Ryan Shannon is a Professor in Swinburne's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing and a Chief Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitaitonal Wave Discovery (OzGrav). Ryan's major research interests focus on understanding some of the most extreme objects in astronomy (neutron stars, fast radio bursts, and black holes) and using them to answer fundamental questions about the Universe. He studies these objects using the most powerful telescopes in the world.

Ryan co-leads the Commensal Real-time Fast Transients Collaboration which uses the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder Telescope to find and study fast radio bursts. He is also leads the MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: a  large project that searches  and studies nanohertz frequency gravitational waves with the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.

Prior to joining Swinburne, Ryan was a researcher at the CSIRO and Curtin University. Orginally from Canada, Ryan completed his doctoral training at Cornell University in the United States and has worked in Australia since completing his PhD.