Dr Greg Pottie

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2009 Fulbright Senior Scholar

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“Over the past decade we have gathered extensive experience in networking groups of sensor nodes to work together for a variety of applications, and the field continues to develop. It is always a challenge to determine the best way to design the network to achieve the user objectives, since we never have exactly the right measurements—too few, unreliable, in the wrong place, or sensors mismatched to the problem.  The most important research issue is how, given the available sensors, to get the best answers to the questions posed by the user."

Greg Pottie, currently Professor and Associate Dean at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of  Engineering and Applied Science, has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholarship from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission to undertake four months research in engineering at the University of Sydney.

Greg is a pioneer and leading expert in the field of wireless sensor networks, in which nodes comprising sensors, communications, and computing are placed in a network and work together for purposes such as basic science, environmental monitoring or control.

“Both UCLA and the University of Sydney have large scale programs related to sensor networks. My aim in going to the University of Sydney is to give both groups the opportunity to benefit from each other’s expertise on common issues, as we have not extensively collaborated previously,” Greg said.

His Fulbright research will be a collaborative project, addressing the basic questions of sensor network technology, determining the number and types of nodes that are put together to efficiently perform an intended function.

“The project outcome will be a side by side comparison of the sensor network paradigms of large numbers of simple nodes versus networks of nodes of mixed capabilities. This will be done under a variety of conditions that shows off their relative advantages and illuminates the scale of cooperation required in a broad range of sensing tasks. This study will benefit both research groups,” Greg said.

Gregory has a BSc in Engineering Physics from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, a M.Eng and a PhD from McMaster University, Ontario. He has received numerous awards and scholarships including an IEEE Fellow, the Chapman Memorial Prize and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada postgraduate scholarship. He has also published widely in professional journals and books, and has five patents to his name.

Greg is one of 19 American Fulbright Scholars travelling to Australia in 2009/2010.