FOUNDED & GREW AN INTERNATIONAL COMPANY

 

Dr Westlake’s first business venture was in the areas of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), computer mapping and CAD/CAM. The first task, circa 1980, in order to make products like Google Maps work, was to convert the massive volumes of geographic data that was on paper into intelligent digital format.

 

The company also developed a low-cost engineering graphics workstation in 1981, in a similar timeframe to the early Sun Microsystems SUN-1 workstation. Over 100 units were manufactured and shipped.

 

The company grew rapidly with venture capital investment and employed over 100 staff, with offices in all states of Australia, New Zealand, Los Angeles, Denver, Boston, London and Paris.

 

It was sold to a Fortune 500 corporation in 1987 and the key technical staff were retained to set up the corporation’s South-East Asian R&D Centre, under Dr Westlake’s leadership and management.

 

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