Derek Abbott obtained his BSc (HONS) in Physics at Loughborough University of
Technology, UK, and completed his PhD, with recommendation for distinction, in
Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He
worked for 9 years at the GEC Hirst Research Centre, London, on infrared and
visible image sensors -- requiring discipline in VLSI design, optoelectronics,
device physics, semiconductor noise, fabrication and testing. He has worked with
both novel and standard technologies including nMOS, CMOS, CCD, SOS, GaAs and
vacuum microelectronics. Since emigrating to Australia, he worked for Austek
Microsystems, Technology Park, SA, has been with the University of Adelaide
since 1987 and is a Lecturer within the School of Electrical and
Electronic Engineering. He has been an invited speaker at a number of
international institutions and has appeared on international radio and
television. He is a founder member and deputy director of the Centre for High
Performance Integrated Systems and Technologies (CHiPTec), Adelaide, instituted
in 1987. He has been consultant to various UK and Australian defense and
industry organizations. His current research interests are in the areas of VLSI,
GaAs, photodetectors, smart sensors, imaging devices, device physics and noise.
His most recent contribution is the discovery of a new photovoltaic self-biasing
internal gain effect within planar GaAs MESFETs. He has been an invited speaker
at the University of Geneva; EPFL, Lausanne; CSEM, Neuchatel; University of Las
Palmas, Spain; Motorola, Tempe, Arizona; MIT, Cambridge, MA; Los Alamos National
Laboratories, NM; Seoul National University (SNU), Korea; Chonnam National
University (CNU), Korea, K-JIST, Korea; Cambridge, UK; Technion, Israel and
Tokyo Metropolitan University (TMU). He was an invited keynote speaker at the
SPIE Photonics East conference in Philadelphia, 1995 and was an invited speaker
at UPoN '96, Szeged, Hungary and Micro '97, Melbourne, Australia. He is on the
international scientific advisory committee for UPoN and on the technical
program committees for SPIE Photonics East and the IEEE GaAs IC Symposium. He
is on the executive organizing committee for the SPIE `97 Smart Materials,
Structures and MEMS and is the conference director for UPoN '99 to be hosted in
Adelaide, Australia. He is co-authoring a text on noise for
Cambridge University Press (CUP).