James Digby Yarlet Collier (born December 1958) is a British physicist and engineer. He was the chief technology officer of Neul Limited. Previously, he held several technical and executive positions at

Cambridge Silicon Radio CSR plc (formerly Cambridge Silicon Radio) was a multinational fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Its main products were connectivity, audio, imaging and location chips. CSR was listed on the London Stoc ...

(CSR), UbiNetics, Cambridge Consultants and

Schlumberger Schlumberger Limited (), doing business as SLB, is an oilfield services company. Schlumberger has four principal executive offices located in Paris, Houston, London, and The Hague. Schlumberger is the world's largest offshore drilling compa ...

Education

Collier was born in December 1958. He was educated at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, where he gained a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

Career

Collier co-founded CSR as a

corporate spin-off A corporate spin-off, also known as a spin-out, or starburst or hive-off, is a type of corporate action where a company "splits off" a section as a separate business or creates a second incarnation, even if the first is still active. Characte ...

from Cambridge Consultants Limited with a group of eight other people including Glenn Collinson,

Phil O'Donovan Phil may refer to: * Phil (given name), a shortened version of masculine and feminine names * Phill, a given name also spelled "Phil" * Phil, Kentucky, United States * ''Phil'' (film), a 2019 film * -phil-, a lexical fragment, used as a root term ...

, Jonathan Kimmitt, Carl Orsborn, Ian Sabberton, Justin Penfold, Robert Young and Graham Pink. He served as CTO of CSR which was acquired by

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

in 2015. Using short-range wireless technology, CSR became a major supplier of

integrated circuit design Integrated circuit design, or IC design, is a sub-field of electronics engineering, encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs. ICs consist of miniaturized electronic component ...

s for

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

and

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

. As a fabless manufacturing company, CSR created the first production ready, single chip,

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...

implementation of the

standard by putting a radio

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which i ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

and

baseband In telecommunications and signal processing, baseband is the range of frequencies occupied by a signal that has not been modulated to higher frequencies. Baseband signals typically originate from transducers, converting some other variable into a ...

on a single

integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

. The techniques developed are now commonplace and included in many consumer

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

devices. Between 1984 and 1999, Collier held executive and technical positions at Cambridge Consultants. Prior to 1984, Collier held a number of executive and technical positions at

. Collier also served as director UbiNetics IP Ltd from 2005. In 2010, Collier set up Neul Limited with Glenn Collinson with £8 million in initial investment to exploit machine to machine communication in the weightless wireless communications market. Neul was based in

Cambridge Science Park The Cambridge Science Park, founded by Trinity College in 1970, is the oldest science park in the United Kingdom. It is a concentration of science and technology related businesses, and has strong links with the nearby University of Cambridge. ...

and developed

wireless network A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and business installations avoid the costly process of introducing c ...

technology to enable the use of the white space spectrum.,

Cambridge Judge Business School Cambridge Judge Business School is the business school of the University of Cambridge. The School is a provider of management education. It is named after Sir Paul Judge, a founding benefactor of the school. The School is considered to be par ...

Neul had a change of management in 2013 after Collier was ousted by the investors. Neul was not successful in commercialising weightless technology and was later acquired by

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...

in 2014 for $25 million USD.

Awards and honours

In 2005, Collier won the

MacRobert Award The MacRobert Award is regarded as the leading prize recognising UK innovation in engineering by corporations. The winning team receives a gold medal and a cash sum of £50,000. The annual award process begins with an invitation to companies to ...

with his CSR colleagues John Hodgson,

, Glenn Collinson and Chris Ladas for their work on Bluecore. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016 One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: and is also a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET) and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).

References

Living people Fellows of the Royal Society British electrical engineers Alumni of the University of Oxford 1958 births {{UK-scientist-stub