Chris Drane's Curriculum Vitae

 

SUMMARY

Chris completed a PhD in the Physics School at the University of Sydney. He is an inventor and has mathematically modeled complex phenomena in many fields, including biology, finance, and physical systems. His work in physical systems includes submarine sonars, aircraft guidance systems, and vehicle tracking systems. He was a pioneer of the accurate location of mobile telephones. He has worked in industry around the world and carried out research at the University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, the University of Cambridge, and University of California Berkley.   

 

EDUCATION

B.Sc. (Hons) Physics, University of Sydney

Ph.D. Applied Physics, University of Sydney

Diploma of Company Director, UNE and Company Directors Association.

 

 

WORK EXPERIENCE

 

Director, Philomaths Pty. Ltd.

(2011 – present)

Chief Scientific Officer. Developed fair handicapping intellectual property. Developed the Golf Mentor web-app. Expert witness consulting in the areas of cellular location systems, Global Positioning System, and the lower layers of telecommunication systems with clients in San Francisco, Dallas, Sydney and London. Currently working on an invention that uses a six degree of freedom Inertial Measurement Unit. He contributes to the Open Source community including a contribution to Ruby and a contribution to the rspec gem, a widely used test language. He supports the Stack Overflow web site, where his technical questions and answers have reached over 850,000 developers around the world.  

 

 

Adjunct Professor, University of Technology, Sydney

(2012 – June, 2018))

Assisting the University to commercialize intellectual property.  Carried out mathematical analyses including the application of quantum mechanical effects to location systems and the probability distribution of Mobile Advertising payments.

 

 

Seeker Wireless Pty. Ltd.

(June, 2003 – December 2011)

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

 

Chris Drane and Malcom Macnaughtan founded seeker Wireless..  The business targeted the cellular location area and developed an innovative location platform for mobile operators.  The high availability platform was installed in the Operator’s network and allowed the operator to offer their customers an extensive range of location services. The company sold systems for deployment with eight Operators, including Vodafone New Zealand, Vodafone Romania, Claro Guatemala, and Mobily Saudi Arabia.

 

Principal function was running the company, but continued to work on theoretical analyses and stayed involved with the development of the patent portfolio.

 

Cambridge Positioning Systems (Australasia) Pty. Ltd.

(August, 2001 – May, 2003)

Vice-President (R&D Australia)

 

Responsible for establishing Cambridge Positioning Systems (CPS) long term research and development group.  Established and administered the Sydney Office.  Managed the research team working in the Sydney office.  Carried out theoretical analyses on most aspects of CPS's systems, concentrating on their mobile location technology.

 

University of Technology, Sydney

 

(January, 1991 – August, 2001)

Professor of Computer Systems Engineering

 

(February, 1990 - December, 1990)

Professorial Fellow

 

Director of Computer Systems Engineering. Responsible for implementing the final stages of the Computer Systems Engineering Degree and for guiding all research performed by the Computer Systems Engineering Group. 

In 1993 Chris Drane was awarded a British Telecom Fellowship in the UK and started work on locating GSM telephones.  At this time there was almost no-one else in the world working in this area. In 1996, his team at UTS was the first in the world to demonstrate accurate location of GSM mobile telephones. In 1995, Chris and his team invented the reference receiver (later known at the LMU) method of network pseudo-synchronisation, USA patent no. 6,522,890 . In 1999 he was a key person involved in the sale of the team's positioning technology to CPS.

 

In the first half of 1993, PEP leave was spent with the Engineering Department at Cambridge University.  While at the University was active in both teaching and research.  In second half of 1996, PEP leave was spent with Intelligent Transport Systems America in Washington D.C. as an International Fellow.   

 

University of Sydney

(February, 1989 - February, 1990)

Principal Research Fellow

Director of the Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing Laboratory.

 

Wrote the draft of a monograph  subsequently published by Springer Verlag, entitled “Positioning Systems: A Unified Approach”

 

EARLY CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

 

Global Tracking Systems Pty Ltd

Technical Director

 

Was first employee and co-founder of the company.  Responsible for selection and fit out of premises, recruitment and management of an R&D group of 16 engineers and scientists, as well as setting up the company's quality control and quality assurance procedures.

 

The company was developing an advanced vehicle tracking system based on the University of Sydney technology.  The GTS system will be capable of measuring the positions of tens of thousands of vehicles in an urban area. Was principal inventor of this system.  The development required the application of RF techniques, advanced digital signal processing, manipulation of raster  graphics  on  SUN work stations, real time software and development of a MASCOT like kernel.

 

Was overall technical authority.  Performed many systems engineering studies, which often necessitated detailed signal  processing analysis and probabilistic analysis of the system.

 

 

Logica Pty Ltd

Principal Consultant

 

Worked on a wide variety of projects including strategy studies, bidding, bid management,  expert systems, and a long term consultancy assignment with the Royal  Australian  Navy Research Laboratory on adaptive beam forming sonars.

 

 

Advanced Technology Systems (U.S.A)

Principal Scientist/Engineer

 

Played a major role in the development  of a new form of aircraft guidance technology that that was capable of  measuring  the  position  and orientation of a remote vehicle.  The feasibility of the system was established  and  the technology sold  to  the  McDonnel Douglas Corporation.  The hardware included two spread spectrum transceivers controlled by Micronova microcomputers. 

 

Worked on the project to develop a  simulator  for  the McDonnel Douglas FA-18 fighter plane.  Researched simulating fog/haze to make the CGI more realistic.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL LISTINGS

Who's Who in Australia

Australian Men and Women of Science and Technology

 

PUBLICATIONS

 

Books

Drane C. R. (1992) "Positioning Systems - A Unified Approach" Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences 181. Heidleburg, Springer Verlag,1992.

C. R. Drane and C. Rizos. “The Role of Positioning in Intelligent Transport Systems”. Artech House, Norwood, M.A., 1998.

Malcolm Macnaughtan, Craig Scott, and Chris Drane. “A Series of GSM Positioning Trials”. Pp195-230. In “Next Generation Wireless Networks”.Ed. Sirin Tekinay, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.

Other publications

Numerous papers, technical notes, patents and patent publications