NICTA

NICTA

Type	Company limited by guarantee
Industry	Information and Communications Technology Research
Founded	2002
Headquarters	Sydney, Australia
Key people	Duane Zitzner, CEO
Number of employees	700
Slogan	The imagination driving Australia's ICT Future
Website	nicta.com.au

Construction of NICTA's new premises at the Australian Technology Park (ATP).

NICTA (previously known as National ICT Australia Ltd) is Australia's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence. The term "Centre of Excellence" is common marketing terminology used by some Australian government organisations for titles of science research groups.^[1] NICTA's role is to pursue potentially economically significant ICT related research for the Australian economy.

NICTA's organisation is structured around groups focused primarily on pure research and the implementation of those ideas within business groups.

History

In 2002, NICTA won a competitive selection process to be established as Australia's national centre of excellence in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) research, under an Australian Government policy initiative to promote science and innovation called Backing Australia's Ability.^[2] The creation of the centre was intended to address a previously identified weakness in long-term strategic ICT research in Australia.^[3] NICTA was officially opened on 27 February 2003.^[4]

The founding members of NICTA were the University of New South Wales, Australian National University, the NSW Government, and the ACT Government. NICTA later acquired other university and government partners. In January 2003, The University of Sydney became a partner. In July 2004, the Victorian Government and The University of Melbourne became partners.^[5] In January 2005, the Queensland Government, the University of Queensland, Griffith University, and the Queensland University of Technology became partners.^[6] The University of Melbourne and the Victorian Government became members in May 2011.^[7]

Since foundation NICTA has created six new companies, collaborated on joint projects with a range of ICT industries, developed a substantial technology and intellectual property portfolio and continues to supply new expertise to the ICT industry through a NICTA-supported PhD program.

Organisation

Quadcopter at CeBIT 2014

NICTA research is focused in five scale Research Groups:^[8]

• Software Systems
• Networks
• Machine Learning
• Computer Vision
• Optimisation

NICTA focuses on potential economic opportunities that related to the use of information communication technology. NICTA is often funded by government or industry partnerships. These may include start-up corporations or other specific Australian government funds. Funding is mainly assessed on the basis of the potential economic value for Australian industries or communities.

Three NICTA business teams^[9] are responsible for determining potential commercial or economic outcomes in the following domains for ICT:

• Broadband and the Digital Economy
• Infrastructure, Transport and Logistics
• Safety and Environment

Locations

NICTA has over 700 people spread across four cities in Australia:

• Australian Technology Park Laboratory and Headquarters, Sydney
• Neville Roach Research Laboratory, Kensington, Sydney
• Canberra Research Laboratory
• Victoria Research Laboratory
• Queensland Research Laboratory

In addition, NICTA collaborates with many Australian universities and research organisations, and has smaller numbers of staff on various campuses around the country.

Funding

NICTA is funded by the Australian Government as represented by the Department of Communications and the Australian Research Council. NICTA also receives funding from industry and several state governments, and is supported by its member and partner universities.

Federal Government funding is set to be terminated in June 2016.

See also

• OpenNICTA

References

External links

• NICTA website