Scott Foster is a Principal Scientist with the Defence Science and Technology Group (DST) in Adelaide, South Australia. After obtaining a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from the University of Adelaide in 1996, he worked in the opto-electronics industry for 3 years before joining DST as a Research Scientist in 1999.  Since 2003 he has led research into photonic sensor technologies for undersea surveillance, and in partnership with defence industry has developed advanced fibre optic sonar systems. He holds 3 patents and has authored over 50 journal and conference papers, with over 800 citations in the literature, including important works on distributed feedback fibre lasers and on the fundamental noise limits of fibre optic measurement. His research interests include fibre optic sensors, fibre lasers, laser noise, acoustics and magnetometry.