Rate My Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths

Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths FAA is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Associate Director (Research) in the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. She currently serves as the Chief Scientist of the SKA Observatory, a position she assumed in July 2025. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Oberlin College in 1997 and a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Minnesota in 2001, with her doctoral work on the Southern Galactic Plane Survey. Her professional career commenced in 2001 with a Bolton Postdoctoral Fellowship at CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility, where she advanced through various leadership roles, including OCE Science Leader and Head of National Facility Science, over 13 years. In early 2015, she joined the Australian National University as Professor.

McClure-Griffiths specializes in the structure, evolution, and dynamics of interstellar gas and magnetic fields within the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, including the Magellanic System. Her research employs radio telescopes such as the Australia Telescope Compact Array, Parkes Radio Telescope, and Green Bank Telescope, with preparations for the Australian SKA Pathfinder and Square Kilometre Array. She is co-Principal Investigator on major surveys including the Galactic ASKAP Survey (GASKAP), mapping HI and OH in the Galactic plane and Magellanic System, and the Polarisation Survey of the Universe's Magnetism (POSSUM). Previously, she led the Galactic All-Sky Survey and Southern Galactic Plane Survey. She chaired the international SKA Science and Engineering Advisory Committee from 2020 to 2025 and holds positions on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Visiting Committee. Her accolades include election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2022, the Pawsey Medal from the Australian Academy of Science in 2015 for contributions to physics, and the Prime Minister’s Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year in 2006. Notable publications encompass 'Atomic Hydrogen in the Milky Way: A Stepping Stone to Multi-Phase ISM Physics' (Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2023), 'Cold molecular gas in the hot nuclear wind of the Milky Way' (Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2025), 'Multi-phase HI clouds in the Small Magellanic Cloud halo' (Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2025), and 'Considerations with stacking absorption spectra: cold HI gas in cirrus region of the Milky Way' (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2025).