Chris Ormston

Biography

Chris Ormston graduated with a Master of Engineering in Mechatronics from Lancaster University. This is a combination of Mechanical Engineering Electronics and Software engineering, and the integration of all three; sometimes referred to as robotics.

Joining BT's Advanced Research Centre in 1999, Chris worked with microcontrollers to interface PC's to various devices and creating standalone products based around microcontrollers. The most notable of these projects were the height adjustment of the multimedia phone camera used in the millennium dome, and Dataport, a device that allowed you to connect you laptops modem to a phone socket and pay for it using your credit card.

He then moved to the Emerging Technology Lab in 2001. The work here revolved around making the use of technology seamless and invisible. This involved a lot of work with WiFi when the technology was in its infancy. From this Ormston became very proficient at wireless networking, and the fixed network required to support it. From showcasing the work of the lab he was invited on three occasions to present to Local Engineering Institutes. It was within this group that Chris worked with a small team to create a self contained research network for the testing of new ideas and technologies. Moving on to the Mobility Research Centre in 2003, his knowledge of networking especially the wireless work, and the research network created in emerging technologies expanded to include the Mobility Research Centre. The work within Mobility looks at the seamless transition from one connection medium to another, from this Chris has worked on GSM/WiFi/SIP phones, and Mobile IP. Looking at using SIP as a medium for voice has lead to projects that investigate the performance characteristics of 3G and it's suitability as a carrier for VOIP traffic using SIP.

Outside of specific work projects Chris has a reputation for fixing PC's, mainly from a hardware point of view, but also experimenting with the software as well. With his background being in electronics Chris often helps to design and fix various electronic systems.