Gavin Mercer has an Honours Degree in Computing Science from the Australian National University. After graduating in 1993 he worked as computer programmer at the Social Psychiatry Research Unit, and at the Centre for Networked Information and Publishing, before obtaining a joint post at the Australian National Dictionary Centre and the Supercomputing Research Unit.

Gavin is responsible for the systems analysis of the Centre's dictionary production activities and for the management and development of the Centre's suite of databases and electronic search tools.

His special interests include SGML, XML, parallel computing, graph theory, and the encoding and manipulation of large bodies of text.