The 16 researchers, considered world-class in their field, were recently made redundant from LSI Australia – formerly Agere Systems – following the closure of their North Ryde research facility.
The additional $4.8 million in funding over two years was set aside by Communications and IT Minister Helen Coonan just before the federal election was called.
The extra funding from the Australian Government means NICTA will be able to offer new employment to these researchers. They will be working on wireless-related research within NICTA’s Embedded Systems research theme. This research is developing next generation wireless networks.
“Through this team Australia has developed a core competency in silicon chip design which is leading edge and contributed to Australia’s ICT capability,” NICTA acting chief executive officer Professor Aruna Seneviratne said.
The addition of the researchers to the Millimetre Wave Gigabit Wireless Project team will allow NICTA to fast-track research on the technology. NICTA envisages that the increased effort afforded by the LSI team could mean that research from the project would be ready for commercialisation in two years.
“NICTA identified an opportunity to merge the LSI Australia-Agere team with an existing research effort to create state-of-the-art personal broadband wireless chips which will enable people to transfer large multi-media files, such as entire movies, a thousand times faster than currently possible,” NICTA Chief Technology Officer of Embedded Systems Dr Chris Nicol said.
The researchers will be based at NICTA’s New South Wales facilities and will be part of NICTA’s efforts in Embedded Systems.
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