Dr. Sarah Pearce

Director of the SKA-Low Telescope

Dr. Sarah Pearce is Director of the SKA-Low Telescope, soon to be built in Western Australia as part of the $2bn international SKA Observatory. Sarah worked at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, for 10 years in the fields of space and astronomy, and spent six months in early 2021 as CSIRO’s Acting Chief Scientist.

Her previous roles included senior science advisor in the UK Parliament and project manager of GridPP, the UK’s program delivering computing for particle physics. In 2020, Dr. Pearce was named Telstra NSW Business Woman of the Year and Executive of the Year at the Australian Space Awards. She is a strong advocate for diversity in science and technology.

Sarah holds a PhD in X-ray astronomy from the University of Leicester and an undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Oxford (Worcester College).

In this podcast, Dr Pearce shares the latest development of the SKA (Square Kilometre Array) Observatory – an international ‘mega science’ radio-astronomy project. The SKAO Is an intergovernmental organisation – the second-ever in astronomy – that was officially launched in July 2021.

She highlights that SKA will be the world’s largest radio telescope facility of its kind, underpinned by the latest technologies that can help address the exciting cutting-edge challenges in astronomy, including our understanding of the cosmic dawn – the time when the first stars and galaxies in the Universe were formed.

She elaborates on the international partnerships and collaborative efforts in the project. It involves 16 countries as well as engineering consortiums across the world, who are coming together to build the two SKA telescopes, being built in remote regions of South Africa and Australia.

Podcast

Episode 317 – The SKA Observatory – the next-generation radio astronomy