Simon Block Email & Phone Number

Melbourne, Australia

Chief Technology Officer

Richmond, Australia

Responsible for all Technology within the company. Member of the senior management team.Optalert is the only company in the world able to detect drowsiness and quantify an individual’s alertness level. Using the patented Johns Drowsiness Scale (JDS), developed by Founding Director Dr Murray Johns, Optalert’s technology assesses a user’s drowsiness level in real time by measuring a number of characteristics of eyelid blinks. Operators are assigned a risk score between one and 10 and are alerted before they become drowsy; an important distinction, as it is too late to notify a person after they have fallen asleep – especially if they are travelling at speed. With more than 20 years invested and validation by researchers from some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, including Harvard Medical School, our technology is in demand for high-performing 24-hour operations and for integration and licensing opportunities with in-vehicle systems within the consumer, autonomous vehicle and heavy-vehicle automotive industries. Although we started in the mining and transportation industries, we have increased our global reach to work with the airline industry, automotive manufacturers, railways, professional sport and companies testing medicines within the pharmaceutical industry.

Platform architect for new range of products. Leading development on the migration of the existing vehicle system to the Android platform. Responsible for overall architecture and R&D processes.

Key point of contact between deployment and business development Management of all deployments in the Philippines regionDefinition and onsite delivery of technical solutions to regional partnersDelivery of wireless transactions for the financial industry (ATM)Commissioning and certification of wireless infrastructure for the first pre-paid power scheme in SE AsiaResponsible for hiring and management of regional staff

Overall responsibility for Wireless Terminal Product DefinitionDevelopment of Wireless Terminal product roadmapResponsible for all issues relating to the wireless terminalsPrincipal vendor contact for vendor issues Management of Embedded development team

Project Team Leader with responsibilities for scheduling and meeting tight project deadlines Embedded development in Linux environmentWireless Telecommunications based productEmbedded and server side C/C++ developmentManagement of cross platform build and release systemConfiguration ManagementHardware interfacing and debuggingDevelopment of custom interfaces and protocolsEmbedded development in Sierra Wireless OpenAT environmentPrincipal architect of the Symstream OpenAT embedded solution

Strobe Data design and manufacture hardware and software emulation products as drop in replacement for PDP11 and HP 1000 real-time systems. Development ConsultantDevelopment of proprietary NIC device driverDebugging and re-architecture of existing driversSystem design/architecture with detail documentationPorting of drivers across versions of Windows Development of USB multi-port serial driver

Reach Technologies specialize in research and development and manufacturing of Bit Error Rate testers, Data Recorders and Telemetry instruments for the aerospace industry.Porting of NT device driver for proprietary hardware to WDM compliant Windows 2000 driverUse of Microsoft development environment: SDK, DDK, Visual C++Debugging using SoftICE kernel mode debuggerDevelopment of kernel mode device driver

Spectrum provides production ready DSP solutions including software-defined radio, signal intelligence, video processing and satellite communications for civilian and military applications.Development of proprietary device drivers for DSP applicationsSystem Design/Architecture Project ManagementDevice Driver development: Windows NT/2000, SCO, VxWorks, SolarisHot swap cPCI WDM device driver for Windows 2000Integration with 3rd party tools and development environmentsPorting and development of generic, cross platform application interfaceDetailed architecture and design documentation

The Richmond operation was a principal development centre for the Motorola's GPRS solution. Coordinated with operations in worldwide, the primary GPRS protocol stack development was developed in house for the GPRS support nodes (GSN).Development of GPRS system for existing GSM networkDevice driver development for Lynx OS real-time operating systemUnix development on Sun Solaris Embedded development of multi-threaded GPRS system nodesOverall responsibility for system integrationSystem Design/Architecture Network programming and SNMP

The HP Vancouver operation pioneered real-time MPEG video analysis prior to the widespread adoption of digital video in terrestrial cable and broadcast applications. The instrumentation developed was first to market and captured a large portion of the video test market.Product definition European and US customer visits and trade shows

The HP Vancouver operation pioneered real-time MPEG video analysis prior to the widespread adoption of digital video in terrestrial cable and broadcast applications. The instrumentation developed was first to market and captured a large portion of the video test market. HP E6277A MPEGScope plus test equipmentWindows NT kernel mode device driver developmentHP E6271A MPEGScope ATM test equipmentReal-time MPEG analysis and capture firmware development on 68040 platform running pSOS embedded OSProtocol analysis of MPEG over ATM and AAL5Design and implementation of real-time MPEG measurementsElementary stream and compliance verification softwareLiaison with HP Laboratories

The Australian Telecom Operation (ATO) of HP developed world class SONET/SDH and ATM Telecommunications test equipment. The ATO was HP's most successful initiative in Australia and was exporting over $100M per year by the late 1990's.HP E1615A 2.4 Gigabit ATM Analysis SystemFirmware detailed designReal-time firmware development on 68320 platform running pSOS embedded OSSCPI parser integrationReal-time statistics and protocol analysis of ATM and Adaptation layersGeneration and analysis of user defined OAM trafficPower on self tests and FPGA interconnection testsFrequent debugging at hardware level/ICE emulationHP E1696A 155Mb/s OC3 Load Generation ModuleStatistical verification of algorithms used in generation of traffic profiles

Quality Assurance of instrumentationDevelopment of test plansResponsibility for the regulatory compliance for all products including safety, RFI and EMI testing

Service Engineer for Hewlett Packard's range of test instrumentation.Diagnosis and Repair of instrumentation including scopes, meters and protocol analysers. Calibration of all equipment to NATA standards.

Documentation for ATM test products Reference to and understanding of all SONET/SDH and ATM standards involved; Hewlett Packard is the world largest IT and computer company.

Maintenance, installation and field repair of HP’s full range of technical computer systems.HP 9000 UNIX / HP 1000 Real-time systemsLAN administration, printers, plotters, disk and tape drivesManagement of assigned accounts

Be, Electrical Engineering

Activities and Societies: Member IEEE SMEE (Society of Electrical Engineers)

Masters, Infomation Technology (Engineering)

Activities and Societies: Studies on Masters was suspended whilst overseas. Some subjects taken at the University of British Columbia.