Dr Alexander Cooke is the Chief Executive Officer of Astronomy Australia Ltd (AAL), the peak body responsible for managing Australia’s access to leading astronomy infrastructure and advancing the goals in the Australian astronomy Decadal Plan and Mid-term Review.
Over 20 years, Dr Cooke has been instrumental in facilitating the delivery of high impact science at scale including major science initiatives on behalf of the Australian Government. Before joining AAL, he supported the establishment of the Australian Government’s Strategic Examination of R&D (SERD) and recently led delivery of the International Conference on Research Infrastructure (ICRI) 2024 which Australia hosted in partnership with the European Commission.
Dr Cooke led CSIRO’s Missions Program which aimed to deliver large-scale collaborative research with national and international partners to solve societal challenges. From 2017-2020, Dr Cooke was Australia’s Science Counsellor for the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR), where he advanced the nation’s interests on science, technology and industry matters. He engaged regularly with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory, advocating for Australia’s interests with key astronomy stakeholders across the European Union.