 |
Director Centre for Quantum Computer Technology
Professor Experimental
Physics (Chair) and Scientia Professor
Australian Government Federation
Fellow
Robert Clark’s early career (from the age of 15) involved
10 years service as an officer in the Royal Australian
Navy (1969–79), during which he undertook his BSc
degree at the Royal Australian Naval College, Jervis Bay
and UNSW. He served in 8 RAN ships and completed an
Operations and Weapons course on exchange with the
Royal Navy, UK. RAN qualifications included a Full
Bridge Watchkeeping Certificate and RAN Ships Diving
Officer. Promoted to Lieutenant. On resigning from the
RAN he completed a PhD in Physics at UNSW and the
Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford via a
Commonwealth Postgraduate Research Award.
After a postdoctoral research position at the Clarendon
and a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College,
Oxford, he was appointed University Lecturer in Physics
at the University of Oxford and Fellow of The Queen’s
College, Oxford (Faculty Appointment) in 1984. During
this period he headed a research group at the Clarendon
Laboratory investigating quantum effects in advanced
semiconductor systems, in particular the fractional
quantum Hall effect and was responsible for Physics
teaching at Queen’s. He returned to Australia in 1991 to
take up the position of Professor of Experimental
Physics at UNSW, where he founded and established the
National Magnet Laboratory and Semiconductor
Nanofabrication Facility. These facilities provide an
Australian capability to fabricate sophisticated
semiconductor nanostructure devices and to measure
their quantum properties.
He was appointed Director of the ARC Special Research
Centre (now Centre of Excellence) for Quantum
Computer Technology in 2000. He has been a member
of the Editorial Board of the international journal Solid
State Communications and has been the Australian
representative for nanotechnology, International Union of
Vacuum Science. He has contributed to numerous
national and international bodies, most recently serving
on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and
Innovation Council’s Nanotechnology Working Group
and as a member of the US Government Quantum
Computing Roadmap Technology Expert Panel and of
the Review Committee for Los Alamos National
Laboratory’s Physics Division, for example.
Robert has received a number of awards and
distinctions. In the RAN he received the EE Mayo Prize
for top academic performance at the Royal Australian
Naval College and the RAN (RNZN) Navigation Prize. At
Oxford he received a Wolfson award in 1988 for
prestigious research and was conferred UK Mott Lecturer
at the European Physical Society Meeting in 1991 for
his research in condensed matter physics. In 1994 he
was elected Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study,
Indiana University, USA for his research achievements
and in 1998 was awarded the Walter Boas Medal of the
Australian Institute of Physics. In 2000 following peer
nomination and international review, he was honoured
with the title Scientia Professor at the University of New
South Wales, recently reconfirmed for 2007–11.
In 2001 he was elected Fellow of the Australian
Academy of Science and was a recipient of an inaugural
Federation Fellowship by the Australian Government for
the period 2002–6, presented by the Prime Minister.
In 2003 he was awarded a Centenary Medal for his
service to Australian society and was selected in the
Bulletin Magazine’s Australian “smart 100 list” for
innovation and achievement. In 2006 he was awarded
the Australian Defence Medal. In 2007 he was awarded
a second Federation Fellowship, for the period
2007–12.
Publications Listing
|
