Professor Peter Poole

About Peter

Awards and Fellowships

Academic Achievements

Winner of the Queensland IT&T Awards for Outstanding Contribution to the IT Industry.

Professor Poole was educated at the Mackay State High School where he was the Dux in 1948. He entered UQ in 1949 on a scholarship from DPI to become a high school teacher of Science and Mathematics. After graduating with a BSc and a Dip. Ed, he taught for 4 years in high schools in Queensland, during which time, he completed a BEd (Hons).

In 1957, he enrolled for postgraduate study in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. This was where he first encountered the electronic digital computer, SILLIAC, one of the first such machines installed in an Australian university. In 1958, after successfully completing the MSc Qualifying, Poole was appointed as a Teaching Fellow and enrolled in an MSc. He joined the Cosmic Ray Air Shower Group led by Professor CBA McCusker who later became his PhD supervisor.

During the period 1958-63, he made extensive use of SILLIAC, developing programs and databases not only for his own research but also for the use of other members of the group.

Silliac

In 1964, he was awarded a PhD for his studies on “Variations in the Arrival Rates of Extensive Air Showers”. He was also appointed a Lecturer in the Basser Department of Computing in the School of Physics with teaching responsibilities in the Postgraduate Diploma of Numerical Analysis and Automatic Computing and managerial responsibilities for the operation of the computing service provided by SILLIAC and its successor, the English Electric- Leo KDF9. To facilitate the transfer of the workload from the old to the new machine, Dr Poole developed a program for the KDF9 which simulated SILLIAC exactly.

In 1965, Dr Poole left Australia to take up a position of Senior Scientific Officer with the Culham Fusion Laboratory of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. His role was to establish a new research group in Computer Systems (CSRG) with a mission to explore how computers could best be used to assist the physicists and engineers to build a nuclear fusion reactor.

In 1966, Dr Poole embarked on a project to design and develop the Culham Online Terminal Access Network (COTAN). The goal was to provide staff of the laboratory with the ability to access the central computer from remote locations such as their office or home over the public telephone system. This reduced the turn around time for developing programs and improving the productivity of the researchers. COTAN Version 1 was released for use by Culham staff in 1967. The system was later installed and used at a number of universities and research laboratories in the United Kingdom.

MANIAC (not Peter) (1952)

In 1969, Dr Poole was promoted to Principal Scientific Officer with the UKAEA. He subsequently visited Professor W M Waite of the Department of Electrical Engineering for a period of 6 months at the Boulder Campus of the University of Colorado in the USA. The purpose of the visit was to enable Poole and Waite to continue a collaborative research program they had initiated earlier. About this time, the computing community worldwide had begun to realise that programming was not an art but rather something akin to an engineering discipline. With this, in the mid 60s, the term “software engineering” was coined and defined. Poole’s experience with building COTAN had convinced him that there had to be a better way to construct operating systems than using assembly code. In the collaborative research program of Poole and Waite, the focus was on the development of systems software that was both portable and adaptable.

In 1971, Dr Poole was promoted to Senior Principal Scientific Officer. By this time the CSRG had grown to 15 staff and had earned a well respected international reputation. Subsequently, Culham was awarded a large research grant by the UK Government to further its research programs in Software Engineering being carried out by the CSRG.

In 1972, Dr Poole moved to the USA as Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Boulder Campus of the University of Colorado. The next few years were very productive ones, not only from the point of view of research but also because of their involvement in developing and presenting Advanced Courses in “Software Engineering” and “Compiler Construction” sponsored by the Technical University of Munich.

In 1975, Professor Poole returned to Australia to take up the Foundation Chair of Computer Science at the University of Melbourne.  He was appointed Head of the department, a position he held until 1990 when he was appointed Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Information Technology).

CSIRAC (1940s)

As Professor of Computer Science and Head of the Department (1975-1990), Professor Poole stimulated the growth of this discipline at The University of Melbourne. The department became the largest in the Faculty of Engineering and offered a modern computer science curriculum at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It was well equipped with a network of mini and microcomputers operating under UNIX to support the research and teaching activities of the staff and students. The department developed strong research programs with substantial external funding in such areas as logic programming, deductive databases, theoretical computer science, software engineering, information retrieval and computer networks. It also developed close links with industry and a number of products based on research and development activities carried out in the department became marketed worldwide. The setting up grant that was allocated to the Foundation Chair was used to build academic staff as well as strong technical support.  Staff members hired at this time included Dr J L Lassez (Cornell), Dr P Mateti (Illinois), Dr L Allison (Manchester) and Dr R Kotaigri (Monash) who subsequently became Professor of Computer Science and Head of the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering.

A notable achievement by Professor Poole and Robert Elz, one of the departmental programmers in the early 80s was the establishment of a data link to the USA which enabled Australian researchers to exchange email with the users of overseas networks. Although cumbersome by modern standards, it was nevertheless the forerunner of the modern Internet.

As Head of the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (MU), Professor Poole coordinated the activities of the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering so that they work together closely in both teaching and research. This led to the introduction of new degrees in Computer Engineering and Software Engineering as well as to various collaborative research projects.

In 1986, Professor Poole co-authored and published, with his eldest daughter Nicola, an introductory text to the Unix Operating System, Using Unix by Example (Addison-Wesley, 1986). The book was distributed internationally, had excellent reviews and was reprinted by popular demand. View on Amazon

As Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Science, he played a major role in ensuring that the Faculty was taking full advantage of information technology to support its teaching, research and administrative activities.

As Chair of the Combined Working Group, Information Technology Strategic Plan, Professor Poole led the development of the plan which guided the use of information technology at The University of Melbourne during the period 1991-1993. This ensured that the University was a leader in embracing information technology not only for research but also for teaching campus wide.

As Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Information Technology) and Chair of the Information Technology Policy Advisory Committee, he supervised the implementation of the Information Technology Strategic Plan.

At the end of 1992, Professor Poole retired from the University of Melbourne and was awarded the title Professor Emeritus in recognition of his contributions to the university over a 17 year period.

In 1993 Professor Poole took up the position of Dean of the School of Information Technology at Bond University , which is Australia’s first private university situated on the Gold Coast, Queensland. He remained in that position until he retired at the end of 1997.

Leadership, Industry and Community Achievements

In 1983, Prof. Poole established the Systems Development Group as a self-funded unit within the Department of Computer Science at The University of Melbourne. Initially, there were 4 members of staff, all graduates of the department. The group maintained a close contact with industry and carried out projects under contract. In 1986 following successful negotiations with the University about royalties, the group moved off campus into premises in Carlton to establish Knowledge Engineering P/L. Today KE Software P/L (as the company has been renamed) has 40 staff members located in 5 offices in Australia, Canada and the UK Prof. Poole was the Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1986 to 2003.

Emeritus Professors Harry Messel, John Bennett and Peter Poole

As Dean of the School of Information Technology and Professor of Computer Science at Bond University he introduced a new syllabus with much more emphasis on Software Engineering and created a new form of scholarships with support from industry for undergraduate students.

As the Australian representative on IFIP Technical Committee 2 for 15 years and Chair (1989-95), Prof. Poole ensured that Australian scientists were invited to become Working Group members and that the various working groups would, from time to time, hold meetings in Australia. Usually such meetings were associated with a workshop or small conference open to local scientists, thereby guaranteeing their access to the latest trends in Software Engineering research.

As Dean of the School of Information Technology at Bond University, he strengthened the relationship between the university and the local community by organising and presenting free half-day seminars about the Internet over a number of weekends in 1996 and 1997. Over 2000 local residents took advantage of these seminars presented in real time which helped spread knowledge about this new technology throughout the wider community in Australia.

In 1998 Professor Poole Chaired a Working Group set up by the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) to develop a strategic plan for Information Technology research in Australia. The findings of this working group were published by the Academy under the title “Information Technology: Sink or Swim".