Speakers
Dr Mark Cheung
Australia plays a remarkable, yet often overlooked, role in humanity’s exploration of space. From communicating with spacecraft billions of kilometres from Earth to advancing satellite technologies and understanding the forces shaping our Sun, Australian science is helping unlock discoveries and capabilities that will define our future.
Drawing on his experience with NASA missions and his leadership at CSIRO, Dr Mark Cheung explores why space matters far beyond exploration — from the resilience of our communications, energy and critical infrastructure to the growing importance of technological sovereignty, international collaboration and scientific innovation.
For families accustomed to thinking in generations rather than investment cycles, space offers a compelling perspective on patience, ambition and the long view. What capabilities should Australia be building today to secure its place in tomorrow’s world? And where might patient capital, enterprise and philanthropy help turn scientific discovery into enduring national advantage?
A conversation about Australia's future, the opportunities beyond the horizon, and the legacy we choose to build for generations to come.
Dr Mark Cheung leads teams of scientists, engineers and technicians at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. At CSIRO’s Space & Astronomy research unit, he and his colleagues push the boundaries of our understanding of the universe and the environment on Earth through new instrumentation and scalable scientific computing. The unit is custodian of major research infrastructure, including the Australia Telescope National Facility, the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (NASA) and the New Norcia Deep Space Ground Station (ESA).
Mark’s own research sits at the nexus of astrophysics, remote sensing, high-performance computing and AI/machine learning. His domain-transferable expertise spans GPU algorithm development, cloud computing, deep learning, computer vision, computational (magneto)hydrodynamics, computational radiative transfer, massively parallel computing and sparse signal recovery.
After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Adelaide, Mark moved to the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany to study magnetic activity on the Sun. He then moved to the United States, where he worked at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center on a number of NASA missions, most notably the Solar Dynamics Observatory.