Professor Sarah Maddison

Biography

I am the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education, Experience and Employability), leading our Education Strategy at Swinburne, and am also a professor of astrophysics.  My main area of research interest is planet formation, which I study both observationally and via computer simulations.

I lead the planets group in the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, and we are studying the evolution of dust in planet forming disks around young stars, as well as surveying the dust content of these disks in the solar neighbourhood. We use a range of numerical codes (N-body, hydro, thermodynamical, radiative transfer) and telescopes (Australia Telescope Compact Array, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, Keck) to study the formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks and planet-disk interactions.  

I sit on a number of national & international committees, including the women in physics committee of the Australian Institute of Physics and the Square Kilometre Array 'Cradle of Life' Science Working group.  I am the founder and past chair of the women in astronomy chapter of the Astronomical Society of Australia and the International Astronomical Union working group for women in astronomy, and I am the Swinburne lead for the Science Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) Pilot, run by the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.