Nicholas Birrell

Curriculum Vitae

Summary: Nick Birrell has over 30 years experience in the finance and technology industries in Australia and globally. He has held senior positions in business and academia and successfully started and built a major funds management business. He is able to bridge cultures and industrial fields and has a long history of motivating and leading talented individuals.

PERSONAL DETAILS
Full Name:	Nicholas David Birrell
Email:	NickBirrell@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 the American Physical Society. 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 supervise 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 have 36 students, which is close to capacity. Having handed the Directorship of the Centre to my successor, I now play an occasional advisory and support role while aiming to continue to build links between the Centre and industry.
2006 - date	Innovation Capital I am a part time (50%) 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. I represent Innovation Capital as a director on two investee companies, Wine Preserva (www.winepreserva.com) and Opto Global (www.optoglobal.com).
2005 - 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. For more details see Kintan’s investment philosophy at www.kintan.com. Two projects involve commercialisation of technology resulting from Monash University research, the intellectual property of which is now owned by Kintan and the scientists behind the technology. One project involves the technology for efficiently creating plasmid DNA vaccines in large quantities (http://sites.google.com/site/belmonolithtech/home) and the other involves a possible treatment for the underdeveloped organs of premature babies (see "Babies could benefit....", page 2 of http://www.med.monash.edu.au/sobs/docs/biomed-benchmark-march-2009.pdf)
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. As an outcome of structural analysis of the impact of biotechnology on the economy, I authored a paper The Biotechnology Revolution: A Unique Opportunity for Australia (1998), which had a significant impact on focussing key stakeholders on the importance of this opportunity. This was followed by a number of speaking engagements on the importance of science to the Australian economy (see attached publications list).

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 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 Warburg,) 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). (See attached publications list.)

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) 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. A detailed explanation of my approach to investment in science is set out in “Venture Capital Investment in Transformative Science – The Investment Philosophy of Kintan Pty Ltd”, which may be found at www.kintan.com.