Professor Derek Abbott

Biography/ Background

Main Hompage: http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/Personal/dabbott/

Qualifications

• 1982 BSc (Hons) in Physics, Loughborough University of Technology (LUT), UK
• 1995 PhD in Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of Adelaide. Thesis: MESFET Photodetectors for Imaging Arrays, under Kamran Eshraghian and Bruce R. Davis

Teaching Interests

Current teaching activity

• Supervision of PhD students
• Communications IV

Other teaching activity

• 1998 Stephen Cole the Elder Prize
• 2002 PGSA Supervisor of the Year Award
• 2004 Member of DVCE’s working party on Recognition of Quality in Teaching.
• 2005 Member of SPIE (USA) International Scholarship Committee

Research Interests

Areas

• Biomedical and bioinspired engineering
• Optical/Infrared/mm-Wave/T-ray vision systems and sensors
• Novel analog VLSI circuits
• Game theory and information theory
• Complex systems and quantum systems
• Stochastic phenomena
• Computational neuroscience

Honours

• 1977 General Electric Company (GEC) Bursary, UK
• 2003 SPIE Scholarship Award for Optical Science and Engineering, USA
• 2004 Tall Poppy Award for Science, Australia
• 2004 SA Great Award for Science & Technology, Australia
  

Publications

Books

• Mark D. McDonnell, Nigel G. Stocks, Charles E. M. Pearce, and Derek Abbott, Stochastic Resonance, Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 9780521882620.
• Derek Abbott, Paul C. W. Davies, and Arun K. Pati (Eds.), with Foreword by Sir Roger Penrose, Quantum Aspects of Life, Imperial College Press, 2008, ISBN 9781848162532.

Selected journal publications

• G. P. Harmer and D. Abbott, "Losing strategies can win by Parrondo's paradox," Nature (London), Vol. 402, No. 6764, p. 864, 1999.
• J. M. R. Parrondo, G. P. Harmer and D. Abbott, "New paradoxical games based on Brownian ratchets," Physical Review Letters, Vol. 85, No. 24, pp. 5226-5229, 2000.
• M. D. McDonnell, N. G. Stocks, and D. Abbott, "Optimal stimulus and noise distributions for information transmission via suprathreshold stochastic resonance," Phys. Rev. E, Vol. 75, No. 6, Art. No. 061105, 2007.
• I. Jones, L. Ricciardi, L. Hall, H. Hansen, V. Varadan, C. Bertram, S. Maddocks, S. Enderling, D. Saint, S. Al-Sarawi, and D. Abbott, "Wireless RF communication in biomedical applications," Smart Materials and Structures, Vol. 17, Art. No. 015050, 2008.
• W. Withayachumnankul, B. M. Fischer, and D. Abbott, "Material thickness optimization for transmission-mode terahertz time-domain spectroscopy," Optics Express, Vol. 16, No. 10, pp. 7382-7396, 2008.
• A. P. Flitney and D. Abbott, "Quantum version of the Monty Hall problem," Physical Review A, Vol. 65, Art. No. 062318, 2002.
• G. P. Harmer, B. R. Davis, and D. Abbott, "A review of stochastic resonance: circuits and measurement," IEEE Trans. Instrum. & Meas., Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 299-309, Apr. 2002.
• M. Baumert, N. Wessel, A. Schirdewan, A. Voss, and D. Abbott, "Scaling characteristics of heart rate time series before the onset of ventricular tachycardia," Annals of Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 201-207, 2007.
• D. Abbott, P. C. W. Davies, and C. R. Shalizi, "Order from disorder: the role of noise in creative processes," Fluctuation and Noise Letters, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. C1-C12, 2002.
• D. Abbott and X. C. Zhang, "T-ray imaging, sensing, and retection," Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 95, No. 8, pp. 1509-1513, 2007.
• L. T. Hall, H. J. Hansen, B. R. Davis, and D. Abbott, "Performance analysis of a series transformer for complex impedance matching," Microwave & Optical Technology Lett., Vol. 45, No. 6, pp. 491-494, 2005.
• W. Withayachumnankul, B. M. Fischer, and D. Abbott, "Uncertainty in terahertz time-domain spectroscopy measurement," JOSB, Vol. 25, No. 6, pp. 1059-1072, 2008.
• Y. Lee, A. Allison, D. Abbott, and H. E. Stanley, "Minimal Brownian ratchet: an exactly solvable model," Physical Review Letters, Vol. 91, No. 22, 220601, 2003.
• A. P. Flitney, D. Abbott, and N. F. Johnson, "Quantum walks with history dependence," J. Phys. A: Math. Gen., Vol. 37, pp. 7581-7591, 2004.
• P. Amengual, A. Allison, R. Toral, and D. Abbott, "Discrete-time ratchets, the Fokker-Planck equation and Parrondo's paradox," Proc. Royal Society London A, Vol. 460, pp. 2269–2284, 2004.

Professional Associations

• Fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE), USA
• (Life) Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IoP), UK

Expertise for Media Contact

Categories	Science and technology, Mathematics and statistics
Expertise	T-rays; terahertz technology; lasers; biophtonics; biosensing; bioinformatics; platonism in science; nature of physics; quantum mechanics; game theory; puzzles; games of chance; probability; code cracking; authorship detection; what is scientific research?; problem solving; complex systems; biomedical engineering; vision systems; how to solve the world's energy needs?; order from randomness.
Notes	https://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/derek.abbott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Abbott

Entry last updated: Sunday, 22 Nov 2009