Lisa Harvey-Smith

Associate Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith is an astronomer who studies the birth and death of stars and the evolution of galaxies, including supermassive black holes.

Harvey-Smith won the 2016 Australian Museum’s Eureka Prize for the Promotion of Australian Science Research, was a recipient of the CSIRO Chairman’s Medal in 2015 and was named in The Sydney Morning Herald’s list of Sydney’s 100 most influential people in 2012.

She recently took to the stage with science superstar Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Gene Cernan. She also runs astronomy distance learning courses for amateur astronomers and currently has students from seven different countries on four continents.

Lisa is best known for her accessible style of communicating astronomy on television, radio and in the media. She is involved in grassroots educational initiatives and regularly mentors students in schools in Sydney and at Pia Wadjarri, a remote aboriginal community in Western Australia.

To get away from it all, Lisa enjoys ultra-marathon and multi-day races. She once ran 250km across the Simpson Desert for fun.