Dr Ben McAllister—Young Tall Poppy Award 2025

Congratulations Ben! Ben is a 2025 winner of the Australian Institute of Policy and Science (AIPS) Young Tall Poppy Award for Victoria.

The Young Tall Poppy Science Awards were created in 1998 by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science (AIPS) to recognise and celebrate Australian intellectual and scientific excellence and to encourage younger Australians to follow in the footsteps of our outstanding achievers. The awards have made significant achievements towards building a more publicly engaged scientific leadership in Australia.

Dr Ben McAllister, DECRA Fellow at Swinburne University of Technology, is tackling one of the greatest mysteries in science: what is our universe made of? While most of the universe’s matter is invisible “dark matter,” scientists still don’t know what it is.

Dr McAllister builds ultra-sensitive detectors to search for new fundamental particles that could make up this elusive substance. His research spans advanced quantum technologies, cryogenics, and high-precision instrumentation with applications that extend beyond physics to next-generation sensing and measurement.

He helped build Australia’s first dark matter detector (The ORGAN Experiment), leads a node of the global ADMX axion dark matter collaboration, and now heads a Swinburne-based group designing a new dark matter detector. He also co-founded CELLAR, a cryogenic facility deep underground, to explore new physics and understand how radiation affects quantum technologies.

Through this work, Dr McAllister is not only advancing the search for dark matter but also driving innovation in quantum science and technology.

Visit the AIPS website to read about Dr Ben McAllister - AIPS and other Young Tall Poppy Award winners.