Instructors

Semester 2, 2007

• HET602 Exploring the Solar System: Kurt Liffman
Dr Kurt Liffman has a B.Sc.(Hons) in Mathematics from the University of Melbourne and PhD in astrophysics from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University (Houston, TX). Kurt has worked on problems related to the formation of the Solar System at NASA's Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX) and AMES Research Center (Mountain View, CA). Kurt currently works at the CSIRO, where he is developing a number of his inventions including new types of medical devices and particle processing machines, part time, at the Centre of Stellar and Planetary Astrophysics, Monash University and is a visiting scientist at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology.
Around a decade ago, Kurt published a theory suggesting that the some major components in meteorites (and, possibly, the planets) were formed in the early Solar System by bipolar jet flows that existed in the first few million years of the Solar System. This theory has grown in popularity and has obtained some preliminary experimental confirmation. It is now one of the leading theories for understanding the formation of the foundation stones of the planets. Recently, the Stardust mission verified one of Kurt's predictions: that the solar nebula was primarily composed of high temperature refractory dust. A summary of this work was recently discussed in Science.

• HET603 Exploring Stars and the Milky Way: Sarah Maddison
Dr Sarah Maddison is computational astrophysicist at the Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, and the Coordinator of Swinburne Astronomy Online. Sarah has a BSc(Hons) in mathematics and a PhD in computational astrophysics, both from the Mathematics Department at Monash University. Her main areas of interest are star and planet formation, particularly the formation, evolution and dynamics of circumstellar and protoplanetary disks. She occasionally works on galaxy interactions and is particularly interested in the formation of the Magellanic Stream.
Sarah has worked as an Associate Professor at New Mexico State University, where she taught planetary astronomy and the theory of accretion disks, ran Open House sessions at the University's 16 inch telescope, and worked at the Apache Point Observatory testing the astronomical capabilities of a fast read-out military IR camera. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Observatoire de Grenoble, in France, she made synthetic IR maps from dynamic circumbinary disk models to compare high angular resolution observations. At Swinburne Sarah is part of the Stars & Planets Group and continues her work on disk and planetary dynamics, plays with a parallel two-phase dusty gas code that makes planets, collides galaxies, runs Swinburne Astronomy Online and AstroTour.

• HET604 Exploring Galaxies and the Cosmos: Chris Blake
Dr Chris Blake is a lecturer at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. He received his PhD in the U.K. in 2002, before spending time living in Sydney and Vancouver, and arriving in Melbourne in August 2006. His research is in the area of observational cosmology, in particular mapping out how galaxies are distributed through the Universe. He helps to run the WiggleZ survey which has been awarded 220 nights of time at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. The survey is obtaining spectra for 400,000 galaxies in order to measure the properties of the mysterious dark energy which is driving the recent speeding up of the expansion of the Universe.

• HET606 Tools of Modern Astronomy : Alister Graham
Dr Alister Graham is a Senior Lecturer within the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at the Swinburne University of Technology. He obtained his Ph.D. from The Australian National University's Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories in 1998. Since then he has worked for three years at the University of Florida's Department of Astronomy in the USA, and for another three years at the Spanish Institute for Astrophysics in the Canary Islands as a telescope Support Astronomer. He has published over 50 refereed papers about the structure and dynamics of galaxies, their dark matter halos and central supermassive black holes, and is involved in a prestigious Hubble Space Telescope Treasury Program.

• HET607 History of Astronomy: Chris Fluke
Dr Chris Fluke joined the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing in 1999. For five years, he led the Centre's virtual reality projects team, acting as writer, director and occasionally animator of stereoscopic (3D) movies that have been shown throughout Australia and internationally. His main research interests are in gravitational lensing and astronomy visualisation, particularly looking at new ways for astronomers to explore their datasets with advanced displays. He is a member of the Commonwealth Cosmology Initiative - a major project funded by the Australian Research Council that aims to enhance Australia's expertise in computational cosmology. Chris is a keen science communicator and astronomy educator.

• HET608 Introductory Radio Astronomy and SETI: Terry Bridges
Dr Terry Bridges received his Ph.D. in astrophysics at Queen's University, Kingston, in 1992 and spent the next dozen years or so working as a research astronomer at observatories around the world (Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees in Toulouse, France; Royal Greenwich Observatory in Cambridge, which sadly closed in 1998; and the Anglo-Australian Observatory Sydney, Australia). During this time, he got to observe at lots of nice places, including Hawaii, Australia, Chile, and La Palma.
In January 2004, Terry returned to Queen's as an adjunct professor, teaching physics and astronomy courses and carrying out research. In 2004-2005, he got a B.Ed. degree at Queen's University, teaching science, math, and astronomy. Terry is the Coordinator for the university observatory, which has ~3000 visitors a year, including many school groups. Terry has diverse research interests, ranging from extrasolar planets to the large-scale structure of the universe. Much of his research centers around the use of globular clusters as probes of galaxy formation, evolution, and dark matter content.

• HET612 Major Project - History of Astronomy: Glen Mackie
Dr. Glen Mackie is Lecturer and PostGraduate Coordinator at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology. He received a PhD ("The Stellar Content of Central Dominant Galaxies") from the Australian National University in 1990, and has worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Carter Observatory (Wellington, NZ) and Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests include investigating the properties of Brightest Cluster Galaxies as tracers of large-scale structure, and probes of galaxy formation and evolution in the rich cluster environment.
His other research interests are multi-wavelength properties of galaxies, galaxy mergers, low luminosity galaxies and astronomy education. Glen has authored general astronomy articles in Sky and Space (Aust.) and North and South (N.Z.) and developed a web site on Astronomy Resources. In his spare time he practises topspin lobs, donates bait to fish and seeks the ultimate spiral torpedo.

• HET614 Particle Physics and High Energy Astrophysics : Warrick Couch
Prof Warrick Couch is a Distinguished Professor at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology. He received his PhD from the Australian National University in 1982 and has worked at Durham University, the Anglo-Australian Observatory and the University of New South Wales. His main research interests are in galaxy evolution and observational cosmology, with a major focus on the evolution of galaxies is influenced by their environment, particularly in the very dense rich cluster environment. He is noted for his pioneering studies of the photometric, spectroscopic and morphological evolution of galaxies in distant clusters, his contributions to understanding the influence of environment on galaxy star formation via the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, and being part of the distant supernovae searches that have shown the expansion of the universe is currently accelerating. He has been honoured by being listed as a Highly Cited re searcher by ISI, and as a joint winner of the 2007 Gruber Prize in Cosmology.

• HET615 Major Project - Observational Astronomy: Pamela Gay
Dr Pamela Gay is is on the faculty at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, IL, USA. She received her PhD from the University of Texas in 2002. The title of her dissertation focused on the evolution of galaxies in different cluster environments, specifically addressing the Butcher-Oemler effect. Her current research focuses on variable stars and she draws on AAVSO observers for help in tracking down bumps and wiggles in multiperiodic pulsating variable stars. Pamela is also a freelance science writer, with articles appearing in Sky & Telescope and Astronomy magazines. Outside of work, Pamela plays with gifted and talented high school students, and she co-host of the Astronomy Cast podcast and writes for both the Earth and Sky and Star Stryder blogs. You can usually find a student or two hanging out in her office working on projects involving EPO websites, variable stars, or both. In her free time, she is working to help her 1892 Queen Ann Victorian house recover from a bad mid-80s face lift.

• HET616 Great Debates in Astronomy: Karl Glazebrook
Prof Karl Glazebrook is a Professor at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology. He received a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in 1992 and has worked at Durham University, Cambridge University, the Anglo-Australian Observatory and the Johns Hopkins University. He does research on observational cosmology (size, shape, history and composition of the Universe), galaxy formation, assembly and evolution over cosmic time and astronomical instrumentation concepts. He is noted for carrying out one of the world's first large area near-infrared surveys, for developing the "nod & shuffle" observing technique in multi-object spectroscopy, for some of the deepest spectroscopy of the high- redshift Universe ever attempted and for developing the 'cosmic sound' technique for understanding dark energy. He has been honoured by being listed as a Highly Cited researcher by ISI, Packard Fellowship and the naming of an Asteroid (#10099).