Dr Dean Economou
Technology Strategist, NICTA
Dr Dean Economou's career spans the research, commercial and government sectors. During his PhD he co-founded QPSX Communications, his work forming part the IEEE 802.6 standard for Metropolitan Area Networks. As system architect for QPSX and later, Jtec, he developed high speed telecommunications products which were sold to global markets by Alcatel and Siemens.
From 1999 to 2005 he held senior positions at CSIRO, including Director of CSIRO’s Networking Technology Lab. He was a co-founder of the Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy and later, Director, where he led the bid for an additional $25m in cash and in-kind.
Dean joined the Smart Internet Technology CRC in 2005 as Director of Media and Health where he developed projects in clinical handover, adverse medical event prediction and immersive audio (later sold to Dolby). He was a key part of the team for the successful $100m Smart Services CRC bid, developing the industry-relevant research program across 22 companies and universities in Media, Health, Government and Finance sectors. Key organisations included Fairfax Media, Westpac, Telstra, SAP, Infosys, Sensis, and the NSW and QLD State Governments.
He joined NICTA in 2008 reporting to the CEO to investigate the use of ICT in urban environments and to develop Smart Infrastructure capability. He was part of the team which developed NICTA’s R and D services business and is currently working on projects across the Digital Economy, Transport, Infrastructure and Logistics. He also convenes the Media Thought Leaders Group for the Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation.
Dean is a frequent keynote speaker, a business advisor/mentor in the start-up community, and has provided policy input to the Australian government on the Internet, Built Environment, Broadband Technology, Smart Infrastructure and Cloud Computing.
He has B.E and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Western Australia (1992) with further studies in High Technology Product Marketing at UC Berkeley (1998) and Customer Focused Innovation at Stanford Graduate Business School (2007). Dean is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (2006).