In 2013, he was appointed to his current role as Director of the AAO. In announcing the appointment, the Minister for Science and Research, Senator Chris Evans, described Couch as one of Australia's leading astronomers and cosmologists. The AAO has its headquarters and computing facilities in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde, while the actual telescopes, including the 3.9-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope, are located on Siding Spring Mountain, near the country town of Coonabarabran. One of his most pressing priorities in taking up this role was to assist the Australian National University with the recovery of the Siding Spring Observatory (which hosts the AAO telescopes) following the January 2013 bushfires. While the telescopes and their instrumentation remained intact, several buildings at the Observatory were destroyed by the fires.