
Dr Purcell is Program Director at Trillium Technologies Australia, where he builds public-private research partnerships to tackle the biggest challenges of our time. Trillium works with diverse partners, that include NASA, ESA and Australian Space Agency, to apply AI and space data to bushfires, flooding, climate change, ocean health and space science. He is currently working to build an AI-driven shark species detector in collaboration with NSW Department of Primary Industries, for deployment on NSW beaches this summer.
Before joining Trillium, Dr Purcell spent 18 years investigating the physics of the interstellar medium and led the data-processing teams of several large surveys of star-formation and cosmic magnetism. He is currently an Adjunct Senior Lecturer with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW, and an Honorary Lecturer with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Macquarie University.