Dr Tony Cantoni is a distinguished research engineer, engineering manager, and electrical engineering practitioner. He has been closely associated with industry and engineering research and development for over 30 years, and has an outstanding record of design leadership and of building major research and development facilities.
Dr Cantoni is a Fellow Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) (USA) and Fellow Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. His research interests include adaptive signal processing, electronic system design, and networking and regularly acts as a consultant to industry in these areas.
From 1983 to 1986, he was Foundation Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Newcastle.
From 1987 to 1991 he held the position of Director of Digital and Computer Systems at QPSX Communications Pty Ltd, responsible for establishing and leading a design team of some fifty engineers and computer scientists in the development of Metropolitan Area Network products operating at 140 Mbps.
In 1992, Dr Cantoni became the Foundation Director of the Australian Telecommunications Research Institute at Curtin University of Technology.
In 1993 he became the Foundation Director of Cooperative Research Centre for Broadband Telecommunications and Networking (CRC-BTN) venture. Under Dr Cantoni's leadership CRC-BTN made significant contributions in the design and development of ATM technology, ASICS for telecommunications, and DSP based modulators for wireless systems. He grew the centre to world class team of 45 researchers and engineers.
In 1997 he co-founded Atmosphere Networks Inc a startup in the optical access network area. The company has been funded by venture capital from Silicon Valley.
From 1997 to 2000 he was Chief Technology Officer of Atmosphere Networks, responsible for technology and R&D in both the California and Western Australian office, and was a director of Atmposhere Networks Inc (USA).
Concurrent with his industry achievements, Dr Cantoni has provided leadership in academic research, supervising more than 25 postgraduate students and publishing more than 200 technical papers.
Dr Cantoni holds a number of patents, of which four patents continue to be exploited in commercial products. He has secured in excess of $25M in R&D funding so far.
He has received a number of awards for his research, including the Marconi Premium from the Institution of Engineers in the United Kingdom. In recognition for his contribution to industry development and R&D Dr Cantoni was award the Western Australia IT&T Achiever Award in 1999.
Dr Cantoni has served on numerous national committees, including the Information, Communications and Electronics Committee of the Industry Research and Development (IR&D) Board of the Commonwealth Government of Australia, The Physical Science Panel of the Cooperative Research Centre program and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Panel of the Australian Research Council.
He is currently a consultant to Cortec Pty Ltd, a startup that he co-founded in 2002 as a spin off from ATcrc. He is Research Institute and Professor of Telecommunications at the University of Western Australia.
