David Tsai
Dr David Tsai is a Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering as well as the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, at UNSW, Sydney Australia. He received his PhD in biomedical engineering at UNSW under the supervision of Scientia Prof. Nigel Lovell and Prof. John Morley. He then completed postdoctoral training at Columbia University under the joint guidance of Prof. Kenneth Shepard and Prof. Rafael Yuste. Dr Tsai is a recipient of the NHMRC CJ Martin fellowship.
Dr Tsai’s current research focuses on (1) CMOS microelectronics for large-scale, high-density brain machine interfaces, (2) micro- and nano-fabricated devices for neural sensing and stimulation, and (3) neurobiology of brain machine interfaces.
Education
PhD, University of New South Wales (2012)
MBiomedE, University of New South Wales (2007)
BE (Honours 1st Class), University of New South Wales (2007)
Selected Grants
DoE Australia’s Economic Accelerator Grant, 2025, LE-A
NHMRC MRFF Stem Cell Therapies Mission, 2023 - 2024, CI-F
NHMRC Ideas Grant, 2020 - 2024, CI-A
UNSW Research Infrastructure Scheme Grant, 2020, Co-I (x2)
UNSW - Chinese Academy of Sciences Collaborative Research Mobility Grant, 2020 CI-A.
ARDC Transformative Data Program Grant, 2019, Co-I
Shanghai Jiao Tong University - UNSW Collaborative Research Fund Seed Grant, 2018
NHMRC Project Grant, 2015 - 2019, Co-I
NHMRC CJ Martin Fellowship, 2013 - 2017, CI-A
Kavli Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2012 - 2013, CI
Before academia
Capital Markets CRC Ltd
I was a research engineer at Capital Markets CRC (CMCRC), where we developed software for identifying prohibited trading behaviours, such as insider trading and market manipulation. The software was used by over 40 stock brokers in 25 markets internationally, including many of the world’s largest banks and investment houses. The system was subsequently purchased by NASDAQ QMX. More about the software Compliance Explorer.
National ICT Australia Ltd
Before CMCRC, I was at National ICT Australia, where I developed models for the ARM microprocessor in higher order logic using the theorem prover Isabelle/HOL. It was part of the L4 Microkernel project at NICTA. Qualcomm, Google and Oracle are some of the mobile solution companies using the L4 microkernel. As of 2012, L4 has been deployed in more than 1.5 billion mobile devices. My supervisor was A/Prof. Gerwin Klein. Some related links: