Biographies

Dr. Robert Clark
Director, Centre for Quantum Computer Technology
Program Manager: Quantum measurement & control chip
Professor of Experimental Physics (Chair) and Scientia Professor, University of New
South Wales, Sydney NSW, Australia

Professor of Experimental Physics (Chair) and Scientia Professor
The University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW
Australia
Federation Fellowship
BSc, Ph.D. New South Wales, MA Oxford, UK

Dr. 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, 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.