Joss Bland-Hawthorn

Chief Investigator

University of Sydney

Biography

Joss Bland-Hawthorn is an ARC Laureate Fellow Professor of Physics and Director of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIFA). He was born in England before moving overseas in 1985. After receiving his PhD from the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the University of Sussex, he took a 3-year postdoc in astrophysics at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. In 1988-1993, he was a tenured professor at the Space Physics & Astronomy Department, Rice University, Texas. In 1993, he joined the Australian Astronomical Observatory, Sydney. In 2000, he was appointed Head of Instrument Science, a new division that was created to reflect the increasing need for complex novel solutions to astronomical instrumentation. In 2007, Joss was awarded the prestigious Federation Fellowship with a tenured professorship in the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA), School of Physics, University of Sydney. In 2009, he co-founded the Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS). In 2012, he was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Optical Society of America. In 2014, Joss was awarded the Australian Laureate Fellowship. He has won numerous awards and serves on several boards including Section H (IAU) and the Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics (USA). He has delivered numerous lecture series (e.g. Saas Fee, Bologna, Wisconsin) and is a regular speaker on the conference circuit, in addition to delivering occasional addresses at schools, clubs and industry. He was the Canon Lecturer at Canon Inc, Shinegawa, Tokyo (2012), the Plenary Speaker at the Supreme Court Judges conference (2013), and the Allison Levick Lecturer (2009, 2014) and gave the address at the AAS Burbidge dinner in Auckland, NZ (2019). In 2018, he was the Miller Professor to Berkeley. In 2019-2021, The Australian identified him as the research leader in astronomy and astrophysics. He is a regular guest at the University of Oxford, the University of Bologna and the University of Marseille.