Christopher Onken is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics. After obtaining a PhD in astronomy from The Ohio State University in the U.S. for research into black hole masses, he was a Plaskett Fellow at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, Canada. In 2008, he joined RSAA as the Deputy Australian Gemini Scientist. He is currently the Operations Manager for the SkyMapper telescope project, which is conducting a ground-breaking survey of the entire southern sky. Amongst many other expected discoveries, the SkyMapper Southern Survey will find new black holes for further study.