Director's Profile - Dave Appleton

With both parents heading school science departments, inspired by such childhood heroes as Professor Eric Laithwaite (the father of the linear induction motor) and reinforced by constant reading of renowned Science Fiction authors like Isaac Asimov, it was only natural that Dave Appleton would have a natural tendency towards research and development in science and technology.

With strong showing in school subjects like Maths, Physics and Chemistry he easily gained offers to study science and engineering at several top UK universities.

Dave's pursuit of Physics at Imperial College London and Electronics at Chelsea College (now part of Kings College London) resulted in a B.Sc. (eng) and a passion for electronics and micro-computing - then a fledgling science.

Dave's involvement in Research and Development started as an attachment student in 1976 when he carried out tests on the effects of vibrations on submarine casings for the Admiralty Research Laboratories near London.
Since then he has carried out research in many areas including a low cost means of detecting Flash X-Rays for safety systems (1978), the effects of Alpha particles on semiconductor memories (1981), Shock analysis to detect the depth of ground rock (1985), a novel means of IC testing in a repair environment (1987-93) and a PC Fax system that reads incoming faxes to the owner when they are away from the office (1993-95).
Current areas of interest are Cavity Pressure Monitoring, Advanced machine vision systems and statistical techniques for early detection of impending specification drift.

After completing his M. Sc. in Management of Technology at the University of Singapore in 1997, Dave founded Calistra Research Labs with the mission of developing systems to help manufacturing companies improve their quality levels and developing test and measurement systems for calibration and research laboratories.

Under his direction the mission has always been to take on the tougher technical challenges and to venture into areas not covered by other local companies. This has led to a store of expertise unmatched by virtually any private organisation in Singapore.

Dave has been a featured speaker at many international seminars on subjects as diverse as Testing of Integrated Circuits, monitoring the Plastic Injection Moulding process and Statistical Process Control.

When he is not doing any of that, Dave spends time riding his Harley Davidson Motorcycles as far as possible given the time constraints of having a business to run and a wife and two young children. He is on the committee of the Singapore HOG chapter.

SPC for Machines is a high speed Statistical Process Control package for machine builders and system integrators.