J. C. Olivier

JC Olivier was born and raised in the rural South African town of Welkom, where his father worked as a civil engineer during the 1950's and the politically volatile 1960's. His father is of French extraction (hence the last name), and his mother is Irish. After completing high school, he was educated at the University of Pretoria. After completing his Ph.D., he moved to Canada, where he was a senior researcher at Bell Northern Research (BNR) in Ottawa, Canada until 1999. He then became principle scientist with the Nokia Research Laboratory in the United States, before joining the University of Tasmania in Australia as a professor of electrical engineering. He's research focusses on estimation, detection and linear signal processing, and besides numerous publications in this area he also holds 10 patents in the United States and Europe. JC loves classical music and plays the piano. He is also a dedicated teacher, and often helps students with queries from all over the world. He also loves old cars, and took pride in the restoration of several classics with his father as a teenager. His most beloved restored classics were a Alpha Romeo coupe GT 2000 and a BMW 2002 Ti.