Ray Norris

Ray Norris is a British/Australian astronomer in the School of Science at Western Sydney University and with CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science. He researches how galaxies formed and evolved after the Big Bang, and the process of astronomical discovery with large data volumes. He also researches the astronomy of Australian Aboriginal people.

Ray was educated at Cambridge University, UK, and moved to Australia in 1983 to join CSIRO, where he became Head of Astrophysics in 1994, and then Australia Telescope Deputy Director, and Director of the Australian Astronomy MNRF, before returning in 2005 to active research.

He currently leads an international project—the Evolutionary Map of the Universe—to image the faintest radio galaxies in the universe, using the new ASKAP radio telescope recently completed in Western Australia. He also leads the WTF project which is exploring machine learning techniques to discover the unexpected.

He frequently appears on radio and TV, and has published a novel, Graven Images.