Student Prizes

At every Annual Scientific Meeting, prizes are awarded for the best Student Talks and Posters. The number of these prizes has varied over the years. A list of recent prize winners is given below.

List of Past Winners

(based on year of the ASM meeting)

2026 

Talks
1st: Blaze Houlden
2nd: Harshit Pal
3rd: Daniela Montes Doria

Posters

1st: Lydia Haacke
2nd: Mali Land-Strykowski
3rd: Owen Downes

People’s choice for best talk: Samuel Colliver

2025

2024

Talks

1st: Louisa Canepa
2nd: Katy Proctor
3rd: Tyrone O’Doughty

Posters

1st: Cassidy Mihalenko

2nd: Antonia Fernández Figueroa

3rd: Chien-Chang Ho

Sparkler

1st: Antonia Fernández Figueroa

2nd: Abbe Whitford

3rd: Amrita Banerjee

2023

Talks

1st: Benjamin Metha

2nd: Madeleine McKenzie

3rd: Anthony Carr

Honourable mentions: Jacob Askew; Lucinda Lilley; Jonah Hansen; Rowina Nathan; Matthew Miles; Kirsten Banks; Madeline Howell

Posters

1st: Giulia Cinquegrana

2nd: Sanja Lazarevic

3rd: Natasha Van Bemmel

Peoples Choice: Natasha Van Bemmel

Sparklers

1st: Sarah Bradbury

2nd: Natasha Van Bemmel

3rd: Tommy Marshman

Honourable mentions: Nicolò Dalmasso, Bailey Martin 

 

2022Talks1st shared: Nataliea Lowson, When You Wish Upon A Planet: The Encapsulating Tail of KELT-9b1st shared: Callan Wood, Time-Resolved VLBI Imaging of Jet Launching in an X-ray Binary3rd shared: Andrei Ristea, Stellar-gas kinematic misalignments as a probe of external processes shaping galaxy evolution3rd shared: Teagan Clarke, All binary black hole mergers may form dynamically: the eccentric perspective3rd shared: Kat Ross, Looking through rainbow coloured glasses: The importance of spectral coverage in variability surveysPosters1st: Ellie Lietinger, “A spatially complete view of multiple stellar populations in Galactic globular clusters2nd: Kateryna Andrych, Second-generation proto-planetary disks around evolved binary stars3rd: Elli Borchert, On the rise times in FU Orionis events

Video Posters

1st shared: Simon Lee, Towards a Network of Cherenkov Telescopes

1st shared: Kirsten Banks, Investigating the spectro-seismic connection of giant stars

3rd: Elli Borchert, On the rise time of FU Orionis events

2021

Talks

1st: Stephanie Monty [ANU] Astronometry with MAVIS: Pushing the Limits of Gaia to the Crowded Centres

2nd: Caro Derkenne [Macquarie Univ] Density Slopes of Early-type galaxies from spatially resolved MUSE stellar dynamics up to redshift ~0.5

3rd shared: Sara Webb [Swinburne] Fast Flares in the Galaxy, and the unsupervised machine learning used to find them

3rd shared: Georgie Taylor [ANU] Developing Supernova Models for Cosmology Applications

Posters

1st: Anna-Maree Syme [UNSW] Trihybrid Linelists: A CN Example

2nd: Sonja Panjkov [Univ. Melbourne] Placing Progenitor Constraints on the Supernova Remnant Population of the
Large Magellanic Cloud

3rd: Marcus Lower [Swinburne] How do young pulsars spin down?

2020N/A due to COVID-19 restrictions

2019Talks1st: Isobel Romero-Shaw [Monash] Eccentricity in Binary Black Hole Coalescences Observed with Gravitational WavesPosters1st: Jeffrey Simpson [UNSW] The GALAH Survey: Chemical tagging globular clusters to stellar streams 2018Talks1st: Sarah Hegarty [Swinburne] PerSieve: understanding the role for the astronomer in the data-intensive era2nd: Nikhil Sarin [Monash] An X-ray guided search for gravitational wavesPosters1st: Wael Farah [Swinburne] FRB Microstructure revealed by the real-time detection of FRB1708272nd: Julian Carlin [Melbourne] Clustering of rotational glitches in the Crab pulsar 2017Talks1st: Jacob Seiler [Swinburne] Exploring Reionization With Semi-Analytics: The Escape Fraction Strikes Back2nd: Anna Zovaro [ANU] Catching Feedback in the Act at the Sub-kpc ScalePosters1st: James Lau [Adelaide] The ISM towards the unidentified TeVV gamma ray sources HESS J1614-518 and HESS J1616-5082nd: Pikky Atri [ICRAR Curtin] Investigating black hole formation with VLBI 2016Talks1st: Rebecca McElroy [Sydney] The Close AGN Reference Survey: Mrk 1018 returns to the shadows after 30 years as a Seyfert2nd (equal): Katharina Lutz [Swinburne] The HIX galaxy survey: The most HI rich galaxies in the southern hemisphere2nd (equal): Ross Turner [Tasmania] Spectral estimation of energetics and composition of radio AGNPosters(equal): David Liptai [Monash] Does the PDF lead to the IMF?(equal): Zac Johnston [Monash] Simulations of X-ray bursts on accreting neutron stars 2015Talks1st: Sarah Hegarty [Swinburne]2nd: Jack Line [Melbourne]Posters1st: Vlad Tudor [Curtin]2nd: Stuart Weston [Auckland University of Technology] 2014Talks1st: Emily Petroff [Swinburne/CAASTRO/CSIRO], The first real-time FRB: multi-wavelength follow-up of a fast radio burst2nd : Ben McKinley [ANU/CAASTRO], Modelling of the Spectral Energy Distribution of Fornax A: Leptonic and Hadronic Production of High Energy Emission from the Radio LobesPosters1st: Anthea King [UQ/CAASTRO], AGN as high-redshift standard candle candidates and the role of OzDES2nd (equal): Claire-Elise Green [UNSW], New detections of HC5N toward hot cores2nd (equal): Daniela Opitz [UNSW], Searching for Binary Y dwarfs with the Gemini GeMS Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics system2nd (equal): George Zhou [RSAA], Characterising exoplanets by their Kepler light curves 2013Talks1st: Vanessa Moss [Sydney] High velocity clouds in the Galactic All Sky Survey: Catalogue2nd: Andrew Casey [ANU] Adopting the Aquarius Stream: Is the Aquarius Stream the result of a disrupted classical Globular Cluster?Posters1st: Louise Howes [ANU] Discovery of the oldest stars in the Galactic bulge2nd: Bernard Meade [Swinburne] Do tiled display walls improve feature recognition in large astronomical images?3rd: Scott Meyer [UWA] 2012Talks1st: Christina Blom [Swinburne] NGC 4365: A key to Galaxy Formation2nd: Terrence Tricco [Monash] Improved simulations of magnetic fields in star formationPosters1st: Genevieve Shattow [Swinburne] Measuring the environments of galaxies in the high redshift Universe2nd: Kitty Lo [Sydney] Automatic classification of variable 2XMM sources3rd: Hauke Worpel [Monash] Does the accretion rate change during a thermonuclear bust? 2011Talks1st: Simon Murphy [RSAA]2nd: Morag Scrimgeour [ICRAR]Highly Commended: Jacinta Delhaize [ICRAR]Posters1st: Florian Beutler [ICRAR]2nd: Sarah Reeves [Sydney]3rd: Holly Trowland [Sydney] 2010Talks1st: Emily McNeil [RSAA]2nd: Toby Potter [UWA]Posters1st: Vanessa Moss [Sydney]2nd: Holly Trowland [Sydney] 2009Talks1st: Lila Wil2nd: Simon Murphy [RSAA]Posters1st: Christine Nicholls [RSAA] New Results on Long Secondary Periods in Red Giants2nd: Elizabeth Maunder [RSAA] The Kinematics of Substructures in The Milky Way’s Outer Halo3rd: Jacinta Delhaize [UWA] Constraining Omega_HI Through Spectral Stacking(all highly commended): Keith Bannister [Sydney](all highly commended): Caroline Foster [Swinburne](all highly commended): Chris Hales [Sydney](all highly commended): Devika Kamath Kotachery [RSAA](all highly commended): Stephen Parker [UNSW] 2008Talks1st: Rebecca McFadden [Melbourne]2nd: Kate Randall [Sydney]Posters1st: Shane Hengst [UNSW]2nd (equal): Christine Nicholls [RSAA]2nd (equal): Brendan Griffen [UQ] 2007Talks1st: ?Posters1st: ? 2006Talks1st: Annie Hughes [Swinburne]2nd: Julian North [Sydney](highly commended): Russell Jurek [UQ](highly commended): Suzanne Kenyon [UNSW](highly commended): Judy Mohr [Canterbury NZ](highly commended): Liz Wylie [Canterbury NZ]Posters1st: Jessie Christiansen [UNSW]2nd: Daniel Bayliss [RSAA](highly commended): Grant Kennedy [RSAA](highly commended): Suzanne Kenyon [UNSW](highly commended): Matt Owers [UNSW](highly commended): Andrew Smith [Macquarie]