Dr. Sarah Maddison
My main areas of interest are star and planet formation, particularly the formation, evolution and dynamics of circumstellar, protoplanetary and debris disks. My main tools of the trade are a two-phase gas+dust (hydro+Nbody+drag) code to study planet formation; a simple radiative transfer code to made synthetic IR maps; and an Nbody code to study planetary dynamics. Though I'm really a computational astrophysicist, once a year I go wild and do some millimetre observing, studying dusty disks in southern star formating regions. I also do educational research to better understand how to enhance the online learning experience.
As well as research, I spend quite a lot of time being the Coordinator of Swinburne Astronomy Online, a fully online graduate program in astronomy. I also run AstroTour, 3D virtual tours of the Universe for primary and secondary students.
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