Kirk McKenzie is a Professor in the Centre for Gravitational
Astrophysics at the Research School of Physics and Research School of Astronomy
and Astrophysics, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia. He completed a BSc with honours at the Australian National University in
2002 and his PhD in experimental physics in 2008. After completing his PhD, he
moved to California as a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. He stayed at JPL for 11 years, holding positions as an Optical
Engineer and NASA Instrument Manager. He worked on the LISA and GRACE Follow-On
missions during that time. His team is developing lasers for precise
measurements that will map Earth’s water to measure climate change effects,
ice-cap melt, and monitoring of water basins.
