Matthew Bailes

Matthew Bailes FAA is an astrophysicist and Professor at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology^[2] and the Director of OzGrav, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery. In 2015 he won an ARC Laureate Fellowship to work on Fast Radio Bursts.^[1][5] He is one of the most active researchers in pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts in the world. His research interests includes the birth, evolution of binary and millisecond pulsars, gravitational waves detection using an array of millisecond pulsars and radio astronomy data processing system design for Fast Radio Burst discovery. He is now leading his team to re-engineer the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope with a newly designed correlation system for observation of pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs).^[6]

Matthew Bailes FAA
Alma mater	Australian National University (PhD)
Awards	Australian Laureate Fellowship (2015)[1] Shaw Prize (2023)
Scientific career
Fields	Astrophysics Pulsars Fast radio bursts Gravitational waves[2]
Institutions	Swinburne University of Technology Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing
Thesis	The origin of pulsar velocities (1989)
Doctoral students	Manisha Caleb[3] Duncan Lorimer[4]
Website	www.astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/mbailes.html

Education

Bailes was educated at the Australian National University, graduating with a PhD in 1989.^[7]

Career and research

Bailes research interests are in astrophysics, pulsars, fast radio bursts and gravitational waves.^[2][8][9]

Bailes founded the organisation for development of the Virtual Room, an octagonal virtual reality system for displaying the planets, the Sun, the stars, the Milky Way, the galaxies and the universe, etc. He made the 3D film Realising Einstein's Universe. His former doctoral students include Duncan Lorimer.^[4]

Bailes is a committee member of the Australia Telescope Steering Committee^[10] and on advisory board of Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER).

Awards and honours

Bailes was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAAS) in 2022.^[11] In 2023, he was awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy shared equally with Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin for their discovery of FRBs.^[12][13][14] In 2024, Bailes was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Science for his work in the discovery of FRBs. ^[15]