Astrophiz Podcasts

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 pow