Naomi McClure-Griffiths

Career

In 2001, she relocated permanently to Australia taking up a post doctoral fellowship at the Australia Telescope National Facility as a CSIRO Bolton Fellow. During her fellowship, McClure-Griffiths studied the movement of interstellar gases and how explosions of stars create bubbles or shells which push the gasses out of the galaxy. In their movement, chimneys of empty space may be created, two of which were discovered by McClure-Griffiths. One of the chimneys she discovered is the only known chimney to "extend through the top and bottom of the galactic plane". Then in 2004, she discovered a new spiral arm during her senior postdoctoral position. The new arm was shown on previous mappings but never identified nor given a name. McCure-Griffiths created a computer model to confirm its existence which was confirmed by her team.

In 2006, Naomi McClure-Griffiths was honored with the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the year one of the annual prizes awarded as the Prime Minister's Prizes for Science. As Principal Investigator she initiated the Galactic All Sky Survey that same year and then in 2007, she was the recipient of the Powerhouse Wizard Award from the Powerhouse Museum at the Sydney Observatory. McClure-Griffiths' team took part in the international effort to complete the mapping of the Milky Way's magnetic fields in 2011. In 2015, she left CSIRO and joined the Australian National University as a professor conducting her research from the Mount Stromlo Observatory. That same year, her work in physics was recognized by receipt of the Pawsey Medal from the Australian Academy of Science. McClure-Griffiths was appointed the first Chief Scientist of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory in July 2025.