Alan Duffy

In October 2017, the Royal Institution of Australia announced that it appointed Duffy as its Lead Scientist.

As of August 2017, NASA's Astrophysics Data System (ADS) lists 29 publications by Duffy, which have 1,487 citations while Cornell University's arXiv lists 31 of his papers, covering a range of topics in general astronomy and cosmology.

He has presented at TEDx in the Sydney Opera House. He was the Ambassador for the Sydney Science Festival 2016, and host for Famelab showcasing Australian research and achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. He hosted an Evening with Neil DeGrasse Tyson at the Melbourne Convention Centre, interviewed onstage Lawrence Krauss as well as Brian Greene, and presented in a national tour for BBC Worldwide's The Science of Doctor Who. He was a featured speaker at the Australian Skeptics' national conventions in 2017 and 2018. In 2018 he was a host of ABC's Stargazing Live series.

In January 2016, Duffy married Sarah Clarke. He qualified as an Australian citizen in October 2014.

Duffy's good looks have helped to attract media attention – MamaMia commented that "Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the sound of his cheekbones."

Sci-fi was a big inspiration. My mum had remarried and my stepdad at the time was a ferocious nerd like me. We watched everything – Star Trek, Star Wars, all the classic sci-fi books by Asimov and Arthur C Clarke – and it opened up this world to me of all these possibilities... And, of course, Stephen Hawking's books – how could you not want to study physics? There are these incredible concepts – black holes, the universe expanding – that are so bizarre and yet are actually part of our world.

He wrote and starred in a 2012 science documentary about dark matter, Dark. Since December 2012 he has co-hosted the YouTube series Pint in the Sky with Katie Mack, and in March 2017 he started a new podcast, Cosmic Vertigo with co-host Amanda Bauer. As part of Science Week 2017, Duffy and Katie Mack launched a virtual reality tour of the Universe, using custom-made headsets and a free app.

As Duffy was completing his doctorate, work was starting on the Australian component of the world's largest astronomical facility, the Square Kilometre Array. His doctoral work had covered similar topics, and he was invited to join the first stage of this telescope; the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). He moved to Perth, Western Australia in 2009 to take up the position at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. Three years later, he moved to Melbourne to accept an academic post as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, where he investigated the formation of the first galaxies in the early universe. Then in 2014 he took up the position of Associate Professor at Swinburne University of Technology, still based in Melbourne.

His undergraduate studies in physics were conducted at the University of Manchester. He incorporated periods of study in the Netherlands on an EU scholarship, working on supercomputers at Europe's oldest observatory in Leiden University, and undertook physics at the University of Amsterdam, even though he spoke no Dutch when he started. He graduated with a MPhys (1st) in 2005. He completed his PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Jodrell Bank Observatory based in the University of Manchester in 2009, with his thesis entitled "Investigation of large scale structure in the Universe".

Alan R Duffy (born 1983) is a professional astronomer and science communicator. He was born in England, raised in Ireland, and is currently based in Australia. He is a Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology, and he is the Lead Scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia.