Rate My Professor Tayyaba Zafar

Dr. Tayyaba Zafar is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Macquarie University, Faculty of Science and Engineering. She earned her PhD in Astronomy from the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute in 2011, with a thesis titled 'Spectroscopy of high redshift sightlines.' Prior to her current role, which she assumed in mid-2018 within the Astrophysics and Space Technologies Research Centre and Australian Astronomical Optics, Zafar held a postdoctoral position at Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in France, a fellowship at the European Southern Observatory in Germany in 2013, and served as Research Astronomer at the Australian Astronomical Observatory from November 2015, supporting operations at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. Her academic journey began with an MSc from the University of the Punjab in 2005. Zafar's career emphasizes both observational astrophysics and instrumentation development, contributing to Australia's global standing in these fields through international collaborations with observatories such as Subaru and the Giant Magellan Telescope.

Zafar's research investigates the evolution of dust—a catalyst for star and planet formation—along with gas and metals in galaxies across cosmic time, spanning nearby galaxies to the distant Universe. She explores the interstellar medium's lifecycle across diverse galaxy types and redshifts, leveraging transient events like gamma-ray bursts alongside galaxy observations to probe obscured regions. In instrumentation, she specializes in fibre-fed spectroscopy and adaptive optics, participating in projects including GMT/MANIFEST, MAVIS, a spectrograph for KMTNet, and the Subaru/ULTIMATE instrument. A key contribution involved analyzing dust-obscured spectra for the brightest cosmic explosion, GRB221009A, at 2.4 billion light years, in collaboration with 42 scientists using data from ESO's Very Large Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, and others; results appeared in Astronomy & Astrophysics and The Astrophysical Journal Letters. She has produced over 125 research outputs, with more than 4,490 citations and an h-index approaching 40 on Google Scholar. Awards include the 2020 NSW Young Tall Poppy Award and Homeward Bound alumni recognition in 2017. Zafar chairs the Astronomical Society of Australia's Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in Astronomy Chapter (2025-2027), serves as Early-to-Mid Career Researcher member on the Australian Academy of Science's National Committee for Astronomy (2024-2026), and is on Astronomy Australia Limited's Science Advisory Committee (2024-2025). Select publications: 'A census of double-peaked Lyman-α emitters in MAGPI' (2026, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia); 'Deep polarimetry study reveals double ring odd radio circle-like structures' (2025, Astronomy & Astrophysics); 'Enhancing astronomical exploration with the GMT/MANIFEST' (2024); 'The MAGPI Survey: forward modelled gas-phase metallicity gradients in galaxies at z ∼ 0.3' (2026, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society).