Dr Chris Nicol
Winner: Computer Sciences Category, NSW Scientist of the Year 2008 Awards

Dr Chris Nicol is Chief Technology Officer at National ICT Australia.

Dr Nicol established the first Asia-Pacific Bell Labs Research facility in North Ryde and with that team invented new circuit techniques that have been widely adopted and deployed in mobile phones and mobile network infrastructure around the world. (Dr Nicol holds 18 patents in this area).

Dr Nicol’s team also patented a unified voice+data channel codec processor for 3G systems, enabling 3G mobile phones to seamlessly roam from older GSM networks to new 3G systems. This technology has been since been installed in millions of 3G mobile phones around the world.

Dr Nicol also led the team that created the world’s first 4x4 MIMO detector chip for multi-antenna wireless communications and the world’s first MIMO receiver for fast frequency selective fading channels. To date, these chips achieve the highest spectral efficiency of any wireless communications chips ever designed.

Dr Nicol pioneered power reduction techniques for the implementation of broadband modems in silicon chips and his conceptual designs have been applied to reduce silicon chip power consumption in cable modems, ADSL modems, High Definition TV (HDTV) receivers, mobile phones and numerous other digital devices.

In 2003, Dr Nicol transitioned his Bell Labs team to Agere Systems Australia – attracting millions of dollars of investment to Australia.

In 2005, Engineers Australia named Dr Nicol “Entrepreneur of the Year” and in 2007 they added him to their list of “Australia’s 100 most-influential engineers”.

As Chief Technology Officer at NICTA, Dr Nicol has played a pivotal role in establishing Embedded Systems Australia, an industry cluster headquartered in NSW to develop embedded systems technologies and whose members include nine companies and the NSW Government.