Program Leader
Victoria Laboratory, Melbourne

Ampalavanapillai (Thas) Nirmalathas is an Associate Professor and Reader in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

He is also the Program Leader for the Network Technologies Research Program at the Victoria Research Laboratory of the National ICT Australia (NICTA). Since January 2007, he is the acting Director of Victoria Research Laboratory.

Thas Nirmalathas obtained his Bachelor of Engineering and PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Melbourne in 1993 and 1998 respectively.

Between 2000 and 2004, he was the Director of Photonics Research Laboratory (Melbourne Node of Australian Photonics CRC) and also the Program Leader of Telecommunications Technologies Program.

Thas Nirmalathas has exceptional research leadership demonstrated by his outstanding, internationally well recognised research track record. He has written 78 journal publications, three book chapters, 111 international conference papers, 12 domestic conference papers, currently hold two internationally active patents.

Four Papers from his students won best paper awards at key international conferences.

He is a member of Steering Committees of Asia Pacific Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics as well as the International Conference on Optical Internet (COIN) and a member of technical subcommittee on microwave photonics for the IEEE LEOS.

He was also Guest Editor for Special Issue on Opto-Electronics and Communications of the IEICE Transactions in Communications.

He will be the General Co-Chair of the 2008 IEEE Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics.