Acclaim for the mover and shaker at Monash

AS the head of Australia's largest university, Ed Byrne runs an organisation with $2 billion on its balance sheet.

AS the head of Australia's largest university, Ed Byrne runs an organisation with $2 billion on its balance sheet, 15,000 employees, 63,000 students and tentacles that reach across the globe.

But it's not uncommon for him to meet people who think universities are just big "finishing schools".

"If it was a listed company, Monash would easily be in the top 50," Professor Byrne says with a laugh. "Universities are incredibly big complex organisations and while professional training and first degrees are a crucial part of the deal, at least half our staff is dedicated to our research endeavours."

Today's conferring of a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia is Professor Byrne's second Australia Day award in eight years. An academic neurologist by training, he was rewarded in 2006 for his contribution to medical research.

"I guess the new award is for what I've been doing since then," he says. Those years have included a stint at the esteemed University College London, before taking up the reins at Monash -- where he had previously served as dean of medicine -- in 2009.

Under his guidance as vice-chancellor, Monash has become Australia's most international university, with 22,000 overseas students on its books, seven local and offshore campuses, research training links with elite Indian and Chinese universities and collaborations with pretty much every country in the world.

"All universities have their own unique presence and mission. Monash's mission is to grasp the opportunities thrown up by globalisation and the rise of Asia," he says.

"A kid studying in Melbourne today is just as likely to work in Sydney as Shanghai and will probably work in both. Many of Australia's work and business opportunities require a great deal of international knowledge and the university sector has a massive role in preparing our young people for that and also doing the R&D and innovation that underpins it."

A ten-pound pom whose family migrated to Tasmania from the north of England in 1968, Professor Byrne says his career has been a tale of two cities: Melbourne and London. In September, he will be back in Britain again, this time to head up the prestigious Kings College London.