Professor Bryan Gaensler is an award-winning astronomer and author who is internationally recognised for his groundbreaking work on dying stars, interstellar magnets and cosmic explosions. His popular astronomy book “Extreme Cosmos” was published worldwide in 2012, revealing Bryan’s passion for understanding the Universe. Like the rest of us, Bryan is fascinated by the ways in which celestial objects change, flicker, flare and explode, but Bryan takes it a step further,  aiming to develop new approaches to astronomy through innovative hardware and software, to train the next generation of astronomers, and to foster public engagement in science. Not to mention aiming to uncover why the Universe is magnetic.

A former Young Australian of the Year, NASA Hubble Fellow and Harvard professor, Professor Bryan Gaensler was an Australian Laureate Fellow at The University of Sydney and founding Director of the Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics, before relocating to Canada in 2014. He gave the 2001 Australia Day Address, was named one of Sydney’s 100 most influential people for 2010, and in 2011 was awarded Australia’s Pawsey Medal for outstanding research by a physicist aged under 40. Bryan is currently the Director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, Canada, and the Canada Research Chair in Radio Astronomy. He is harnessing the unique capabilities of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) to conduct the Polarisation Sky Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism (POSSUM). Bryan hopes to tailor the unique capabilities of wide-field telescopes and all-sky surveys to explore the time-domain Universe for discoveries and new physical insights.