Rate My Professor Simon Driver

Professor Simon Driver is an ARC Laureate Fellow and Senior Principal Research Fellow at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), where he heads the Distant Universe Science Unit within the University of Western Australia's School of Physics, Mathematics and Computing. He attained his PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Wales College of Cardiff in 1994. Following Research Associate and Fellow positions at Arizona State University, the University of New South Wales, and the Australian National University, he held progressive roles at the University of St Andrews, advancing from Lecturer to Reader, Professor, and Observatory Director over eight years. In 2011, he relocated to the University of Western Australia as Winthrop Research Professor within the then School of Physics.

Driver's research examines the evolution of mass, energy, and structure from the Big Bang to the present day, federating data from space-based imaging via ESA and NASA telescopes with ground-based facilities in Australia and Chile to construct an empirical blueprint of cosmic evolution. He leads large international teams as Principal Investigator for the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, which catalogues 300,000 nearby galaxies across ultraviolet to radio wavelengths, and the Wide Area VISTA Extragalactic Survey (WAVES). Future work incorporates data from eROSITA, Euclid, and JWST. With over 300 refereed publications garnering more than 28,000 citations, notable contributions include 'Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Data Release 4 and the z < 0.1 total and z < 0.08 morphological galaxy stellar mass functions' (Driver et al., 2022, MNRAS, 362 citations), 'JWST PEARLS: Prime extragalactic areas for reionization and lensing science: project overview and first results' (Windhorst et al., 2023, AJ, 217 citations), and 'Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Panchromatic Data Release 3 and Lambda < 0.1 total and z < 0.08 morphological galaxy stellar mass functions' (Driver et al., 2016). Driver received the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship in 2022 for 'Unveiling the mass of the Universe: stars, gas, plasma and dark matter.' He has served on the Australian Research Council College of Experts (2016-2018), as Deputy Chair of the Anglo-Australian Telescope Council (2017-2022), an executive member of the 4MOST Consortium, Chair of the Australian Astronomy Limited Space Science Leads Committee, and leads the Astronomy from Space node of UWA's International Space Centre.