Chris Cantrall

Senior Technical Officer (Electronics)

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Biography

Chris Cantrall is currently the design engineer for the New Technology Demonstrator (NTD) telescope control systems. His recent projects include automation upgrade of solar telescope, system design of the acoustic Non Destructive Testing (NDT) instruments (Bandicoot project) and micro control of power in Hospital Without Walls (HWW) project.

Chris was the technical coordinator of the Acoustic Mine Imaging (AMI) project. He also contributed to the establishment of an acoustic array testing facility. While working with the Wool Technology division of CSIRO Chris has designed numerous instrumentation systems some of which are still in manufacture. In the course of this work two international patents have been obtained.

Chris began training in 1971 with the Post Master General's Department. He was employed in the telecommunication area as a cadet technical officer. In 1974 he completed the Electronics & Communications Certificate. He studied further at Canberra TAFE in post certificate units specialising in industrial electronics and telecommunication areas. Chris has also studied units in electronics, physics and mathematics at Canberra University.

From 1975 to 1977 Chris worked in medical research at the John Curtin School within the Australian National University. During this period he designed precision analogue and interface systems. These included transducer interface and the digital interface for data acquisition. From 1977 to 1979 Chris held a post with the science services unit at Macquarie University. The majority of the work was microprocessor based including the design of "flip-chip" modules to operate in the PDP8 architecture.

In 1979 Chris took up a position with the Mt Stromlo & Siding Springs Observatory. He worked with the space astronomy group in the development of observation instrument systems for potential deployment on space platforms. He was responsible for the design and construction of the ground based instruments.

From 1981 to the present Chris has been employed by CSIRO in the divisions of Wool Technology, Radiophysics, Telecommunications & Industrial Physics currently the ICT Centre. During this period Chris has worked on a wide variety of projects, including the hybrid car project which was awarded the CSIRO Chairman's medal.