ANU Professor Aidan Byrne to Become Australian Research Council CEO Effective July 23, 2012. (May 29, 2012)

The Australian National University's Dean of Science and Director of its College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor Aidan Byrne, will take over as the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Research Council (ARC) effective July 23, 2012. The ARC's current annual budget allocation is $849 million.

According to the thumbnail biography on the ANU website:

Professor Byrne completed BSc and MSc degrees at the University of Auckland before commencing a PhD degree at the ANU in 1981. Following the completion of the degree in Department of Nuclear Physics he held positions with the University of Melbourne and spent over two years in Bonn, Germany as a von Humboldt fellow. He returned to the ANU in 1989 as a Research Fellow and in 1991 commenced a joint appointment between the Department of Physics, in the Faculty of Science and the Department of Nuclear Physics, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering. He was Head of the Department of Physics from 2003 to 2007. He is currently the Dean of Science at the ANU and the Director of the ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Science.

One of Professor Byrne's tasks will be to ride herd on the continuing legacy of Senator Kim Carr's ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia). Its next edition is due early next year.