Melanie Johnston-Hollitt

Johnston-Hollitt was born in Darwin shortly before Cyclone Tracy destroyed the city. She and her mother were evacuated to Brisbane on December 29, 1974[1] en route to Townsville. During her early life she lived in various parts of Queensland before her family returned to Darwin in 1979. In 1986 her family moved to Adelaide and she completed High School and later undertook two undergraduate degrees at the University of Adelaide: a Bachelor of Science majoring in Theoretical and Experimental Physics and a Bachelor of Science (Mathematics & Computer Science) with a major in Pure Mathematics. She also completed a BSc (Hons) in Astrophysics under the supervision of Roger Clay, and a doctorate in radio astronomy jointly with the University of Adelaide and the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility under the supervision of Ron Ekers and Richard Hunstead.

Johnston-Hollitt moved to Leiden Observatory at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands as the inaugural LOFAR Fellow,[2] joining the group of George Miley to work on the design of the LOFAR telescope. In 2004, she took up a continuing faculty position at the University of Tasmania.[3] In January 2009 she moved to Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand to establish and lead a new radio astronomy group.

Johnston-Hollitt became instrumental in NZ's engagement with the Square Kilometre Array, and she has played an advisory role for the New Zealand Government on the project since April 2009. Shortly after commencing her term advising the NZ Government, it was announced that NZ would join Australia in bidding to host the SKA telescope.[4] Johnston-Hollitt was subsequently an author of the Australia-New Zealand bid to host the SKA, responsible for identifying possible SKA station sites in New Zealand. From 2011, she was a government-appointed member of the preparatory group set-up to establish the SKA as a legal entity in the UK, and then a founding member of the Board of Directors for the SKA Organisation Ltd. (December 2011 - January 2018).[5] For her scientific leadership she was appointed by the SKAO as founding co-chair of the SKA Cosmic Magnetism Science Working group (March 2013 - December 2015),[6] and along with her co-chair, Federica Govoni, was responsible for defining the key SKA requirements to associated with cosmic magnetism, editing the magnetism sections of the SKA Science Case and writing the cosmic magnetism scientific summary paper.[7] Johnston-Hollitt also took up the role of technical lead for the Science Data Processor (SDP) Science Analysis Pipeline (2012 - 2016), and was a Board member of the SKA Science Data Processor consortium (2012 - 2017)[8] which was tasked with designing the compute system needed to ingest the massive raw data the SKA is to generate.[9] From December 2016 to April 2017 she chaired the Cost Update Subcommittee of the SKA Board.

Johnston-Hollitt led the 2011 bid for NZ to join the Murchison Widefield Array, a low frequency precursor to the SKA. She joined the MWA Board in 2012, became Vice-Chair in 2013, and held the position of Chair from January 2014 to January 2018. In early 2017 she became CEO and Founder of Peripety Scientific Ltd. an independent research organisation specialising in radio astronomy research and consultancy based in Wellington. She resigned from Victoria University of Wellington in September 2017 and it was subsequently announced she would take up the position of Professor of Radio Astronomy at Curtin University and Director of the Murchison Widefield Array.[10]

Johnston-Hollitt's primary research interests are cosmic magnetism and observations of galaxy clusters, primarily through the use of radio telescopes. She has authored over 230 publications.[11] [12] She has served on the Editorial Board of Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia since January 2015, commencing a 3-year term as Editor-in-Chief from January 2018.[13]

Johnston-Hollitt has gained funding for design, construction and exploitation of radio telescopes across Europe, Australia and New Zealand.[14][15][16][17] She has held several visiting positions as a guest professor at the Excellence Cluster Universe, Munich, Germany, the Sophia Antipolis University, Nice, France, the University of Bologna, Italy[18], and the University of Malaya, Malaysia.

• 2002 – Union of Radio Scientists International (URSI) Young Scientist Award [19] Awarded in recognition of individuals under the age of 35 who have made innovative contributions and discoveries in multidiscipline research related to electromagnetic fields and waves[20]
• 2006 – Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology, Faculty Early Career Research Award, University of Tasmania[21]
• 2010 – Royal Society of New Zealand, Hudson Lecturer. Awarded for recognition of effort in science or the promotion of science and technology [22].

Johnston-Hollitt has given presentations at TEDx Christchurch (2016), Singularity University New Zealand Summit (2016),[23] www2017 (2017)[24], O'Reilly Media's Strata Data Conference on Big Data (2017)[25], and L'échappée Volee 2018.[26]