Looking up at the sky, thinking about the endless possibilities of our solar system and what else may exist out there has always been a favourite past-time of Dr Jessie Christiansen.
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During her high school years at her home town of Peak Crossing in Queensland she set up an astronomy club with a few of her friends.
“That’s when I fell in love with the night sky,” Dr Christiansen said.
After completing a degree in physics and mathematics, she then completed a PhD in astronomy at the University of New South Wales.
She then moved to the United States to pursue a post-doctoral research fellowship at Harvard, where she was contacted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and offered a job.
Dr Christiansen is now a research scientist for NASA and has been described as the “Tomb Raider of exoplanet research”.
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One of her goals is to break the stereotype and to act as a role model for female scientists, helping engage young people within STEM subjects.
“When I was in high school I didn’t have any role models who were female scientists,” Dr Christiansen said.
“I love giving talks at schools, to be the person who stands in front of the students to talk about all of the amazing work that is being done within science.
“I want to let them know that anyone can do it.”
Dr Christiansen is a research scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute based at the California Institute of Technology.
In the past she was part of the NASA Kepler Mission, looking at other planets that are of similar size to Earth and how they orbit around other stars.
Her work is now focused on the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, a two year project hunting planets by researching the brightness of stars as orbiting planets pass in front of them.
Dr Christiansen’s role involves writing software which observes fluctuations in the brightness, and once the program finds something of interest, she will then manually check the results
Dr Christiansen has been travelling throughout regional Victoria as part of National Science Week where she has facilitated discussions about her work to encourage younger generations to become involved with science.
Looking at what she hopes to accomplish in the future, her heart is set on continuing research into exoplanets.
“It has only been during the last twenty years or so we have properly discovered exoplanets and started to categorise them,” Dr Christiansen said.
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