Tim Bedding

Professor

Stellar oscillations (asteroseismology), using data from NASA’s Kepler and TESS missions.

A recipient of the University of Sydney's Excellence in Teaching Award.

View Tim’s academic profile HERE

Joss Bland-Hawthorn

Professor

Galactic archaeology and physical processes in galaxies, both observations and simulations.

Key member of the GALAH and SAMI/Hector surveys.

Project scientist for the SAIL labs which develop photonic instruments for telescopes and industry.

View Joss’s academic profile HERE

Céline Boehm

Professor

Céline Boehm is an astroparticle physicist working at the interface of particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. She is trying to discover what dark matter is made of.

View Celine’s academic profile HERE

Julia Bryant

Professor

High redshift radio galaxies, galaxy evolution and astrophotonic developments for astronomical instrumentation, in particular imaging fibre bundles called hexabundles.

Leads the team building the Hector instrument for the Anglo-Australian Telescope.

View Julia’s academic profile  HERE

Manisha Caleb

Lecturer

Using localised Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) as cosmological probes.

Measuring the distribution function of dispersion measure in the FRB population to help understand how baryons are distributed with respect to galaxy halos, in combination with UV and X-ray absorption-line surveys.

Using integral field spectroscopy to better characterize the local environment of FRBs, including their host dispersion measure contribution and exploring how future FRBs at high redshift can be used as probes for helium reionisation.

Scott Croom

Professor

Cosmology and the formation and evolution of galaxies.

The study of quasars and active galactic nuclei and the use of spatially resolved spectroscopy to further our understanding of galaxy evolution.

Leads the SAMI Galaxy Survey.

View Scott's academic profile HERE

Anne Green

Emeritus Professor

The structure and ecology of the Milky Way Galaxy and its various constituents, via radio frequency surveys, including searches for supernova remnants and OH masers.

Studies of the Carina Nebula, including its HI and molecular gas.

The UTMOST project to detect and characterise Fast Radio Bursts with the Molonglo Telescope.

View Anne’s academic profile HERE

Dr Anita Hafner

Helen Johnston

Associate Professor

Stellar remnants like neutron stars and black holes, particularly those in binary star systems.

The supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies.

View Helen’s academic profile HERE

Sergio Leon-Saval

Associate Professor

Sergio Leon-Saval develops optical and photonic instruments for cubesats, for astronomical telescopes and for commercial applications. He is Director of the SAIL labs, the experimental arm of SIfA.

View Sergio’s academic profile HERE

Geraint Lewis

Professor

Geraint Lewis explores the influence of dark energy and dark matter on the evolution and ultimate fate of the Universe. He also uses gravitational lensing to probe the structure of dark matter in galaxies.

View Geraint’s academic profile HERE

Don Melrose

Emeritus Professor

Plasma astrophysics, especially coherent emission processes in astrophysical plasmas.

Quantum plasmadynamics.

Pulsar radio emission mechanism.

The theory of solar flares.

View Don’s academic profile HERE

Tara Murphy

Professor

Radio astronomy.

Radio transients and variables. Co-lead of the transients project on the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP). Interest in gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, pulsars, flare stars, exoplanets.

Leads the Australian effort in radio follow-up of gravitational wave events.

Interdisciplinary work in machine learning and big data.

Teaches computational science and data science with a particular interest in online teaching and teaching innovation.

View Tara’s academic profile HERE

John O’Byrne

Associate Professor

Astrophotonics.

Research using high resolution ground-based optical telescopes and interferometers, specifically Adaptive Optics, Optical Stellar Interferometry (including Sydney University Stellar Interferometer - SUSI), multi-band optical filters for astronomy, multi-wavelength imaging of nearby face-on spiral galaxies and measuring magnetic fields on the Sun.

Physics and Astronomy Education research.

View John’s academic profile HERE

Elaine Sadler

Professor

Galaxy evolution; co-evolution of massive galaxies and their central black holes.

Low-luminosity radio galaxies: demographics, triggers and lifetime in the radio-galaxy phase.

Neutral hydrogen in and around early-type galaxies.

Searches for high-redshift galaxies.

Radio source populations at 20-100 GHz.

Supernovae and gamma-ray bursts.

Design and planning for next-generation telescopes.

View Elaine’s academic profile HERE

Peter Tuthill

Professor

Development of novel technologies to image the theatres of stellar birth and death, revealing the cradles of solar system formation. Lead of a space telescope project to find exoplanets around stars in our immediate galactic neighbourhood.

View Peter’s academic profile HERE

Mike Wheatland

Professor

Solar astrophysics.

Solar flares and solar activity, the statistics of that activity, coronal magnetic fields, solar-terrestrial relations, and Bayesian probability.

Modelling magnetic fields in the Sun's corona using nonlinear force-free fields.

Computational modelling.

View Mike’s academic profile HERE

Dr Dan Ballard

Galaxy-galaxy scale strong gravitational lensing as a probe of dark matter, the expansion history of the Universe and galaxy evolution. Developing lens reconstruction techniques to model Hubble Space Telescope data from the Astro3D Galaxy Evolution with Lenses (AGEL) survey.

Dr Christopher Betters

The development (design, construction, characterisation, and implementation) of cutting-edge compact optical instruments that harness the latest photonic technologies, originally for astronomical applications. Using techniques and methods I developed for astronomy to tackle a broader range of problems in academia and industry, specifically in remote earth observation and agriculture.

View Christophers’s academic profile HERE

Dr Courtney Crawford

Asteroseismology with particular interests in the modeling and analysis of post-merger stars, spectral classification, and spectral analysis, especially of exotic stellar variables.

Dr Dougal Dobie

My research includes follow-up of gravitational wave events with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), searching for exotic radio transients with ASKAP, and using the ATCA to study the radio emission of relativistic transients discovered at other wavelengths.

Dr Laura Driessen

A radio astronomer who works on searching for radio stars, image-plane radio variable and transient sources, and localising fast radio bursts. She works with the ASKAP and MeerKAT telescopes and is co-Project Scientist of the Variables and Slow Transients with ASKAP (VAST) survey. Laura is also part of the ThunderKAT and MeerTRAP collaborations. She is currently a Superstar of STEM.

Dr Nastaran Farhang

Solar Physics. Solar coronal features particularly solar flares and coronal loops (statistics & modelling). Cellular automaton and self-organized criticality. Complex Networks.

I've extensively applied data mining and numerical modelling techniques to study various aspects of the Sun's atmosphere, including solar flares, magnetic field evolution, and solar atmospheric features. My current research includes energy balance in avalanche models, statistical methods for analyzing power-law distributions, network-based studies of solar flares, and the study of quasi-periodic pulsations and active regions on the Sun's surface.

Dr May Gade Pedersen

Asteroseismology of massive stars, with special focus on studying their internal element and angular momentum transport mechanisms.

Variable stars in OB associations and ensemble modelling of their pulsating stars.

Providing observational constraints for stellar structure and evolution models.

Dr Madusha Gunawardhana

The formation and evolution of massive stars, HII regions and star formation in the nearby Universe.

The stellar initial mass function, massive stellar populations and galaxy evolution.

The stellar population synthesis and photoionisation modelling.

Integral field spectroscopy using VLT-MUSE, SAMI and Hector surveys, and spectroscopy using GAMA and 4HS surveys.

Dr Elizabeth Iles

Ties with galactic archaeology and resolving the history of galaxies/galaxy formation and evolution, as well as galaxy interactions/mergers.

Dr Prasad Mani

I apply deep-learning techniques to analyze δ-Scuti pulsations from NASA/TESS.

Additionally, I do feature engineering to construct realistic datasets for training deep-learning models.

Dr Barnaby Norris

Instrumentation (specifically high contrast imaging, astrophotonics, interferometry and polarimetry), planet formation and stellar mass-loss

View Barnaby’s academic profile HERE

Iris de Ruiter

Radio astronomer within OzGrav.

I analyse ASKAP data to discover exotic radio transients from compact objects, developing software to identify them and conducting multi-wavelength follow-ups for detailed interpretation. These transients provide insights into the properties and evolution of white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, often in binaries. I also work on the radio follow-up of gravitational wave events, searching for prompt radio bursts and long-lived emission from neutron star mergers.

Dr David Sweeney

Dr Kyriakos Tapinou

Data-driven models of solar eruptions. MHD and MFP plasma simulations.

I’m a plasma physics and solar astrophysics researcher, specialising in numerical modelling of plasmas and fluids. My current research focus is on modelling solar eruptions with data-driven simulations. I am interested in plasma physics, astrophysics, fusion energy, hypersonics, and plasma based propulsion for space exploration.

Dr Thorsten Tepper García

Galaxy formation and evolution: Constrained numerical simulations, analytic models

Quasar absorption lines: Cosmological simulations, spectroscopy

View Thorsten's academic profile HERE

Dr Yong Yang

Galactic Archaeology of the Milky Way.

My research interests are the formation and evolution of substructures: moving groups in the Galactic disk, globular clusters and stellar streams in the Galactic halo.

I also work with data from Gaia, LAMOST, SEGUE, APOGEE, GALAH and other surveys.

Adam Taras

Optomechanical Engineer

Adam completed his B Engineer (Mechatronics with Space Major) / B Science (Physics) studies in 2022 at The University of Sydney. He is currently interested in the design and implementation of a novel fringe tracking instrument at VLTI as well as differentiable optical simulations for image reconstruction.

Zinat Sathi

Optomechanical Engineer

Zinat was awarded her Ph.D. from the Phonics and Optical Communications Group at UNSW where she was an Australian Leadership Awardee (2011-2015). Her research interests are special silica optical fibres and devices (rare-earthed doped optical fibres, fibre lasers and fibre amplifiers), spectral characterisation, photonic experiment design and implementation.

Qingshan Yu

Redyan Ahmed

Thesis Title: Exoplanet detection via TOLIMAN mission

Supervisors: Prof. Peter Tuthill, Dr. Christopher Betters

Smrithi Gireesh Babu

Thesis title: Shedding Light on Dark Matter with Stellar Shells.

Mara Bernizzoni

Asteroseismology

Gurashish Bhatia

Current area of study/thesis title: "Innovative Instrumentation for Astronomical Spectroscopy"

For more information about this project, please contact this students supervisor JULIA BRYANT

Max Charles

Filip Chatys

Current area of study/thesis title: "Asteroseismology"

For more information about this project, please contact this students supervisor TIMOTHY BEDDING 

Arnab Chowhan

Thesis Title: Combining interferometry and asteroseismology for precise stellar parameter determination.

Supervisors: Prof. Timothy Bedding, Daniel Huber

James Crowley

Louis Desdoigts

Viraj Ekanayaka

Thesis title: Constraining Dark Matter with Stellar Streams

Ashna Gulati

thesis title: Radio Follow-up of Gravitational Wave Events.

Abhinav Iyer

Thesis Title: Validating models of the solar corona

Supervisor: Michael Wheatland

Emily Kerrison

Current area of study/thesis title: "Probing young active galaxies at intermediate redshift"

For more information about this project, please contact this student's supervisor Elaine Sadler and Tara Murphy.

Mali Land-Strykowski

Joshua Lee

Thesis title: Searching for fast transients with the Australian SKA Pathfinder

Connor Langford

Thesis: Optical Engineering for the TOLIMAN Mission

Lucinda Lilley

Current area of study/thesis title: "Applications of Machine Learning to Stellar Interferometry"

For more information about this project, please contact this students supervisor PETER TUTHILL

Teodor Malendevych

Ph.D. title: Wavefront Sensing with Photonic Lanterns

Supervisor: Dr. Sergio Leon-Saval

Vasudev Mittal

Thesis title: Confronting the Cosmological Principle

Supervisor:  Prof. Geraint Lewis

Oliver Oayda

Thesis title: Bayesian Inference in Tests of the Cosmological Principle.

Grace Piroscia

Thesis title: High-Sensitivity Interferometric Imaging at the CHARA Array

Supervisor: Prof. Peter Tuthill

Huimin Qu

Thesis title: Reconstructing the dark matter properties of lensing galaxies in the strong gravitational lensing regime.

Sreenivasan Kalarickal Ramachandra

Thesis Title: Global Astroseismology of red giants using Kepler and TESS data.

Kovi Rose

The title of thesis is: A Search for Unusual Radio Transients with ASKAP / VAST.

Stephanie Rossini-Bryson

Thesis title: The glimmer of alien worlds: astrophotonic imaging for exoplanetary discovery.

Tomas Rutherford

Nada Salama

Thesis title: Gravitational Microlensing of the Galactic Centre Gamma-Ray Excess.

Lea Schimak

thesis: Asteroseismic Analysis and Modelling of Red-Giant Stars

Kavya Shaji

Thesis Title: Targeting Repeating Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) to Study Repeatability and Searches for Associated Persistent Radio Emission

Supervisors: Dr. Manisha Caleb, Prof. Tara Murphy

Adam Taras

Masters in Photonic lantern characterisation and image reconstruction for high angular resolution astronomy.

Dylan Theron

Thesis Title: Turbulent gas disks in the early universe.

Supervisor: Prof. Joss Bland-Hawthorn

Sujeeporn (Susie) Tuntipong

Current area of study/thesis title: "Understanding the Milky Way through studying analogues with integral field spectroscopy"

For more information about this project, please contact this student's supervisors SCOTT CROOM and JESSE VAN DE SANDE.

Justin Vella

Thesis title: Extreme Astronomical Imaging with Photonics and Machine Learning.

Supervisors: Dr Barnaby Norris and Assoc. Prof. Sergio Leon-Saval

Fiona Wei

Current area of study/thesis title: "Photonic Lantern as focal plane wavefront sensor"

For more information about this project, please contact this students supervisor SERGIO LEON-SAVAL

Pavadol Yamsiri

Thesis topic: What drives corrugations in disc galaxies?