Rate My Professor Andrew Melatos

Professor Andrew Melatos is a Professor in the School of Physics, Faculty of Science, at the University of Melbourne, where he chairs the Knowledge and Engagement Committee. He earned a BSc with University Medal from the University of Sydney (1988-1991) and a PhD from the same university (1992-1995). His postdoctoral career began with a Research Fellowship in Theoretical Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology (1995-1997), followed by a Miller Fellowship in Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley (1997-2000). Upon returning to Australia, he joined the University of Melbourne, progressing to full Professor and assuming leadership roles in gravitational wave research as Chief Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).

Melatos specializes in theoretical astrophysics, with key interests in gravitational waves from neutron stars, pulsar glitches, superfluid turbulence in neutron star interiors, relativistic pulsar winds, and innovative LIGO data analysis methods such as hidden Markov models for continuous-wave searches. He serves on the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Council (2014-present) and has held positions including Chair of the International Steering Committee of the Texas Symposium Series (2006-2008), member of the National Committee for Astronomy of the Australian Academy of Science (2004-2007, contributing to the 2005 Decadal Review), Australia Telescope Time Assignment Committee (2002-2004), and Gemini Telescope Science Advisory Committee (2005-2007). His honors include the University of Sydney University Medal, the 2014 University of Melbourne Award for Outstanding Research Higher Degree Supervision, and a 2015 Australian Awards for University Teaching Citation for sustained impact in physics education. Representative publications include "Discovering Pulsars in Compact Binaries with a Hidden Markov Model" (2019), "Long-term Statistics of Pulsar Glitches Due to History-dependent Avalanches" (2021), "Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with Gamma-Ray Bursts Detected by Fermi and Swift during the LIGO-Virgo Run O3a" (2021), and "Gravitational Waves from Non-Radial Oscillations of Stochastically Accreting Neutron Stars" (2024). He has delivered public lectures, such as the 2016 Physics Lecture at the University of Melbourne.