University of Tasmania astrophysicist Dr Karelle Siellez will bring her national lecture tour home to Tasmania this month, visiting schools across the state before a free public lecture in Hobart.
Dr Siellez, from the University’s School of Natural Sciences, is the first Tasmania-based physicist to be named the Australian Institute of Physics’ Women in Physics Lecturer.
Her 2026 Marie Curie Lecture Tour explores gravitational waves through science, art and music, and will finish at the University’s Sandy Bay campus on 1 October.
Dr Siellez said she had chosen Tasmania for the final leg of the tour.
“Tasmania is where I have made my home as a scientist, so it was important to me that the tour finished here,” Dr Siellez said.
“I wanted to bring it back to the University and share it with communities across the state, particularly young people and those in regional and rural areas who may not often have the chance to meet a physicist.”
Dr Siellez specialises in multi-messenger astronomy, which uses different signals from space, including light and gravitational waves, to understand cosmic events.
She contributed to the first detection of gravitational waves and a gamma-ray burst from the same cosmic event, recognised with the 2017 Breakthrough Prize.
Her lecture, Painting the Universe: A Visual and Musical Exploration of Space-Time, uses science, art and music to explain how stars collide, how gravitational waves are created and where the elements around us come from.
More than 1600 people have attended the tour so far, which has included nine public lectures, school visits, technical talks, radio interviews and online lectures.
The tour is supported by an Inspiring Australia grant awarded to the Australian Institute of Physics.
In Tasmania, she will visit schools in the north on 24 and 25 September and present at the Launceston Planetarium on 26 September, before visiting schools across Greater Hobart on 29 and 30 September.
Dr Siellez grew up in rural northern France and said reaching students in regional Tasmania was a central part of the tour.
“Growing up in a rural community, I didn’t see many people with backgrounds like mine working in science,” she said.
“Physics opened up a world I had never imagined. I want young people, particularly girls and students in regional communities, to know that science can belong to them too.”
The public lecture will also be livestreamed for people unable to attend in person.
Dr Siellez will be presented with the award at the public lecture on 1 October.