Staff Biographies
Below are the details of AARNet staff biographies
Mr Chris Hancock
CEO, AARNet Pty Ltd
Chris Hancock was appointed Chief Executive Officer of AARNet Pty Ltd in 2004. Mr Hancock has had more than 25 years’ experience in senior leadership and executive positions with the last 15 years in the media and telecommunications sectors.
As the CEO of AARNet, Australia’s Research and Education Network, Mr Hancock was responsible for the implementation of AARNet3,Australia’s next generation research and education internet providing high capacity bandwidth and leading edge applications over the internet to the research and education sector throughout Australia.
The AARNet network serves more than one million end users and enables academics, researchers and students throughout Australia.Under his leadership, AARNet has developed one of the largest network footprints in the world connecting 19 points of presence across approximately 10,000 kilometres of fibre.
Mr Hancock joined AARNet from Optus, where he held several key executive positions since 1998. He was Managing Director for Optus Wholesale and Managing Director for Optus Business. Mr Hancock was an integral member of the senior executive team that completed the initial public offering as well as the eventual sale of Optus to Singtel.
In the decade prior to Optus, Mr Hancock held executive positions with Vodafone, the Seven Television Network and Sara Lee Corporation.
Mr Hancock holds a Bachelor of Arts (Social Science) from Charles Sturt University and an Executive MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management.
He is a Board Director of the Internet Industry Association of Australia, Smart Services CRC, IBES (Institute for Broadband Enabled Society) and the Starlight Foundation of NSW.
Mr Alex Reid, eResearch Advisor
Alex Reid provides input into AARNet’seResearch program as Advisor, eResearch and Middleware, which he undertakes ona part-time basis. He has had nearly 50 years’ experience in the IT industry, 45 in Higher Education, where most recently he was IT Director, at the University of WA and at Oxford University, UK.
Whilst in theUK during the 1990s, Alex was an Advisor to Janet, the UK’s equivalent to AARNet. He was for a time in the 2000s the Chair of the AARNet Advisory Committee and a member of AARNet’s Board.His main activities now centre around IT/network policy and strategy and federated access management issues, and he maintains active liaison with colleagues in UK and Europe, where he spends part of each year. He is one of two Australian representatives on the European Committee for Academic Middleware.
He remains an Honorary Professorial Fellow at UWA, where he still undertakes some teaching in the School of Computer Science & Software Engineering. Alex holds BSc, Dip Comp, MA and MBA (Technology Management) degrees. He is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society and a member of the US Association for Computing Machinery; he is a former Fellow of the British ComputerSociety, the Australian Institute of Management and Wolfson College, Oxford.
Mr James Sankar, Director Applications & Services
James Sankar joined AARNet in 2005 and is AARNet's Director for AARNet's Applications and Services division based in Sydney, Australia. James has extensive experience in managing the development and operation of middleware, voice and video over IP and mobile/wireless services. His passion is in mixing talent with new technology to deliver solutions and new services that benefit from access to high-speed research and education networks.
James is an active member of the Open Visual Communications Consortium and leads an OVCC applications working group to innovate new ways to address interoperability and user-friendly video conferencing experiences. He created AARNet's National Video Conferencing Service and has led the successful delivery of an online conferencing booking system, eduroam services, a unified communications and Telepresence exchange services, plus the publication of a various reports on desktop video, wireless networks and streaming media services.
Prior to joining AARNet, James worked for UKERNA (now known as JANET UK) where he was responsible for a range of network access (ADSL, Satellite, Wireless, Power over Ethernet, Mobile) and Middleware (eduroam, shibboleth) services.
James has chaired the TF-Mobility group that developed eduroam that is now accessible across over 2,000 universities worldwide, he has co-chaired of the Asia Pacific Advanced Networking Middleware Working Group, and has been a Steering Committee member for Smart Services CRC. James has also served as an Executive member of the Australian Access Federation.