Research projects

We have recently demonstrated a novel technique to recover sub-dwarf M stars from the combination of VISTA infra-red and SkyMapper photometry.

The successful applicant will work on one of several software related projects for the DREAMS infrared surveyor

In this project, the student would study both the spectral and structural properties of the thermal electron density and magnetic fields in the ionised gas phase of the Milky Way.

In this project we will be able to investigate the environmental effect on star formation and galaxy evolution in individual galaxies falling into the cluster through radio observations of active galactic nuclei (AGN).

The main aim of this project is to parallelise an existing Fortran program to take advantage of the parallel processing environment of the supercomputer raijin, located on the ANU campus.

This project will study red spirals in detail, and aim to understand what levels of star formation persist and for how long. We will use optical and infrared data to measure current rates of star formation and find out what we have been missing due to dust extinction.

Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies are among the faintest and most dark matter-dominated systems known. This project uses archival Hubble Space Telescope photometry to analyse colour–magnitude diagrams, identify binary stars, characterise the stellar mass functions and metallicity distributions in these systems. The results will improve understanding of star formation in extreme environments and provide essential preparation for future surveys such as the Vera Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

Our team is looking for enthusiastic Honours, Masters and PhD students with a strong background in Maths, Physics, or Computer Science who want to work on some of the most important questions currently discussed in near-field cosmology community.

The SkyMapper Transient (SMT) Survey is a currently searching and studying supernovae and other transient sources in southern sky.

This project is intended to search for the magnetic field signature of the Magellanic halo.

The goal of this project is to build a software pipeline that can take simulations of galactic winds, such as the one shown in the figure, and make simulated observational images from them that can be compared directly to telescopic data.

This project will simulate observations of the magnetic fields of a Milky Way-like galaxy from a recent, high-resolution simulation. The goal is to identify effective ways to reconstruct the 3D magnetic field geometry of this simulated galaxy using observables projected onto the 2D sky.

In order to further the MAVIS design, an image simulator was built in Python, allowing star catalogs to be fed in, which are used to generate realistic MAVIS images. MAVIS now requires an IFU simulator to be developed, providing realistic IFU images from star catalogs.

This project will build on work within the Dark-ages, Reionization And Galaxy-formation Observables Numerical Simulation project (DRAGONS).