The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has appointed Macquarie Group Melbourne office executive chairman, Simon McKeon, as its new chairman.
McKeon, due to commence the role on 28 June 2010 when current chairman Dr John Stocker steps down, will be responsible for providing executive leadership based on past experience in a number of public and private sector organisations.
Commenting on the appointment, Innovation Minister, Senator Kim Carr, said that McKeon’s wide range of executive experience and background in business and law made him ideal for the role.
“His ability to combine financial expertise with philanthropic pursuits gives him a perspective that will be of great benefit to CSIRO,” Carr said.
Mr McKeon is also the founding president of the Australian Takeovers Panel, chair of MS Research Australia, chairman of Business for Millennium Development, director of VisionFund International, director of the Global Poverty Project and director of Red Dust Role Models.
The announcement comes after the CSIRO’s recent selection as a member of NVIDIA’s international network of research centres as a part of its new Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) program.
It was the development of its GPU cluster, launched back in November 2009 and the first of its kind in Australia, that helped the company score a spot in the program.