He was a member of the Australian Research Council Mathematics, Information and Communications Sciences Publications Advisory Panel from 2002 to 2004.

His scientific interests include signal processing and machine learning. His publication list can be found at http://axiom.anu.edu.au/~williams/pubs-standalone.html

email: Bob.Williamson@nicta.com.au