Biography

Lisa Harvey-Smith was born in Essex, England. She left school at the age of 11 and taught herself at home, where she developed a great passion for astronomy. She joined her local amateur astronomical society in 1992, where she first learned to use a telescope and never looked back. Her early space heroes included Patrick Moore and Britain's first astronaut Helen Sharman.

Lisa earned a Masters degree in Physics with Honours in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and a Ph.D. in Radio Astronomy from Jodrell Bank Observatory at the University of Manchester, before embarking on a professional career in astronomy. A two-month research project at the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany was followed by a two-year stint as a researcher at The Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe (JIVE) in the Netherlands. She finally moved to Australia, where she has been based for over a decade.

Lisa has spent much of her career working to maintain and develop professional astronomical observatories. She was formerly the project scientist for the $188M Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope at CSIRO and led a group of 30 scientists at Australia's radio telescope national facility. She retains an active program of research, alongside her three PhD students, and has published more than 40 refereed scientific papers on topics as varied as the birth and death of stars, cosmic magnetic fields and supermassive black holes. She serves on several scientific advisory committees including the advisory group to the Australian Space Agency. 

Lisa is now the Australian Government's Women in STEM Ambassador and a Professor at the University of New South Wales. She works on a national scale to drive gender equity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education and careers. For more information visit the Australian Government Women in STEM Ambassador's website.