Professor Stan Skafidas, Research Group Manager at the Victoria Research Laboratory of NICTA, was selected by Melbourne’s The Age newspaper as one of the city’s top 100 achievers of 2008.
Featured in the Technology and Design category, Professor Skafidas, 37, was recognised for the announcement in February of a breakthrough in chip design, whereby up to five Gigabits of data could be wirelessly transferred every second within a range of up to 10 metres. This breakthrough will enable the long-held vision of the wireless office and home. This achievement will revolutionise the way information – including video - is distributed within indoor environments. What was revolutionary in Professor Skafidas’ achievement was to be the first in the world to develop this very high speed wireless technology on the standard, and therefore low-cost, chip manufacturing process. This technology should be available for around $10, and we should see it embedded in devices from digital TV’s, computers, projectors, printers and many more devices in the years to come.
The revolution may not end there. This high-speed, short range wireless technology developed by Professor Skafidas and his team of researchers and students at the University of Melbourne, is the centrepiece of a new effort to build a bionic eye, which aims to restore vision to people suffering from profound vision impairment. This project, the Bionic Vision Australia partnership, features several ICT for Life Sciences Forum sponsors and key participants – the Melbourne School of Engineering, the Bionic Ear Institute and the Victoria Research Laboratory of NICTA. You can learn more about this exciting project, and view a video of the technology being developed by Professor Skafidas and his team, by visiting the Bionic Vision Australia website.
Professor Skafidas is one of Australia’s foremost authorities on wireless technology. He received the Doctoral Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1997 at the University of Melbourne, Australia. In June 1998, he co-founded a technology company in the US, Bandspeed, which develops wireless access chipsets, and has leading industry customers. Professor Skafidas led the Melbourne R&D office of the company and made major contributions to the development of a post-graduate education program in chip design across universities in Melbourne. While Chief Technology Officer at Bandspeed, Professor Skafidas was the inventor of Adaptive Frequency Hopping coexistence scheme, which allows operation and sharing of the spectrum by Bluetooth and other wireless systems, and is now an integral part of every Bluetooth device and has been implemented in over 2.5 Billion devices.
Professor Skafidas’ research and achievements in the development of next generation wireless communication is known in the international wireless community. His is known for successfully implementing single chip communication systems and protocols.
Professor Skafidas is recognised in the US wireless and microelectronics community for his work on cognitive radio, interference and coexistence schemes. He is one of the technical editors of the IEEE 802.15.3c standards committee and has been invited to participate on US FCC panels and conference steering committees and by Silicon Valley venture community to present on the future of wireless and RF microelectronics.
Congratulations Professor Skafidas on this well-deserved recognition!
breakthrough in chip design, whereby up to five Gigabits of data could be wirelessly transferred every second within a range of up to 10 metres. This breakthrough will enable the long-held vision of the wireless office and home. This achievement will revolutionise the way information – including video - is distributed within indoor environments. What was revolutionary in Professor Skafidas’ achievement was to be the first in the world to develop this very high speed wireless technology on the standard, and therefore low-cost, chip manufacturing process. This technology should be available for around $10, and we should see it embedded in devices from digital TV’s, computers, projectors, printers and many more devices in the years to come.
