PERSONAL DETAILS

Full Name:

Nicholas David Birrell

Email:

Nick at Kintan.com

Born:

16 June 1954

Nationality:

Australian

Marital Status:

Married, 2 children

Interests:

Flying, farming, skiing, windsurfing, astronomy , yoga, surfing and opera.

Founding Committee Member of Q Group Australia

Foundation Member of the Genomic Disorders Research Centre

Pilot for Angel Flight

Member of AOPA.

EDUCATION

1976 - 1979

University of London King's College

1979 Ph.D. (Mathematical Physics)

1972 - 1976

The Flinders University of South Australia

1976 M.Sc. (Nuclear Physics)

1975 B.Sc. (Hons. 1st class, Physics, University Medal)

1974 B.Sc. (Physics)

1967 – 1971

Prince Alfred College, South Australia

1971 Matriculation

Editor PAC “Science Journal”, 1971

PAC Scouts - Queen’s Scout

CAREER HISTORY

2006 – date

Innovation Capital, Melbourne

Venture Executive (part time)

1989 – date

Kintan Pty Ltd, Melbourne

Managing Director

2010 –  date

Monash University, Melbourne

Adjunct Professor,
Monash Asia Pacific Centre for Science & Wealth Creation

2006 - 2009

Monash University, Melbourne

Professorial Fellow & Director,
 Monash Asia Pacific Centre for Science & Wealth Creation

2001 – 2005

INVESCO Asia Pacific, Melbourne

Regional Director - Asia Pacific

1994 – 2001

County Investment Management, Melbourne

Director Investments then
from June 1995, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer

1990 – 1994

CS First Boston Australia Investment Management Ltd., Sydney

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

1987 – 1990

CS First Boston Australia Limited, Sydney

Director, Fixed Income Research

1986 – 1987

Dominguez Barry Samuel Montagu Limited, Sydney

Research Manager, Arbitrage Markets

1985 – 1986

John Fairfax & Sons Limited, Sydney

Technology Manager then
General Manger, Electronic Publishing Division

1983 – 1985

Logica Pty. Limited, Sydney

Principal Consultant

1980 – 1983

Logica Limited, London

Principal Consultant

1979 – 1980

University of London King's College
Science Research Council

Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Department of Mathematics

1976

Salisbury College of Advanced Education, South Australia

Part-time Lecturer in Physics

1974 – 1976

The Flinders University of South Australia

Research Assistant in Physics Department

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

2006 - date

Monash Asia Pacific Centre for Science & Wealth Creation

I am an Adjunct Professor (honorary position) of Monash University having previously been a part time Professorial Fellow and founding Director of the Monash Asia Pacific Centre for Science & Wealth Creation.

The Asia Pacific Centre for Science & Wealth Creation was conceived as fulfilling a need to undertake more education and research into the creation of wealth from science and technology in the Asia Pacific Region.  Following over a year of preparation, the Centre was launched at the start of 2007 with the commencement of a novel MBus(Science & Technology) program, aimed at equipping science graduates with business skills.  A special feature of the program is a Commercialisation Project in which students work with Monash University scientists on the commercialisation of real science.  I supervised half of these projects as well as teaching a cornerstone unit of the program entitled “Pathways from Science to Wealth”.  In 2007 the program had 11 students, in 2008 it had 28 students and in 2009 we had 36 students, which is close to capacity.

Having handed the Directorship of the Centre to my successor, I have played an occasional advisory and support role while aiming to continue to build links between the Centre and industry.  I have also continued to support several projects that started as Commercialisation Projects in the MBus program.  These projects include a treatment for premature babies, for which so far two USA patents have been granted, a project developing advanced pDNA and protein purification techniques, and a business involving stem cell banking.  These projects have resulted in both government and private research funding for Monash University.

2006 - date

Innovation Capital

I am a part time Venture Executive with Sydney headquartered venture capital company, Innovation Capital.  Innovation Capital specialises in investment in early stage, high technology companies.

I represent Innovation Capital in Melbourne and I am involved in all stages of the venture capital process from raising funds to assessing investment opportunities to making investments and then monitoring and guiding investee companies through to an exit.  In 2010 my first investment made for Innovation Capital in 2007, Opto Global, was exited in a successful trade sale to Optos PLC of the UK.

I am jointly responsible for two of Innovation Capital’s investee companies, Wine Preserva and Call Journey.

1989 - date

Kintan Pty Ltd

Kintan Pty Ltd is a private agricultural and investment company.  It has agricultural interests in southern New South Wales and the west coast of South Australia.  Kintan is a vehicle for my personal private equity investment in early stage companies involved in the application of advanced science that has the potential to have a significant social and/or economic impact.

2001 - 2005

INVESCO Asia Pacific

Until June 2005, I was Regional Director, Asia Pacific for INVESCO Asia Pacific.  In this role I was involved in the general management of the business in the Asia Pacific region.  I was also responsible for the Product Development and Institutional Sales and Marketing functions throughout Asia Pacific.  I was appointed a Global Partner of AMVESCAP, the parent of INVESCO, in 2002 and was a member of the Global Partners’ Advisory Committee, a small group that advised on the management of the global partnership.  I left INVESCO upon completion of the goals set for me when INVESCO acquired County Investment Management, the company that I was previously running.  These goals included ensuring the integration of County into INVESCO, transferring County’s best practice throughout Asia Pacific and bringing products and expertise from the rest of INVESCO to Asia Pacific.  Such products included Private Equity and advanced quantitatively managed products as well as more traditional products.  My role included coordinating colleagues from a diversity of backgrounds and cultures in offices in Tokyo, Taiwan, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and Melbourne as well as liaising with colleagues throughout the rest of the world.

1994 – 2001

County Investment Management

As County's first Director of Investments I was responsible for the overall management of about $8 billion of funds under management. In June 1995 I became County's second Chief Executive in its ten year history. In 1997 I managed the company through its sale to National Australia Bank. Following the acquisition, County reached its 15^th anniversary with $15 billion of funds under management. As well as having overall responsibility for the management of the company, I was Chairman of the Structural Analysis Group, which was the starting point for County's top-down investment process. In 2000 I managed the company through its sale to INVESCO, an operating unit of AMVESCAP PLC.

1990 – 1994

CS First Boston Australia Investment Management

As Chief Executive, I planned and built from inception a highly successful wholesale investment management business. At the time I left, the company had about $2 billion under management in equity, fixed interest and balanced accounts and employed about 20 people. As well as having overall responsibility for the management of the company, I managed fixed interest portfolios and continued to provide top level strategic planning and economic advice to some major government clients.

1987-1990

CS First Boston Australia Limited (now part of Credit Suisse)

As Director Fixed Income Research, I was responsible for establishing and running CSFB’s Australian Fixed Income Research Department, bringing many research innovations to Australia for the first time. Under my management, in 1990 CS First Boston's fixed income research was voted the best such research in Australia by a BRW magazine survey of institutional investors.

1986 – 1987

Dominguez Barry Samuel Montagu (now part of UBS)

I developed and operated several sophisticated computerised financial markets trading systems using advanced quantitative methods.

1985 – 1986

John Fairfax & Sons

I was responsible for assessing the viability and technology for various electronic publishing ventures. In particular, I established the technology for the Money Watch service and took responsibility for overall business management of the venture as General Manager of the Electronic Publishing Division. These developments were early precursors of the Internet.

1980 – 1985

Logica (London and Sydney)

As principal consultant and senior project manager in this computer systems company I gained hands-on experience in a wide variety of high technology civilian and military communications network and computer consultancy and development assignments including:

Video and audio disk storage and processing systems;
Management accounting database system;
Computer aided manufacturing system analysis;
Telephone billing system implementation;
Research into the market for cellular phones in Australia;
Electronic publishing strategy study;
Artificial intelligence applications;
Point of sales system implementation;
Publishing a number of research papers and co-authoring with M A Ould A Practical Handbook for Software Development (CUP 1985).

1979 – 1980

University of London King's College

Upon completion of my Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics in the area of Quantum Gravity, I was awarded a Science Research Council Postdoctoral Research position and continued research in that field.  My Ph.D. and postdoctoral research resulted in the publication of a number of research papers (see attached publications list) and co-authoring with P C W Davies the book Quantum Fields in Curved Spacetime (CUP 1982), which is still the definitive, highly cited text in the field.

PARTIAL PUBLICATIONS LIST

Publications in the field of computing

Preemptive retransmission for communication over noisy channels.

IEE Proceedings part F 128 (1981) 393.

Timing and Synchronization of the NICS Stage II Digital Network.

With R Boulter, P Hansell and P Gretton-Watson. Vol. II Annexes I and 2

STC-TM-652. The SHAPE Technical Centre, The Hague, May 1981.

A workbench for computer simulation of picture coding schemes.

With M A Ould, P Radford, N Tucker and D I Crawford.  Proc. IEE

International Conference on Electronic Image Processing 1982. 

IEE Conference Publication 214.

The application of catastrophe theory to a slotted ALOHA

communications system.  IEE Proceedings Part F 128 (1981), 393.

Increasing productivity in embedded microprocessor software

development.  With D H S Blease.  Proceedings of the 11th

Australian Computer Conference.  Australian Computer Society,

1984.

A practical handbook for software development.  With M A Ould.

Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Publications in theoretical physics

Off-shell effects in the (p,2p) reaction.   With I E McCarthy & C

J Noble. Nucl. Phys. A271 (1976).

Comparison  of the unitary pole and Adhikari-Sloan expansions  in

the three nucleon system.   With I R Afnan. Phys. Rev. C16 (1977)

823.

Three nucleon results for the one boson exchange potential.  With

I R Afnan.  Phys. Rev. C17 (1978) 326.

Trinucleon  wave  functions from separable expansions of the  N-N

interaction.  M.Sc. thesis 1976 (unpublished).

On falling through a black hole into another universe.   With P C

W Davies.  Nature 272 (1978) 35.

The  application of adiabatic regularisation to  calculations  of

cosmological interest.  Proc. R. Soc. (Lond.) 361 (1978) 513.

Massless  Thirring  model  in curved space:  Thermal  states  and

conformal anomaly.   With P C W Davies.   Phys.  Rev.  D18 (1978)

4408.

Stress  tensor  conformal  anomaly for Weinberg  type  fields  in

curved spacetimes.  J. Phys. A12 (1979) 337.

Particle  production by self interacting fields  in  cosmological

spacetimes.  With L H Ford.  Ann. Phys. (N.Y.) 122 (1979) 1.

Momentum  space  techniques  for curved spacetime  quantum  field

theory.  Proc. R. Soc. (Lond.) A376 (1979) 123.

Analysis of interacting quantum field theory in curved spacetime. 

With J G Taylor.  J. Math. Phys. 21 (1980) 1740.

Momentum  space  renormalisation of lambda * phi ** 4  in  curved

spacetime.  J. Phys. A13 (1980) 569.

Effects of field interaction upon particle creation in Robertson-

Walker Universes.   With P C W Davies & L H Ford.   J.  Phys. A13

(1980) 961.

Massive particle production in anisotropic spacetimes.   With P C

W Davies.  J. Phys. A13 (1980) 2109.

Conformal symmetry breaking and cosmological particle creation in

lambda * phi ** 4 theory.   With P C W Davies.   Phys.  Rev.  D22

(1980) 322.

Renormalisation  of  self interacting scalar field theories in  a

nonsimply connected spacetime.   With L H Ford.   Phys.  Rev. D22

(1980) 330.

The  application  of  quantum  field  theory  to  cosmology   and

astrophysics.  Ph.D. thesis (unpublished).

Interacting  quantum  field  theory  in  curved  spacetime.    In

"Quantum Gravity II: a Second Oxford Symposium" eds. C J Isham, R

Penrose & D W Sciama.  Oxford University Press 1982.

Quantum  Fields in Curved Space.   With P C W Davies.   Cambridge

University Press Monographs on Mathematical Physics Series 1982.

(Hardback, paperback and Russian language editions).

Publication and presentations on science policy

The importance of space projects to the development of the

Australian software industry.  With P Norris.  Proc. National

Space Symposium.  Commonwealth of Australia, 1984.

Biotechnology...A Cutting Edge Industry for Melbourne

County Investment Management (1998)

The Biotechnology Revolution: A Unique Opportunity For Australia

County Investment Management (1998)

The Biotechnology Revolution

ABC Radio National, Ockham’s Razor, 1998

County Submission to Health and Medical Research Strategic Review (Wills Inquiry) (1998)

A Genome Valley for Australia

Invited address to CEDA Trustees (1999)

The Next Revolution – Biotechnology

Invited address at the CEDA Technology Seminar, Brisbane, (1999)

Science – The Wealth Creator

Invited address to the Melbourne University Faculty of Science and subsequently

as part of the Director’s Lecture Series at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (1999)

The Role of the Capital Markets in the Fight Against Cancer

Invited address to the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute (2000)

What is the role of government in supporting innovation?

Presented at a Monash University Centre for Science & Wealth Creation Symposium April 2012

Publications on finance and the economy

During my time at C S First Boston, County Investment Management and INVESCO,  I produced numerous limited distribution research and education publications on finance and economics.  While some of these were of a proprietary nature, copies of others may be made available upon request.  An example of such a publication is a presentation entitled “World Best Practice Pension Fund Management” presented to senior representatives of the National Council of Social Security Fund (NCSSF) of the People’s Republic of China in 2005.

I also have published discussion papers and related Op. Ed. articles for newspapers such as:  “There’s a super Ponzi scheme in the making”, Australian Financial Review, 6 July 2011: www.innovationcapital.net/admin/files/filestore/s_a_super_ponzi_in_the_making.pdf