Dr Simon Murphy | UNSW Research

Keywords

Fields of Research (FoR)

Stellar astronomy and planetary systems, Galactic astronomy, Astronomical sciences

Biography

I was awarded my PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Australian National University in 2012. My thesis examined populations of young stars in the southern sky, particularly around the nearby open clusters Eta and Epsilon Chamaeleontis. During 2013-2014 I was the Gliese Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where I identified new stellar moving group members using data from the Gaia satellite astrometry mission. I returned to Australia in 2015 to work on the ANU SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey and in 2016 I took up a Vice Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at UNSW Canberra. I am now a Lecturer in Astrophysics in the School of Science where I teach physics and astronomy courses and conduct research into young, low-mass stars in the Solar neighbourhood.

My Qualifications

PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2012, Australian National University

My Awards

2016-2020: Vice Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, University of New South Wales

My Research Activities

My research interests focus on identifying and characterising some of the youngest stars in the Solar neighbourhood. These young, nearby star systems are ideal laboratories for understanding early stellar evolution and probing the diverse conditions under which stars and, importantly, planets form. To accomplish this I use observations from a variety of telescopes and satellites, including the latest all-sky surveys here in Australia. I am also interested in the international Virtual Observatory effort, which is developing standards for the discovery, exchange and analysis of astronomical data by computers and astronomers alike.