The Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing is dedicated to inspiring a fascination in the Universe through research and education. It runs one of the world's largest Internet courses in Astronomy and has public outreach facilities in Parkes NSW, Sydney Observatory, Melbourne Museum (the Virtual Room), Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) and South Korea. It also possesses a large supercomputing cluster comprising 350 Xeon and Pentium 4 processors with a theoretical peak of 2.0 64 bit Teraflops.
Michael began his career as an application programmer for Tooheys Limited, a large multinational Australian corporation, where he worked for six and a half years on commercial, industrial systems and networking applications. He then moved on to the network integration company Network Solutions Australia, designing and supporting data networks for large corporate and government customers for a further six and a half years. Michael joined Cisco as a Systems Engineer (SE) in 1993, and was soon promoted to SE Manager shortly after his appointment. With the rapid growth of Cisco Systems, Michael evolved to a Senior Consulting Engineer, solving business communications problems for large enterprise, government and service provider customers.
In May 2000, in recognition of his technical leadership and achievements, Michael was awarded the position of Distinguished Systems Engineer - the highest field position for Systems Engineers within Cisco Systems. Now in his 12th year with Cisco Systems, Michael focuses in developing solutions for Cisco carrier and service provider customers, specializing in access network architectures and technologies and Lawful Interception services.
Sean originally joined Intel Corporation in Folsom, California, as a design engineer on the Intel 486 DX4100 in 1992. Two years later, he moved to Intel's flash memory team as a technical marketing engineer, working to define a new form factor for flash memory cards. In 1996, Sean moved to Singapore to help establish Intel's channel programs within Asia-Pacific emerging markets such as Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Pakistan.
He joined the Intel Australia channel marketing team in 1998, supporting Intel Architecture products (processors, servers, mobile, motherboards) and training local channel members on the latest technologies from Intel. Sean has four US patents for flash memory card design and a USB pager. He has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in Indiana, USA.
Now in the role of Manager, Research and Development, in the new technology analysis group of Optus Networks Division, she has been a user, builder, manager and researcher of Internet networks and services since 1986. She has been an Optus employee since 1998, during which time she has played a key technical and management role in a number of major Internet projects. Prior to that she was data network manager at Vodafone, and earlier spent many years in the university sector building and operating campus networks, primarily within UTS and AARNet's NSW RNO. She holds a bachelors degree in physics and a masters in telecommunications and information systems engineering, and is currently completing a graduate diploma in management.
His current research interests are:
* Surgical robotics: he was the first person in Australia and sixth in the
world to perform a telesurgical procedure in 1998. He has been working with
the College and the University of Western Sydney on remote laparoscopic
surgical procedures.
* High performance computing: he is a member of the Management Committee for
the Penrith Node of the New South Wales High Performance Computing (AC3)
Collaboration. This group is seeking to develop a virtual environment based
on parallel processing systems as a specific target within the AC3 boundaries.
* Hapto-Visual environments: as part of the Skills Laboratory Development
and research undertaken by the CSIRO for the use of Hapto-Visual environments
in surgical education, he is an active participant with the eHealth Group of
CSIRO, working in particular with the CMIS group at CSIRO at ANU in Canberra
and the TIPS group at Marsfield in Sydney.
* CeNTIE: he is a member of the medical advisory group to this endeavour,
and is seeking, in his Area Director's role, to develop broad-band Internet
capabilities to support smaller hospitals which are unable to obtain the
critical mass necessary to maintain and deliver appropriate levels of skills
in smaller hospitals, both district and rural.
* The ViCCU Project: he is currently supervising in part a PhD student in
Medicine at U Sydney working on Hapto-visual and Virtual Reality tools in
Surgical Training. He has been asked to assess projects in this field both
locally and from the University of Singapore.
Paul spent 25 years in scientific-based computation, the last twelve years of which involved supercomputing. He was Head of IT with the Biomolecular Research Institute where he built and managed several supercomputing facilities, and IT Manager at CSIRO Division of Molecular Science. He was one of CSIRO's most senior divisional IT managers. Paul has an international reputation in high performance computing, having presented invited papers at conferences in the UK, Europe, Japan and USA.
Of particular significance amongst the consulting projects undertaken was Robin's role with the ACT Electricity and Water Authority in leading development of the TransACT broadband initiative from a blank sheet of paper to a fully funded company in 2000, later serving as Chief Architect. TransACT has been recognised internationally as Australia's leading broadband network, delivering a voice, data and video services over 50 Mbps connections to tens of thousands of customers in Canberra.
Since 2002 Robin has been consulting in the fields of broadband infrastructure and services throughout Australia as well as in overseas countries such as the UK, Belgium, India, New Zealand and Canada. Increasingly projects are centred on the challenge of finding viable fibre-to-the-home models. Robin is one of Australia's leading broadband visionaries and practitioners.
Simon graduated from, and then worked at, the University of Adelaide in the 80's. He was one of the folk who helped to build version 1 of AARNet while at the University. He contributed to the development of IETF standards in the areas of audio and video transport, and built one of the world's first SNMP controlled Internet toasters. He left the University to found Internode in 1991 and later founded Agile in 1997.
In September 2004, Simon won the Bulletin Magazine 'Smart 100' prize in the IT&T category. When he isn't building broadband thingies, Simon is most likely to be found flying his sailplane.
In his current position René coordinates with Canadian regional advanced networks on network design and technical policies and oversees the engineering and day-day operational management of the CA*net 4 network infrastructure and its operations centre.
Tony has established his own consulting business, Capital Hill Consulting Pty Ltd, that provides high-level advice on large-scale research funding, strategic research management and challenging collaboration issues. He was formerly Manager of the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Program in the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. He has been involved in strategic research management since 1991. His 20-year career in the Australian Public Service has spanned seven Commonwealth agencies, including Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and working for Ministers on both sides of politics.
His academic study includes economics and geography at the undergraduate level, and a Masters of Environmental Studies. In 1994, he completed a Graduate Certificate in Public Sector Management.
In 1996 she helped set up ISOC-AU and was on the board for five years, two of them as President, and since 2002 has been Executive Director of the Society. She maintains the ISOC-AU website, and is the author of Redbill: From Pearls to Peace - the Life and Times of a Remarkable Lugger (2004, Fremantle Arts Centre Press).
Mr Lee became Vice-President for Business Development, KT Philippines in 1995, involved in expansion programs for Filipino telecommunications companies. In 2000 he became Director for Internet Business Planning, Internet Business Center, which set up KT's global network, providing services to multinational companies and interconnection with foreign ISPs.
In 2002 Mr Lee was appointed Assistant Vice-President, Global Business Center, managing overseas investment, subsidiaries and offices, and in 2004 he moved to the Management Research Lab, working on research in policy and regulatory issues.
In 1994 he joined CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences as a business development manager, and regularly consulted to industry and government in the area of internet commerce. Philip left CSIRO in 2000 to become CEO of ac3, a startup company providing high performance computing and data centre services to industry, commerce, government and academia.
Early in 2004, the Australian Film Television and Radio School appointed Pesce as Lecturer in Interactive Media, and early in 2005 the master's program in Interactive Media, which he oversees, admitted its first student. Later this year, Pesce's sixth book will be published. hyperpeople explores the explosive superdistribution of digital media through file-sharing networks, which, when combined with the growing power of mobile digital social networks, will completely transform human communication.
Professor Safaei is also the Program Manager of Smart Networks and Intelligent Environment program at the Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre. Before joining the University of Wollongong, he was the Manager of Internetworking Architecture and Services Section in Telstra Research Laboratories. His primary research interest is to design large-scale telecommunication networks that can adapt autonomously to dynamic characteristics of applications, cost, customer demand, or any other critical influence from outside.
Later he became Chief Executive Officer for the Cooperative Research Centre in Advanced Computational Systems, and subsequently, Director of the Telecommunications & Information Technology Research Institute at the University of Wollongong. Professor Williamson has held visiting appointments at various universities in Europe and the USA, and has published widely in the fields of telecommunications, signal processing and control. He has served on various CRC Boards and advisory committees including the Information Industries Development Board of the ACT Government and the National Advisory Committee of Item3 Pty Ltd.