Rate My Professor Stephen Smartt

Professor Stephen Smartt is the Wetton Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and Director of the Hintze Centre for Astrophysical Surveys. He holds a Royal Society Research Professorship and is a Professorial Fellow of Christ Church. Smartt studied physics and applied mathematics at Queen’s University Belfast, where he earned a BSc and a PhD in astrophysics in 1996. His early career included work at the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes and a fellowship at the University of Cambridge before returning to Belfast in 2004 to establish a research group focused on stellar evolution, supernovae, and time-domain sky surveys.

At Oxford since 2022, Smartt leads projects including the ATLAS sky survey network and contributes to preparations for the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, as well as the UK’s Lasair project. His team searches for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave sources and kilonovae, and he co-founded the ENGRAVE collaboration for follow-up observations with ESO facilities. He serves on committees including the Rubin Observatory Survey Cadence and Optimisation Committee and the Virgo-EGO Science and Technology Advisory Committee. Smartt was appointed CBE in 2022 for services to science, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2020, and is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He received the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2005, the Royal Astronomical Society’s George Darwin Lectureship in 2018 and Herschel Medal, the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in physical and mathematical sciences, and shared the 2025 Into Change Award with colleagues for work on the universe’s heaviest elements. He has authored or co-authored over 300 refereed publications on supernovae, transients, and related topics.