Craig Mudge is an ANU graduate, with a PhD in computer science from UNC at Chapel Hill. He was a computer designer at DEC (now Hewlett Packard) in Boston, and a founder and CEO of computer chip company Austek Microsystems Ltd, spun out of CSIRO?s microelectronics research group, the VLSI Program in Adelaide.    Austek produced chips for Personal Computer manufacturers in the US, for Cochlear, and the Australia Telescope. Its signal processing chips formed the basis of CSIRO?s Wireless LAN patent. Currently he is Managing Partner of www.pacific-challenge.com, a strategy consultancy and has a visiting research position in CSIRO.

Mudge returned to Australia in 2005 after ten years in Silicon Valley. There he led the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) computer science lab He was Chairman of a Working Group of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), whose report 'Cloud computing: opportunities and challenges for Australia' was launched in Canberra in 2010. 

Mudge was elected a Fellow of ATSE in 1985, holds six patents, and has served on the advisory boards of some thirty entities.  In August 2012 he was inducted into the Pearcey Hall of Fame for 'Distinguished lifetime achievement and contribution to the development and growth of the Australian Information and Communications Technology industry'.