Originally from southwest London, Tom Parnell completed his BSc in Mathematics at the University of Warwick in 2006 and is currently working toward a PhD in the same field.

With the help of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and the ERA Foundation, Tom has been able to work within both the academic and industrial domains. Tom began his career with Arithmatica (a small company based in Warwick offering intellectual property and services to the semiconductor industry) in 2005. Having worked extensively on FPGA design and Arithmatica’s EDA (electronic design automation) tool, Tom moved to Arithmatica’s read channel group in Autumn 2006.

Within this group, Tom designed and simulated advanced detection algorithms and coding schemes for magnetic storage devices. Alongside the magnetic storage research, Tom has worked within the FP6 ProTem consortium (www.protem-fp6.org), collaborating with IBM Zurich and others, to develop read channel technology for probe storage devices.

At the end of 2007, Arithmatica’s read channel group was acquired by Siglead Ltd. (a Japanese start-up intending to produce read channel commercially). Tom is currently Chief Technical Officer of Siglead Europe (a UK-based subsidiary of Siglead Ltd) and is still pursuing his research in both magnetic and probe storage read channel.