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Professor Alister Graham

Professor of Astronomy

Biography

Professor Alister Graham's research deals with the structure and dynamics of galaxies, their dark matter halos, and their central supermassive black holes. 

From 2012 to 2016, Alister was a step-2 "Future Fellow" supported by the Australian Research Council.  He has been the lead-author of over 50 scientific articles, with 20 of these having attracted more than 100 citations each.  Based upon a composite of citation metrics, in 2020 Alister was ranked in the top 0.2% of scientists around the world (doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918), and among the top 1% of astronomers in Australia.  

Alister has been at Swinburne since 2006, where he conducts astronomical research with PhD students and postdoctoral research associates, and teaches into Swinburne Astronomy Online.

Further information can be found at http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~agraham/

Research interests

Astronomy; Galaxies; Dark matter; Telescopes and detectors; aurora; black holes

PhD candidate and honours supervision

Higher degrees by research

Accredited to supervise Masters & Doctoral students as Principal Supervisor.

PhD topics and outlines

Galaxy Structure and massive black holes: Explore how stars are distributed in galaxy images obtained from both ground-based telescopes and satellites such as Hubble and Spitzer.  The structure of galaxies reveals much about how they formed, how they are connected with one another, and also with the massive black holes that reside in their cores.

Honours

Available to supervise honours students.

Fields of Research

  • Cosmology And Extragalactic Astronomy - 510103
  • Galactic Astronomy - 510104

Teaching areas

astrophysics

Awards

  • 2011, National, Future Fellow, step 2, Australian Research Council
  • 2007, Swinburne, Vice-Chancellor's Research Excellence Award, Swinburne

Further information

Publications

Also published as: Graham, Alister; Graham, A.; Graham, A. W.; Graham, Alister W.; Graham, Alister W. McK.
This publication listing is provided by Swinburne Research Bank. If you are the owner of this profile, you can update your publications using our online form.

Recent research grants awarded

  • 2017: ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery *; ARC Centre of Excellence Scheme
  • 2017: From bulges to galaxies: galaxy evolution revealed *; ARC Discovery Projects Scheme
  • 2013: Visiting Researcher Scheme 2013 - Prof Guzman *; Research Advisory Group - Visiting Researcher Scheme 2013
  • 2011: Massive black holes in dense star clusters *; ARC Discovery Projects Scheme
  • 2011: The Hearts of Galaxies *; ARC Future Fellowships
  • 2010: Probing the connection between the smallest galaxies and the largest star clusters *; ANSTO Access to Major Research Facilities Program

* Chief Investigator


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