Comms specialist awarded ARC Laureate Fellowship

The latest recipient of the prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowship is wireless communications specialist Professor Branka Vucetic from the University of Sydney. 

Announced in Canberra by the Minister for Education and Training, Simon Birmingham, the Australian Laureate Fellowship scheme is designed to support groundbreaking, internationally competitive research that builds Australia’s research capacity.

Professor Vucetic, from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, is internationally recognised for her work in coding theory and its applications in wireless engineering. She led the team that invented soft output detection and decoding methods that made mobile phones more reliable.

Her work will now look at how to build wireless networks with almost zero latency, as well as investigate the ultrahigh reliability needed for machine-to-machine communications

“We will be investigating response times that are shorter than 1 ms. It is these sorts of improvements that will allow us to create the smart environments of the future on emerging technologies,” said Professor Vucetic.

“The technology associated with wireless communication has developed rapidly in the three decades I have been researching and teaching — mobile phones, mobile internet and Wi-Fi, for example, which we now take for granted.

“We face new challenges in building and designing the new technologies we call ‘smart environments and infrastructure’. But these new technologies have the potential to solve major problems we face in the energy, health and safety sectors.”

Professor Vucetic is also the recipient of the 2016 Georgina Sweet Fellowship, which will see her undertake an ambassadorial role to promote women in research.

“When I was a high school student, a teacher challenged me with a question I could not possibly have answered. This motivated me to find out more about physics and wireless engineering. When I did my research in the school libraries, I felt inspired,” she said.

“I wish to similarly inspire the next generation of young female students toward a career in engineering, technology, science or math. It is a career path full of opportunities.”

Image caption: Professor Branka Vucetic. Image courtesy of the University of Sydney.