Dr Nadia Court is the inaugural Director of the Semiconductor Sector Service Bureau (S3B). Until recently, Nadia was the Technical Director of the Research and Prototype Foundry, the University of Sydney’s micro- and nano-fabrication facility and the Sydney Hub of the NSW Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF). Nadia has worked in various roles with ANFF since 2012, both at UNSW and the University of Sydney. Prior to this Nadia spent several years working in the UK on printed electronics and optical communication technologies for the defence industry.
Dr Skellern worked in radioastronomy for 10 years, taught and researched electronics at Sydney and Macquarie Universities for 16 years and, concurrently for seven years, was a Member of Technical Staff and Visiting Academic at HP Labs. He came to prominence in the IT sector through Radiata Inc, which he co-founded in 1997 to build wireless LAN chips based on research he initiated and led at Macquarie University in collaboration with the CSIRO. Radiata developed the world’s first IEEE 802.11a High Speed WiFi chips. Radiata was acquired in 2001 by Cisco Systems, where he was Technology Director of the WLAN Business Unit, which grew to $1B annual revenue using the Radiata team chips.
He was CEO for six years from 2005 of NICTA, Australia’s ~700-person ICT national research centre (now part of CSIRO’s Data61 Group). he holds a holds BSc, BE (Hons) and PhD degrees from The University of Sydney, and an Honorary Doctor of Science from Macquarie University.
In 2012, he was recognised as an Officer in the Order of Australia in 2012 for distinguished service to science and engineering as a leading researcher and for design and development of world-leading information technology.
Dr Jane Fitzpatrick is the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian National Fabrication Facility Ltd (ANFF) and is based in Brisbane, Australia.
As the CEO of this NCRIS-funded facility, Jane supports and fosters world-class research in Australia and the development of the industries, such as Defence, MedTech, Energy and Space. ANFF provides world class tools and expertise in the area of micro and nanofabrication on an open access framework to all of Australia for the research, development and commercialisation of technology. ANFF is made up of 21 institutions organised into eight nodes of expertise, coordinating open access to over 500 tools. The National office is tasked with maintaining the health and high levels of success across this distributed network.
Before her various roles within ANFF at the Node level and now with the National office, Jane previously held positions within academia, the MedTech start-up space and industry focused research entities, as well as Board positions for Women in Technology.
Jane holds a PhD in Applied Immunology and a degree in Biotechnology, and she has added technical expertise in many areas, including micro and nanofabrication, throughout her career.
Tara Hamilton is an experienced Engineer and researcher with demonstrated success and leadership in research and development particularly in the defence, medical, and technology sectors. Tara is the Chief Scientist at Cuvos, an Australian owned and operated company specialising in sensor technologies.
Tara is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and has held academic positions at the University of Queensland, University of New South Wales, Western Sydney University, and Macquarie University. Tara has also worked extensively within industry having held full-time positions at Cochlear Ltd. and G2 Microsystems. Tara is the author of over 120 research papers and 3 international patents.
Dr Francesca Iacopi has over 20 years international industrial and academic expertise in the miniaturisation of semiconductor technologies. Her career has started off in Industry, where she has led large R&D projects for IMEC (Belgium) and Globalfoundries Inc (USA) in electronic devices, their interconnects and packaging.
In Academia, Francesca first held a Guest Associate Professor appointment with the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 2009, and then fully converted in 2012, with a prestigious Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council in Australia. Since 2016, she is a Full Professor of Nanoelectronics at the University of Technology Sydney. Francesca is also a Chief Investigator and Chair of Industry Liaison for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS).
Francesca received a Gold Graduate Student Award from the Materials Research Society (Boston, 2003), and a TechConnect Global Innovation Award in Washington DC (2014). As a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, she regularly serves in various technical and strategic committees of professional organizations, including the Awards Committee of the Materials Research Society (MRS), the IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS) and the Board of Governors of the IEEE Electron Devices Society.
Francesca graduated with a MSc in Physics at La Sapienza in Rome (1996) and obtained a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (2004).
Scott Martin is the leader for CSIRO’s Electromagnetic Systems and Devices Group encompassing optical systems, superconducting devices, graphene, and instrument development. The group has a strong track record of deploying S&T innovations into aerospace, space, mining, astronomy, health, telecoms, defence and manufacturing.
Since 2012 he has served as a non-executive director of the Laboratories Credit Union (LCU) and in 2016 served 3 years as chairman of the board of directors.
Philip Ryan is the Managing Director of the Australian subsidiary of Broadcom Inc – a leading USA developer and provider of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. He leads a multi-disciplinary team as the Director of Engineering Broadcom Sydney, developing highly integrated WLAN (802.11) / Bluetooth combo chips in conjunction with teams in the USA, India, and Israel. The group has shipped over a billion Wi-Fi 6/6E and Wi-Fi 7 ASICs.
Prior to Broadcom, Philip was VP of Engineering at G2 Microsystems, a Sydney based semiconductor startup developing ultra low power WiFi based CMOS devices for logistics tracking. He has also worked at Cisco Systems, Radiata Communications, and CSIRO, developing WiFi CMOS devices. Philip has a BSc (Physics) and BE (ElecEng) from The University of Sydney.
Neil Weste is an Australian inventor and engineer, noted for having designed a 2-chip wireless LAN implementation and for authoring the textbook Principles of CMOS VLSI Design. He has worked in many aspects of integrated-circuit design and was a co-founder of Radiata Communications.
Professor Darren Bagnall has extensive leadership experience and over 20 years of experience across a range of semiconductor materials and technologies. His research has included silicon transistor and circuit design, photovoltaic devices and photonics. Bagnall held various support and leadership roles in the UK Silicon Microfabrication Facility at Southampton University from 1999 through to 2012, he is a former Head of School of Photovoltaics and Renewable Energy at UNSW, and former Dean of Engineering at Macquarie University. He has extensive experience in management and operation of semiconductor design, fabrication and characterisation tools, has extensive experience in semiconductor education at undergraduate, post-graduate and with industry cohorts.
Omid Kavehei is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Sydney, where he is Deputy Head of the School of Biomedical Engineering. Before this position, he was a Research Fellow in Microelectronics at the Centre for Neural Engineering with The University of Melbourne and a continuing academic at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne. His research interests include biomedical microsystems, biomedical signal processing, and innovative computational and security approaches based on nanotechnology, micro-/nano-electronics, and data analytics. He was a Visiting Project Scientist in Microelectronics at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014. He was an Australian Government’s Endeavor Research Fellow, a SOAR Fellow at the University of Sydney in 2019 and an awardee of the 2021 Ramaciotti Awards for Biomedical Research. In 2021 and 2022, he was awarded the Dean of Engineering and Vice-Chancellor Excellence Awards in Research and Teaching at the University of Sydney, respectively. He is the Founder and Managing Director of a neurotechnology startup, BrainConnect Pty Ltd, and a quantum sensing startup, deteQt Pty Ltd.
Torsten Lehmann holds a PhD from The Technical University of Denmark and is Associate Professor in electronics with UNSW Sydney. He is an expert in CMOS Integrated Circuit design having designed dozens of chips for a large variety of applications spanning technologies from 2um to 22nm and have more than 150 peer reviewed publications and patents. He teaches 3 courses in electronics and integrated circuit design.
Anna Gurevich has spent her career connecting individuals with meaningful job opportunities and experiential learning experiences that align with their values and goals. With a specialisation in scalable talent programs and sector specific recruitment and development initiatives, she has collaborated with stakeholders from diverse industries and disciplines. She has managed large-scale programs and establishing valuable domestic and international relationships to support established and emerging programs, courses and events.
Praveena has a degree in International Business Management, once graduated she moved to Australia in 2018 and started embarking in business development. She has worked with start-ups across Sydney supporting them through projects and event coordination.
Dr Simon Ruffell has extensive experience in the semiconductor technology industry and, more recently, in quantum computing.
He previously led the fabrication team at Microsoft Quantum in Sydney. Prior to this, Simon worked for Applied Materials (leading equipment supplier for major chip manufacturers) in the US for 10 years. He had roles ranging from R&D scientist to technical director where he led engineering teams from R&D through productisation of a brand-new patterning and etch tool and introduction into tsmc and Intel’s R&D and manufacturing fabs.
Simon has a master’s degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from the UK and did his PhD in Physics as a Commonwealth Scholar in Canada.
Robert (Rob) Lang has over 20 years technology and executive management experience including 10 years in leadership roles in Silicon Valley and for Silicon Valley companies. He specialises in business and technology management, product development, prototype engineering and innovation.
Previous roles include ASIC design in Schlumberger Technologies, Silicon Graphics, Nvidia and Agere Systems. He was the Head of the SMARTS and TradeGuard Businesses within NASDAQ OMX, responsible for the Sales, Business, Technology and Product Development of the Surveillance and Compliance product offerings from NASDAQ OMX.
He has been CTO of Escavox, developing IOT-based tracking systems for farm-to-retail supply chain management, CTO of OpenMarkets an online digital stock broker and CEO/CTO of Auggd, an Augmented and Virtual Reality platform company. Rob has served on multiple Boards of Directors for government and University funded research centres.
Rob received a PhD in Computer Engineering from Newcastle University in Australia in 1996.
Madhu Jambunathan has more than 16 years extensive experience in advanced semiconductors and medical devices manufacturing industry. He has previously worked in volume fabrication and supply chain at imec, ASML, Pragmatic semiconductor and Lumentum in Europe. His expertise extends from MEMS sensors, CMOS, flexible electronics, surface coatings and photonic devices. He had roles ranging from Researcher to Technical manager where he led teams in introducing novel processes from innovation to volume manufacturing.
He has a master’s degree in advanced Material science and Engineering from Sweden and master’s in business administration (Supply chain strategy) from UK.
