Plenary speakers

Dr Ilya Budovsky heads the Electricity Section at the National Measurement Institute of Australia (NMIA). He is responsible for the development as dissemination of Australian physical standards of measurement for electrical and time quantities. Many of these standards resulted from his research. He also leads the Energy Efficiency Focus Group of the Asia-Pacific Metrology Programme, a regional grouping of national metrology institutes.

Dr Budovsky is a Fellow of Engineers Australia, Senior Member of IEEE and the Australian representative to the Consultative Committee for Electricity and Magnetism (CCEM).

Dr Ian Robinson is an NPL Fellow working at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK. He has made significant contributions to the area of dc and low-frequency electrical and electro-mechanical measurements. He has worked on coaxial ac bridges, ac current comparators, ac voltage ratio, dc voltage measurement and dynamic pressure using shock tubes. He worked with Dr Bryan Kibble on the world’s first moving-coil watt balance, now renamed the Kibble balance. This balance was an important contributor to the setting of the 1990 conventional value of the Josephson constant. The second balance: the NPL Mk II, was the first Kibble balance to operate in vacuum. It made many measurements of the Planck constant at NPL and, in 2009, Dr Robinson transferred it to NRC in Canada and ensured that it was fully capable of making a major contribution to the recent redefinition of the kilogram in terms of a fixed numerical value of the Planck constant. Dr Robinson has contributed to the work of both the CCEM and the CCM. In 2019 the Institute of Measurement and Control awarded him the Sir Harold Hartley medal in recognition of his work. In 2021 Dr Robinson was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, for his services to Measurement Science. His current focus is leading a team to build a simple, accurate, Kibble balance, that is relatively easy both to manufacture and use. The work should help fellow laboratories to contribute to a worldwide mass scale which is both stable and robust.

Patrizia Tavella has a degree in Physics and a PhD in Metrology. She is presently the Director of the Time Department of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), after 30 years at the Italian Metrology Institute, INRIM. Her main interests are mathematical and statistical models applied to atomic time scales. She was deeply involved in the development of the European Navigation System, Galileo. Dr Tavella was awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize by the Italian Physical Society (2020), the EFTF award (2019), the IEEE UFFC Distinguished Lecturer (2016), and the Distinguished PTTI Service Award (2008).

Alexander Tzalenchuk is a Fellow and the Head of Science for Quantum Technologies at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL). He also holds a Chair in physics at University of London’s Royal Holloway College.

During his career at NPL Alexander has been involved in projects concerning quantum metrology, magnetic and superconducting macroscopic quantum systems, single particle detection, terahertz photon counting, scanning probe microscopy. His current focus is physics of advanced materials in application to quantum electrical metrology and research underpinning scalability of superconducting quantum computers. He plays a leading role in the NPL quantum programme and has become a founding member of the Technical Committee “Quantum Measurement and Quantum Information” of the International Measurement Confederation (IMEKO).

Barry Wood received his PhD in physics from the University of Toronto in 1981 and then joined the Electrical Standards group of the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada. Since that time he has been involved in various electrical measurements including the Josephson effect, the quantum Hall effect, cryogenic current comparators, impedance standards, the calculable capacitor and the watt or Kibble balance.

Barry Wood is the past Chairman of the CODATA Task Group on Fundamental Constants and the past Chairman of the Consultative Committee of Electricity and Magnetism's working group on proposed changes to the SI. He is a two time winner of the NCSLI International’s Astin award, a Life Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the National Research Council of Canada. He is currently a Researcher Emeritus at the National Research Council.