Professor Virginia Kilborn

Biography

Professor Virginia Kilborn is Swinburne's innaugural Chief Scientist, working to further education, research, policy and equity at Swinburne and beyond.

Virginia is also a radio astronomer with the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University, where her research interests include tracing galaxy evolution by studying the neutral hydrogen gas in galaxies. She is surveying the sky with the next generation radio telescopes, such as the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the SKA in the future.  Virginia undertook her PhD studies at the University of Melbourne, and following a post-doc at Jodrell Bank observatory in the UK, she returned to Melbourne to take up an ARC-CSIRO linkage fellowship at Swinburne in 2003. Virginia was deputy director of the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing from 2011-2013, and acting director for CAS in 2013. Virginia was the Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 2015-2018. From 2019-2021 Virginia was the Dean of the School of Science.

Virginia is an enthusiastic educator and has taught into the Swinburne Astronomy online program since 2006, and helped to instigate Swinburne's new and innovative space education programs. She undertakes numerous public outreach opportunities including STEM talks and programs for schools, and space and astronomy outreach with the general public. Virginia is active in the Australian Astronomical community and is a past President of the Astronomical Society of Australia.