Professor Matthew Bailes

Professor Matthew Bailes is currently an ARC Laureate Fellow and the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav). Matthew has a long history in high performance computing. He was the founder of the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing where he drove the early development of supercomputing and advanced visualisation at Swinburne and helped establish the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC). He also led the creation of Museum Victoria's virtual room, an award-winning octagonal virtual reality exhibit and once brought the CEO of Intel to campus to witness the Centre's use of 3D visualisation in education. His research focuses on the use of supercomputers to employ machine learning and advanced signal processing techniques to unlock the secrets of the universe.  

Matthew's interests also extend beyond astrophysics. He believes data science can be used more extensively to improve the effectiveness of research, generally, and its applications to health, society and industry. In this respect, he and his colleagues Professors Richard Osborne and Gavin Lambert, organised a hackathon to develop the 'beatcovid19now' app to monitor the pandemic disruption. 

Matthew's vision for the Data Science Research Institute involves taking the latest techniques developed in fundamental research such as astrophysics and applying them to other research domains within the university in the post-COVID-19 world, particularly in the health sciences, renewable energy and other sectors where the benefits of advanced computing and machine learning are yet to be fully exploited. 

Matthew will commence in this position at the start of next year. 

You can contact Matthew on mbailes@swin.edu.au