Edgar Chan is a PhD candidate in the School of Psychology, under the supervision of Professor Jason Mattingley and Dr Mark Bellgrove. He completed his BA (Psychology) degree with first class Honours at Melbourne University in 2006, and was awarded the APS Prize. In addition to his research into human spatial navigation, Edgar is also undergoing professional training as a Clinical Neuropsychologist at UQ.

Chris Nolan is a PhD student in UQ’s School of ITEE, focusing on biologically inspired robotics. He has received a Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Systems) and a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) from the University of Queensland. Chris has spent five years in the software industry, working as a software developer and a technical consultant, primarily in the employ of Oracle Corporation..

Paul has worked in the IT industry for fifteen years in many different sectors including the Manufacturing, Finance, Telecommunications and Insurance sectors and for such organisations as BHP, Suncorp and both state and local government before returning to commence his PhD full time at the beginning of 2007 on an Australian Postgraduate Award. He has significant real world experience and has worked in various roles, from Senior Analyst/ Programmer to Technical Architect and Software Development Manager. Paul is currently the Product Architect for TSA Software Solutions, where he is responsible for the technical direction of the company as well as researching technologies and methods for their enterprise-level commercial application suite. Paul holds a Bachelor of Information Technology with 1st class honours.

Will received his Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics, first class Honours) from the University of Queensland in 2008, and is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Engineering Systems, Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, QUT. His area of research is biologically inspired robot navigation, and aims to combine characteristics of the RatSLAM system with traditional simultaneous localisation and navigation techniques. His research interests include biologically-inspired sensors and control, robot perception, field robotics and UAVs.

Gavin Taylor completed a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics) degree at UQ at the end of 2008 and following this completed a summer scholarship with Thinking Systems. As a result, he decided to continue his work during the summer by starting a PhD focusing on investigating visually guided honeybee flight behaviour. In addition to interests in mechatronic systems and robotics, he has developed an interest in biology, and would like to look at how biological systems can provide inspiration for novel robotic systems.

Arren recently graduated from the University of Queensland receiving a Bachelor of Engineering (majoring in Mechatronics and graduating with first class honours). He is currently a PhD candidate within the school of ITEE working on the RatChat project. His project centres on robot interaction with its environment and involves techniques in the fields of computer vision, probabilities and statistics, and machine learning.

Chris holds a Bachelor of Engineering majoring in mechatronics from the University of Queensland, awarded in 2009. He is currently working on his PhD at the Queensland University of Technology, which seeks to develop a learning control system that can adapt to the system model of an imprecisely manufactured robot. The research seeks to converge the biological knowledge of the motor cortex and cerebellum with the control theory domain of iterative learning control for robotic applications.

For the past 13 years I have programmed in C/C++, Java, Assembly language and VB for Windows, DOS & Linux. I have a Masters degree in Robotics, a BSc in Computer Science, and a BEng in Mechatronics Engineering. I have worked in Australia, USA and UAE (Dubai) on state-of-the-art robotics and computer vision technologies, from self-balancing robots that can climb stairs, to humanoid robots that can talk and recognize faces.

My research activities involve low power analogue IC design, neuromorphic engineering (modelling neurons and neural systems), biomedical engineering, and electronics (basically anything with transistors!). I completed the BE (Electrical) Hons I and BCom (Economics and Marketing) in 2000 from the University of Sydney. In 2000 I began working at Cochlear Ltd. first as a Quality Engineer and then as an IC Design Engineer. I started my PhD in 2004 and also worked as a consultant for a number of companies including: Cochlear Ltd., Surgical Diagnostics Pty. Ltd., G2microsystems and Perceptia Design Services. I was awarded a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2008. In 2008 I started at the University of Queensland as a lecturer in Electronics.

David Prasser’s work was part of the RatSLAM project, a biologically inspired solution to Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping. During this work he was mostly involved in RatSLAM’s visual processing system, which was the subject of his submitted thesis. In 2007 he was a postdoc with the RatCHAT project, which added language capabilities to RatSLAM, and also lectured UQ’s course on Control Systems and Robotics. His main research interests are in the areas of biologically and cognitively inspired robotics.

Mark is a software engineer with Bachelor degrees in Arts (majoring in Cognitive Science) and Information Technology (with Honours). While studying, he worked in several positions as a research assistant in bioinformatics, biological modelling and visualisation, and robotics. After graduating he joined Thinking Systems in 2007 as Systems Engineer, developing and re-engineering software as well as providing software support. In 2008 Mark moved to London and has worked with a number of research oriented commercial companies.