Personal Stories

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue16 1–31 May 2021

I just joined ANU as a new ASTRO 3D postdoc fellow under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Colless, and I look forward for my new adventure here in Canberra!

I grew up in the hills of the Tuscany region, Italy, in a tiny village close to Pisa. My family owns a farm, and our house has always been a nest for the animals and the community.  

I have always been curious for how nature works and for how humanity thinks it works, so I spent my school days studying physics and philosophy, while I was helping to produce our olive oil. I was always reading something and leaving books everywhere, even dictionaries, which I used for translations in English and French but also for the ancient Latin and Greek languages. 

After high school, I moved to the “city” where I completed my bachelor’s degree in physics at the University of Pisa. I enjoyed long days in the library and long nights under the leaning tower. 

I fell in love with astronomy and for my Master of Research I moved to Trieste in the north-east of Italy. Trieste is quite famous for good and cheap Aperol Spritz (2.50 euros!) and for the really strong wind. I studied galaxy populations of distant clusters. At that point, I realized that my picturesque image of an astronomer was reduced to me sitting in front of a computer and coding all the time!

I wanted to go out of my comfort zone, so I decided to leave Italy and to move to Australia to keep studying astrophysics from there. On my first day at Macquarie Uni, I met my partner during a romantic fire alarm evacuation. He was finishing his PhD as I was starting my second Master of Research. I worked with Dr. Matt Owers on understanding the role played by the environment in galaxy evolution.  For my PhD I played with photometric and spectroscopic data to separate galaxies into their structural components and to understand their formation. 

I love camping and road-tripping Australia. The landscapes and the sky amaze me every time. I chose a different transportation mean every time, from a van, to a 4WD to a motorbike. To mention just a few, I drove from Darwin to Adelaide, from Sydney to Hobart, from Sydney to Noosa, and I have recently travelled for more than 4000km in Western Australia. 

Yoga and dancing are part of my daily life. Both are activities that help me to maintain a healthy mind, manage stress and have fun! 

Stefania Barsanti