Greg Boyle

Dr Boyle’s research career began in 2010, investigating the transport of positrons and electrons in simple dilute gas, dense gas, and liquid systems. Under the supervision of Prof. Ron White, the theoretical framework and numerical tools developed formed the basis of his PhD thesis (“The modelling of non-equilibrium light lepton transport in gases and liquids”) and became a major theme of his subsequent research career. During this time, Dr Boyle was a frequent participant and contributor to the Centre for Antimatter-Matter Studies (CAMS) ARC Centre of Excellence, which offered an excellent opportunity to engage with prominent national and international researchers.

After being awarded a PhD in 2016, Dr Boyle worked as a casual lecturer in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering at JCU, while simultaneously acting as a research officer for Prof. White. In February of 2017, he transitioned into a full-time position lecturing with a focus on fluid mechanics and thermodynamics. His research during this time culminated in “A multi-term solution of the space-time Boltzmann equation for electrons in gases and liquids”, which remains the state of the art, and the later published “Positron scattering and transport in liquid helium” which represented the first ab initio treatment of positron scattering in liquids and the first inclusion of bulk effects on positron annihilation.

In February of 2018, Dr Boyle accepted a position at the Deutches Elektronen Synchtron DESY in Hamburg, Germany, as a DESY Fellow in Experimental Physics. For the next four years, he worked as one of the few theoreticians/simulation specialists in the predominantly experimental Linear Accelerator Technologies group, developing next-generation compact plasma-based particle accelerators. The close cooperation between the theoretical and experimental sides of the project were particularly inspiring, as well as the fantastic working environment and extensive international research partnerships, all of which were a formative experience for Dr Boyle’s subsequent research strategies. The result of this close collaboration between theory and experiment were a number of high-impact papers in prestigious journals including “Recovery time of a plasma-wakefield accelerator” and “High-resolution sampling of beam-driven plasma wakefields” published in Nature and Nature Communications, respectively.

In January of 2021, Dr Boyle took up a full-time lecturing position in physics at JCU. The teaching and research has allowed him to further leverage JCU’s strong tradition in electron and positron transport research, while maintaining the international collaborations established during his time in Germany. One of Dr Boyle’s new research focuses is bringing new computational techniques from the field of machine learning, such as artificial neural networks, to bear on traditional charged-particle transport problems.

Following from his experience at DESY, he is actively engaging with experimental research at ANU and ANSTO.