David Skellern

From IRF 2008

Dr. David Skellern

Dr. Skellern is one of Australia’s most successful ICT entrepreneurs, with a strong background in research, education, collaboration, and commercialisation. Dr Skellern became interim CEO of NICTA in May 2005 and in February 2006 confirmed a further 3-year appointment as the Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Skellern began his career in 1974 at the University of Sydney where he spent around a decade designing, building and commissioning instrumentation and extensions for the Fleurs Synthesis Radiotelescope, one of Australia’s pioneering giant radiotelescopes. From 1983 to 1989 he held various academic appointments at Sydney University's Electrical Engineering department.

In 1989 Dr. Skellern took up the Chair of Electronics at Macquarie University. Dr. Skellern has spent significant time working in industry as a visiting researcher, including over two years at Hewlett Packard Laboratories. In 1997 he co-founded the Radiata group of companies in Australia and the USA, established to commercialise the results of the WLAN research project that he led at Macquarie University in collaboration with CSIRO. Over the next three years he played an integral role in building a successful company with a team of 65 staff. In September 2000 Radiata demonstrated the world’s first chip-set implementation of the 54 Mbit/s IEEE 802.11a High-Speed WLAN standard. Radiata was acquired by Cisco Systems, Inc. in 2001, at which time Dr. Skellern joined Cisco and subsequently moved to the United States as Technology Director of the Wireless Networking Business Unit.

Dr. David Skellern was appointed to the NICTA board in 2003. Dr. Skellern received a BSc (Computer Science and Mathematics) in 1972, a BE (Electrical Engineering) in 1974, and a PhD in 1985, from the University of Sydney. Since 2007, he is an adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney.

Contact: david.skellern@nicta.com.au  ///  +61 2 92094574