Cheryl Praeger is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Western Australia. In 2007 she won an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship and in 2010-14 she served as inaugural Director of the Centre for the Mathematics of Symmetry and Computation at UWA.  Her mathematical research work has transformed our understanding of how groups act on large complex systems, through new theories, constructions, algorithms and designs, which exploit the classification of the finite simple groups.

Professor Praeger received BSc and MSc degrees from the University of Queensland, a DPhil degree from the University of Oxford in 1973, and has received honorary doctorates from Universities in six countries on three continents.  She has served on the Executive of the International Mathematical Union and on the Council and Executive of the Australian academy of Science. She is a former Vice President of the International Commission for Mathematical Instruction, and former Foreign Secretary of the Australian Academy of Science.  She is Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, an Honorary member of the London Mathematical Society, and she was the first woman to be President of the Australian Mathematical Society of which she is now an Honorary Life Member.

Professor Praeger has published more than 360 journal articles and five research monographs, many of them with her students (30 PhD students, 10 research masters students, 21 postdoctoral research associates) and research colleagues.  She has played an active role supporting and mentoring young scientists, especially women.