Dr Brian Boyle, CSIRO SKA Director.

Dr Brian Boyle: CSIRO SKA Director

Dr Brian Boyle, the CSIRO Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Director, is leading the development of the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope and CSIRO's contribution to the development of the international SKA telescope.

• 27 November 2009 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements  

Current activities

Dr Brian Boyle is the CSIRO Director for the SKA, the giant Square Kilometre Array radio telescope. He is also an Adjunct Professor of the University of New South Wales. His main research interests are cosmology and the properties of active galactic nuclei and quasars.

Background

From 2003 to 2009 Dr Boyle was Director of the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility.

He was previously Director of the Anglo-Australian Observatory (1996-2003), which operates the largest optical telescope in Australia.

During 1996-2002, he led the ‘2QZ’ survey, which obtained the distances to 10 000 quasars. This was by far the largest survey of its kind ever made.

He held positions at the University of Edinburgh, the Anglo-Australian Observatory, the University of Cambridge before becoming Director of the Anglo-Australian Observatory in 1996.

Dr Boyle has undertaken research programs on the:

• cosmological distribution of quasars
• clustering of faint galaxies
• nature of galaxies associated with distant quasars
• origin of the X-ray background
• nature of the faint radio source population.  

Dr Boyle has been involved in many international collaborations, working with colleagues in:

• Canada
• Italy
• Japan
• United Kingdom
• USA.

These scientific collaborations use both ground-based and space-based telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope.

Academic qualifications

Dr Boyle was awarded his Doctorate from the University of Durham, United Kingdom.

Achievements

In 2003, Dr Boyle received a Centenary Medal from the Commonwealth Government for his contribution to the field.

In 2007 Dr Boyle was a member of one of the two teams of scientists who shared the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize. The team of which Dr Boyle was a member was awarded the prize for their discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.

Dr Boyle has published more than 250 papers, including more than 120 refereed papers, in astronomy.

Learn more about the Australia Telescope National Facility.