[2] He was previously the General Director of ASTRON, part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.
[3] He was born in Kilwinning, North Ayrshire, Scotland, and brought up in nearby Saltcoats, on the west coast.
He studied for his PhD at Jodrell Bank Observatory, University of Manchester (1986–1990), supervised by Dennis Walsh.
He became the director of JIVE in 2003, and over the course of his four-year tenure the number of employees at the institute doubled from 20 to 40.
[4] On 1 February 2007 he became the General Director of ASTRON, part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.