Pronouns: he/him
PBSci Dean's Office
University of California, Santa Cruz
1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
Phone: +1 831 459 2931
Email: gaensler@ucsc.edu
WWW: https://bryangaensler.net
(last seen in Santa Cruz CA, United States)

I am Dean of the Science Division at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and am a professor in UCSC's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

As Dean of Science, I have three priorities. The first is research impact - the division's research is already outstanding, and my goal is to make sure it has a commensurate impact on our local community, the nation, and the planet. Recent steps include our new partnership with NASA's Ames Research Center, five new research centers, and a divisional seed-funding program. The second is degree-defining experiences - giving students transformative opportunities beyond the existing curriculum, in ways that redefine how they see their degrees and their future careers. The third is embedding the highest standards of fairness and inclusion in the fabric of everything the division does, through evidence-based changes to policy, practice, and support structures, so that a more diverse set of students, staff, and faculty can participate, thrive, and succeed.

A lot of my time as dean goes into making this happen: hiring and supporting faculty, staff, and academic leaders; managing the division's budget, space, and facilities; overseeing 52 degree programs across nine departments; and working with chairs, Senate committees, and campus leadership to set priorities and get things done.

My research interests focus on cosmic magnetism, time-domain astrophysics and interstellar gas. My main goal is to understand why the Universe is magnetic: in particular, I am using the unique capabilities of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) to conduct the Polarisation Sky Survey of the Universe's Magnetism (POSSUM). POSSUM is based around an effect called "Faraday rotation", in which light from a background object is subtly changed when it passes through a cloud of magnetized gas. By measuring the Faraday rotation in the emission from a million distant galaxies over 50% of the sky, POSSUM aims to transform our understanding of magnetic fields in galaxies, clusters and in diffuse intergalactic gas, and to thus address key unanswered questions on Milky Way ecology, galaxy evolution and cosmology. The data from POSSUM will provide a substantial legacy to the astronomical community, while the new instrumentation required for this project is prototyping the technology needed for the Square Kilometre Array.

I also study the ways in which celestial objects change, flicker, flare and explode. I am involved in several systematic studies of the time-domain Universe, tailored to the unique capabilities of wide-field telescopes and all-sky surveys. I'm particularly excited by fast radio bursts (FRBs), random and intense flashes of distant radio emission whose nature and origin are one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy. I am fortunate to be part of the CHIME/FRB team, which has discovered more FRBs than every other experiment combined!

I continue to work with students on the topics above; UCSC students interested in joining my research team are welcome to email me to ask about availability.

I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. I did my undergraduate and graduate degrees at The University of Sydney and at CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility. I subsequently held postdoctoral fellowships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, was an associate professor of astronomy at Harvard University, an ARC Federation Fellow and Australian Laureate Fellow at The University of Sydney, and then was the Canada Research Chair in Radio Astronomy at the University of Toronto. From 2011 to 2014, I was the founding director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics, and from 2015 to 2023 was the director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics.

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Photo: Renee Wall




My book Extreme Cosmos
Buy it now: Aus/NZ, everywhere else

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  • What I'm listening to (last listen 20 Sep 2026):
    • Burning Down The House - Tom Jones
    • I Like the Way - Radio Edit - BodyRockers
    • A Girl Like You - Edwyn Collins
    • MERCY - REMIX - Duffy
    • Get the Party Started - P!nk
    • Shut Up and Dance - Walk the Moon
    • I Want You - Savage Garden
    • I Don't Feel Like Dancin' - Radio Edit - Scissor Sisters
    • Spice Up Your Life - Spice Girls
    • Born to Be Alive - The Original - Patrick Hernandez

  • Some books I've been reading:

Lots of accesses since 29-Feb-1996.