News Archive

Jacqueline Davidson
Project Scientist for the SOFIA project
USRA, NASA Ames Research Centre
California, USA
BSc (Physics) 1980; PhD (Physics) 1986

I wanted to be a physicist, involved in cutting-edge scientific endeavours, ever since my early high-school years. My love for physics continued as an undergraduate at UWA, especially for classical, statistical, and quantum physics and of course relativity.

I went to the University of Chicago from UWA to do my PhD. While there I was steered into experimental astrophysics. After graduating, I was awarded a fellowship to pursue my work at the NASA Ames Research Centre in California. The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) then asked me to join their team to bid for the development of the NASA Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) – an airborne observatory containing a 2.7-metre telescope. We won the contract and I became the USRA Project Scientist for SOFIA. Now, after ten years of development, SOFIA is preparing for its first flight and we will obtain our first scientific results during the commissioning period over the next two years.

The exciting part about working on SOFIA is the knowledge that we are opening up a new window to view the Universe. Currently the School of Physics at UWA is very active in opening up two new and very exciting windows through which to view the Universe: the Australian International Gravitational Observatory (AIGO) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The former is to measure gravity waves emitted by phenomena in the Universe and the latter is to study radio signals from the Universe with unprecedented sensitivity and spatial resolution. Both are very much world-class projects, involving extensive collaborations and support from the international community. I am currently taking a mini-sabbatical in the School of Physics at UWA from my NASA project work in order to learn more on the status of these exciting projects at UWA.

While studying at the University of Chicago, I had the opportunity to compare the quality of UWA undergraduate courses with those taken by 30 physics graduates from all over the world. The quality of the UWA courses compared very favourably with those offered by world-renowned universities. UWA provides a world-class entry to a career in science: do well at UWA, and you can feel confident about going anywhere in the world to begin a science career.

Photo credit: Paul Ricketts – DUIT multimedia