> Quarks to the Cosmos
Quarks

Quarks to the Cosmos

Speaker biographies

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  1. Tim Bedding

    Professor Tim Bedding works on asteroseismology, the study of stellar oscillations. He has worked in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney since 1995 and was Head of School from 2012 to 2018.
  2. Tara Murphy

    Professor Tara Murphy is an astrophysicist working at the University of Sydney, and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. She has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Sydney and a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh. Tara leads an international team of researchers trying to detect and study transient and highly variable astrophysical phenomena with the MWA and ASKAP radio telescopes in Western Australia. In 2017 her team detected the first radio emission from a gravitational wave event caused by the merger of two neutron stars. Tara is also passionate about teaching and public outreach. In 2014 she co-founded a start-up company, Grok Learning, to get high school students around the world excited about computational thinking.
  3. Barnaby Norris

    Dr Barnaby Norris is Instrument Scientist for AAO-USyd and a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. He specialises in high-angular resolution imaging, including infrared imaging cameras, adaptive optics (especially machine learning) and interferometry. A particular interest is astro-photonic technologies. He led the design and construction of the VAMPIRES polarimetric imager and interferometer and the GLINT nulling interferometer, both deployed at the 8 m Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. Astronomical research interests focus on planet formation and mass-loss from evolved stars, performed both with custom-built instruments and existing facility instruments.
  4. Shelley Wickham

    Dr Shelley Wickham is a DECRA Fellow, Westpac Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Schools of Physics and Chemistry at the University of Sydney. She earned her BSc in Physics at the University of Sydney, working on photonic structures found in biology. She received her PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Oxford working on building synthetic molecular motors out of DNA. She then moved to a postdoc position at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, where she worked on designing 3-dimensional DNA origami nanostructures, and using them to study biological systems. Dr Wickham has research interests in self-assembling nanotechnology molecular robotics, and microfluidics. In particular, in the design and assembly of programmable nanostructures out of DNA, with applications in cell biology, materials science and nanomedicine. She is co-lead of the Sydney Nano Institute Grand Challenge project in Molecular Nanorobotics for Health.
  5. Arne Grimsmo

    Dr Arne Grimsmo works on the theory of quantum mechanics and its application to technology. He did a PhD in Physics in Norway and subsequently worked as a scientist in Canada for several years, before joining The University of Sydney as a Lecturer.
  6. Jesse van de Sande

    Jesse van de Sande is a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney studying how galaxies form and evolve. He tries to solve the big questions such as 'How was the Milky Way Galaxy formed?' and 'What will happen to our Milky Way after it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy?' Jesse uses the Anglo Australian Telescope with an instrument called SAMI to study the motions of stars within galaxies. For his PhD thesis, he used the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescopes in Chilli to investigate the formation and evolution of massive galaxies in the early Universe.
  7. Joss Bland Hawthorn

    Joss Bland-Hawthorn is an ARC Laureate Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sydney. He is Director of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy and has won many awards. These include the 2018 Miller Professorship to Berkeley and the biennial 2017 Thomas Ranken Lyle medal from the Australian Academy of Science, the first astronomer to win this award in over 40 years. Two weeks ago, The Australian identified Joss as one of the country's Stars in Research and the overall leader in the field of astronomy and astrophysics. With Ken Freeman (ANU), he has developed the field of galactic archaeology over the past 20 years. In 2000, Joss also initiated the field of astrophotonics that brings together photonics into astronomical and space instrumentation. In 2012, Joss was elected to the Australian Academy of Science.
  8. Kevin Varvell

    Kevin Varvell obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Western Australia and his D.Phil from the University of Oxford. From there he held post-doctoral positions at the University of Birmingham, UK, and at ANSTO. He was an ARC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney from 1997 to 2001, and held further research-only positions there until 2005 when he switched to a teaching and research position. In recent years he has been the Director of the University of Sydney Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale. Kevin's research interests lie in experimental particle physics. Over his career he has worked on six international experiments based at CERN, Fermilab and KEK, embracing neutrino physics, flavour physics with B-mesons, and hadron collider physics. His current research interests are primarily focused on rare leptonic and semi-leptonic decays of B-mesons; understanding the properties of the recently discovered Higgs boson; and searching for new physics beyond the Standard Model using the ATLAS experiment at CERN's LHC and the Belle and Belle II experiments at KEK in Japan.
  9. Tristram Alexander

    Dr Tristram Alexander is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics, based in the Institute for Photonics and Optical Science. His work spans a wide range of problems in nonlinear physics, from light self-localisation (solitons) in optical waveguides, to thermal energy localisation (breathers) in phononics. He also applies the tools of nonlinear physics to problems in social dynamics, using social media data to guide models of opinion dynamics and political polarization.
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Last updated 21 November 2019

Please let me know of any problems with these pages: helenj@physics.usyd.edu.au