Rate My Professor Randall Wayth

Associate Professor Randall Wayth serves as Adjunct Associate Professor at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA), Curtin University, within the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and holds the position of SKA-Low Senior Commissioning Scientist at the Square Kilometre Array Observatory. He earned a BSc in Computer Science and a BEng in Electrical Engineering with honours from the University of Melbourne, followed by a PhD in Astrophysics from the same university in 2005. After five years working as a software consultant in industry, Wayth completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He joined Curtin University as Senior Lecturer in 2013 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2016.

Wayth's research focuses on low-frequency radio astronomy and instrumentation for next-generation telescopes. He led commissioning efforts for the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) as Commissioning Scientist and Project Director, overseeing the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison (GLEAM) survey spanning 40–300 MHz, producing one of the largest catalogues of low-frequency radio sources. His contributions extend to the BIGHORNS experiment targeting signals from the Epoch of Reionisation, SKA-Low prototype station developments including the Engineering Development Array 2 (EDA2), and pulsar observations. Key publications include 'GLEAM: The GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array survey at 40–300 MHz' (2015), 'Engineering Development Array 2: design, performance, and lessons from an SKA-Low prototype' (2022), and '50–250 MHz Pulsar Census with an SKA-Low prototype station: Spectra and Polarization' (2026). Wayth heads the ICRAR Astronomical Instrumentation program and has applied radio techniques to passive radar for space surveillance. His teams received recognition at the 2023 Curtinnovation Awards for the SpeedSig project and were among Western Australia's only winners in 2015 prestigious research awards for MWA advancements. He contributes to the SKAO Transients Science Working Group.