DrStefania Barsanti

I have an active and sustained record of student supervision and mentoring across all levels of tertiary education, with a strong focus on research training, scientific independence, and professional development. Since 2021, I have been the primary supervisor for 2 Master's students and 10 undergraduate students, and the co-supervisor of 1 PhD student. 

These supervisions include both long-term research projects and competitive, short-term research programs, such as the Science Summer Research Program – Denison Scholarship (University of Sydney, 2026),  Future Research Talent Award (ANU, 2022 and 2023), and Dalyell Group research projects (2025).

Project Opportunity

Title: The spinning of galaxies over the last 4 billion years

Description: The shape and spin of a galaxy are observed to strongly depend on the density of galaxies in the surrounding environment. However, the way environment acts to change galaxies is still not well understood, especially at earlier times in the history of our Universe. We aim to map the local and cosmic environments of a large sample of distant galaxies that are observed as they were evolving about 4 billion years ago. This sample will provide a unique laboratory to explore environmental effects on the spinning of galaxies and help to complete the puzzle of galaxy evolution from the distant past through to today. We will take advantage of the spectroscopic data from the MAGPI galaxy survey (observed at the Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama desert) and we will compare them with observations of nearby galaxies from the SAMI galaxy survey (observed at the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Siding Spring Observatory). The students will have the opportunity to develop skills spanning computer science, data collection, data analysis, and statistics.

Project Opportunity
Title: Feeding the Giants: Mapping Cosmic Filaments Around Galaxy Clusters

The Hector Galaxy Survey is a collection of 15,000 galaxies currently observed with the spectroscopic Hector instrument on the Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. The survey spans different galaxy environments, from low-density regions to giant galaxy clusters. Cosmic filaments channel galaxies into clusters, and their role can be probed by reconstructing the filamentary network. In this project, the student will use the filament-finding algorithm DisPerSE to map the large-scale structure around Hector clusters. By comparing galaxy properties (morphology, kinematics, and local environment) with their position relative to filaments, the project will explore how infall and pre-processing shape galaxy evolution. This study will provide new insights into the cosmic web-cluster connection. The student will have the opportunity to develop skills spanning computer science, data collection, data analysis and statistics. There is also the possibility to attend remote or in-person Hector astronomical observations.  

Project Opportunity
Title: Quantifying cosmology bias reduction from spin-informed intrinsic-alignment models

The project goal is to build a controlled simulation-based experiment to quantify how much intrinsic-alignment (IA) systematics bias the measurements of key cosmological parameters , such as dark matter density, dark energy equation of state, and amplitude of matter clustering. The student will test whether spin–filament–informed IA modelling reduces that bias relative to standard empirical IA approaches making use of astronomical computer simulations.