Brian J. Boyle
Brian J. Boyle is a Scottish astrophysicist based in Australia since 1996. His primary research interests are in the fields of quasars, active galaxies and cosmology. He has been involved in science-direction setting in Australia for over 15 years, contributing the mid-term review in 2000, leading the development of the Australian Astronomy Decadal Plan 2006-15 and facilitating the development of the Optical and Radio Astronomy Investment Plan for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy in 2007. He was awarded the Centenary Medal for services to Australian Astronomy in 2003 and elected as a fellow  of the Australian Academy of Science in 2006. Boyle is currently CSIRO SKA Director as well as the Project Director for the Australia–New Zealand SKA bid. In these roles he plays a major part both nationally and internationally in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) program; a project to build the world's largest cm-wavelength radio telescope. Education. Boyle attended school at Stewart's Melville College in Edinburgh, Scotland. He obtained a BSc in astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh in 1982 and a PhD from the Durham University in 1986. His thesis title was "The evolution and clustering  of optically selected quasi-stellar objects." Career. Boyle has held positions at the University of Edinburgh, as Director of the Australian Astronomical Observatory (1996 to 2003) and Director of CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility (2003 to 2009) before his appointment to CSIRO SKA Director in February 2009. Research. Boyle has published more than 300 papers in astronomy, and has undertaken research programs on the: In 2007, Boyle was a member of one of the two teams of scientists who shared the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize. The team was awarded the prize for their discovery that the expansion of the Universe  is accelerating, leading to the idea of an expansion force, dubbed dark energy.