Astrophiz169: Dr Laura Driessen ~ Radio Stars

I am really excited to be speaking again with Dr Laura Driessen, who is now recognised as one of Australia’s Superstars of STEM! You first met Laura 5 years ago back in 2018 when she was doing her PhD at the University of Manchester and Jodrell Bank. Laura’s back story is all there in Astrophiz Episode 54. You heard about her obsession with space starting at age 4 and her natural yet meandering academic Astro journey up to the point where she was using commensal searches on the MeerKAT array in South Africa for pinpointing and localization of FRBs, Fast Radio Bursts. Today we’re taking up that story from where we left off, and we hear of her first post-doc with the CSIRO in Perth, her FRB and Radio Star research and her outreach work in the outback with indigenous school kids who live near the iconic Murchison Widefield Array and the ASKAP Array. Laura tells us about her current research and her work as the joint Science lead on the VAST project and you will love the clarity of her description of the power and nature of Commensal Searches, and how she uses archival data to verify that her radio data is actually coming from her targeted star and not from a radio galaxy hiding behind it. Another gift Laura gives us is her brilliant explanation of how scientists establish and maintain collaborations both big and small, and how scientists often begin with a large number of hypotheses to explain observed phenomena and how the null hypothesis is such a powerful tool in developing an accurate understanding of our universe. On social media you’ll find Laura, she’s @AstroLauraD on Twitter. And her non-astro work can be found on Etsy at Oomigoomi ….. and her Whippet dog is astro.the.whippy on Instagram