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 passion for astronomy. She joined her local amateur astronomical society in 1992, Braintree Astronomical Society, where she first learned to use a telescope. Her early space heroes included Patrick Moore and Britain's first astronaut Helen Sharman.

Harvey-Smith 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 position as a researcher at The Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe (JIVE) in the Netherlands, where she studies star-formation and cosmic magnetic fields. She then moved to Australia, where she has been based since 2017.

Lisa has spent much of her career developing 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 PhD students and collaborators, and has published more than 50 peer-reviewed 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 and Questacon. 

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