Hunstead Activities
Hunstead Activities
In 2014, Richard and Penny Hunstead donated $1.4 million to support students and early career researchers at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA) which is located within the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.
Since then, many activities have been carried out at SIfA, supported by the Hunstead Fund for Astrophysics.
Read more about Hunstead Gift for Astrophysics.
Penny and Dick Hunstead photographed in the foyer of the Physics Building.
Their generous gift supports a range of ongoing initiatives:
Hunstead Distinguished Visitors
The most recent initiative to be supported by the Hunstead Gift is a program supporting distinguished visitors for terms up to one month through the provision of funding of up to $5,000 AUD. This program, inspired by the visitor program run at Mount Stromlo, gives scientists the chance to work collaboratively on activities associated with SIfA’s astrophysics and technology research programs.
Hunstead Distinguished Visitors are invited to spend up to 4 weeks in residence at SIfA. Up to two appointments can be funded each year.
- 2024: Jan Eldridge (UAuckland, NZ) & Doug Johnstone (U British Columbia, Canada, Canada)
- 2023: Roland Bacon (Observatoire Lyon, France)
- 2022: Richard Ellis (UCL, UK) & James Binney (UOxford, UK)
- 2020: Don Kurtz (UCLan, UK)
Hunstead Visitors (Short Term)
Hunstead Visitors are invited to spend 3 days and nights in Sydney to meet with our SIfA students and postdocs and to give a seminar. Five $1,000 appointments are funded per year.
Hunstead Lecture Series
The Hunstead Lecture Series is an annual event funded by the Hunstead Gift for Astrophysics. An internationally renowned speaker delivers five lectures over a week on a key topic in astrophysics.
Recordings of the series and presentations are available to the public.
Hunstead Workshops
Organised by early-career researchers, Hunstead Workshops run every year to open collaborations between SIfA students and postdocs with national and international astronomers.
See the past and future Hunstead Workshops.
Hunstead Merit Award for Astrophysics
The Hunstead Merit Award provides a top-up scholarship (valued at $5,000 per year for three years) to PhD students enrolling at SIfA.
Aiming to attract top students to undertake cutting edge research, the award is available to students who did not undertake their undergraduate studies at the University of Sydney.
Up to two awards are made annually with the key criteria based on merit. Women and other underrepresented groups within the astronomical community are encouraged to apply.
The first Hunstead Merit Award recipient was Harry Qiu, who commented on how the award has assisted him during his studies:
“Moving to Sydney was hard in many ways – especially finding affordable accommodation! The support from the Hunstead Merit Award for Astrophysics has relieved some of the pressure………(this) support makes me cherish the research environment I have today. It motivates me to dig deeper to make an impact in astrophysics and aim to inspire and support future generations with their research.”
Following Harry Qiu, many more students have also recieved the scholarship, including
- 2025 – Dylan Theron
- 2024 – Xuying Zhang
- 2023 – Louis Desdoigts (2nd year award)
- 2022 – No award conferred
- 2021 – Liroy Lourenco
- 2018-2020 – Merid awards were not conferred but 3 year Top Up Scholarships were awarded for 3 years to Adeline (Haobing) Wang, Andy (Ziteng) Wand and Yuanming Wang, who were all recipients of Chinese Scholarship Council Awards.
- 2017 – Harry Qiu
More information about The Hunstead Merit Award for Astrophysics is located on the scholarships website.