Iver H. Cairns received his PhD from the University of Sydney (Australia) in 1987. He worked at the University of Iowa (1986–1998) before taking up a prestigious 5-year Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Sydney. In 2004 he was awarded a similarly competitive Australian Professorial Fellowship and in 2009 was appointed Professor in Space Physics (teaching and research) at the University of Sydney. He has great experience leading international and national scientific societies. He is Australia’s national representative to both the ICSU Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the International Association for Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA), and the past Chair (2005–2011) of the Australian Academy of Science’s National Committee for Space Science. As such, he led the development of Australia’s first Decadal Plan in space science, published by the Academy of Science in 2010. He is a clear leader of Australia’s space science community, writing submissions to multiple government reviews and entities in the last several years together with the Decadal and Strategic Plans. He also led the development of a professional-level annual Australian Space Science Conference in 2007. His primary interests are in the theory, simulation, and observation of plasma waves, radio emissions, shocks, and associated space weather produced in the solar atmosphere, inner solar wind, planetary magnetospheres, the distant heliosphere, and the local interstellar medium.