During his 20 years tenure at UNSW Professor Brookes was Head of the School of Accountancy from 1979 to 1985, and later on the School of Information Systems and Technology. Colleagues, friends and numerous students will remember Cyril as a dedicated and inspiring teacher and researcher with a passion for IT innovations for business and government.

Professor Cyril Brookes holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Sydney and a doctorate from Oxford University, England (his thesis was on "Adaptive Control Systems" in 1964).

Cyril Brookes was appointed the founding Professor of Information Systems at the Faculty of Commerce and Economics, UNSW in 1974. The Australian Financial Review reported at the time that "the appointment was the first at an Australian university specifically directed towards the financial and managerial applications of computers and operations research technology"  McGregor 1974). During his 20 years tenure at UNSW Cyril was also head of the School of Accountancy from 1979 to 1985 and later on the School of Information Systems and Technology. He taught all aspects of the application of computer systems to business and government, with special emphasis on management information systems, collaborative systems, executive support systems, and corporate computer strategies. Cyril was directly involved as well in the design of some of the world's most advanced computer-based production systems, leading to establishment of grapeVINE and BI Pathfinder as highly successful commercial enterprises. He was awarded a US Patent for his research work into collaboration support systems. In 2006 Cyril Brookes was the Pearcey Hall of Fame Medallist.

The grapeVINE technology was sold to Sun Microsystems in 2000, and has become an integral part of Sun's corporate Intranet server business software environment.

Brookes has also worked to promote professionalism in ICT including being NSW chair of the ACS, an executive committee member for several years and serving on IFIP's information systems committee for a decade from 1975.

He was made an ACS Fellow in 1972, and was founding Director and later Chair of the Australian Association of Chief Information Officers.