Personal Story

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue29 1–30 June 2022

I am a Melburnian from the beautiful Mornington Peninsula, but now calls Canberra home.

As a child I was strongly influenced by the insatiably-curious Sir David Attenborough, and even used to write my own science books with the help of my Dad. If the world had been a different place, my Dad would have been an astronomer, or at the very least, a physicist of some flavour. His analytical mind, his phenomenal memory and his dry sense of humour have shaped me.

Much as I dreamed of becoming a musician, science (ironically) afforded more stable prospects. And so, after having two inspirational chemistry teachers in VCE I enrolled at RMIT University in an Applied Chemistry degree. Surprisingly to me, the course covered a wide range of topics, including more thermodynamics than any self-respecting chemist should expect to study. 

To add a bit of spice to my degree, I dabbled in outreach. The Faculty of Science was always looking for undergraduates for events. These opportunities were too good to pass by so I became a regular participant, demonstrating chemistry experiments at Open Day and the like. The pinnacle was the Peer Tutor program, funded by a Department of Education and Training grant. It involved leading a team of undergraduates into the great unknown (i.e. rural Victoria) with a station wagon full of science experiments. We visited primary schools with experiments on food nutrient testing, spectroscopes and soil testing, inspiring children to study science (and preferably at RMIT).

After my Honours year I entered industry at the company that invented the atomic absorption spectrophotometer. For three years I worked on the latest UV-Vis and fluorescence spectrophotometers, being introduced to clean optics labs; CNC machines; and software, firmware, mechanical, optical AND electrical engineers. 

For a company that exported 90% of its product, a major increase in the Australian dollar in 2003 meant a round of redundancies. I brought my payout to Canberra to study science communication at the ANU through Questacon (yes, I was in the Shell Questacon Science Circus). From there it was a string of outreach jobs in NSW, from the Poultry CRC to the Wollongong Science Centre and Planetarium, and the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. 

When my other half, Rob Sharp (then at the AAO), secured himself a job here at RSAA I followed him to Canberra. To supplement my outreach experience I enrolled in a Diploma of Secondary Education at the University of Canberra, taught high school science for a short while and then secured a job at Geoscience Australia in the Education Centre where I remained for ten years. It was here that I honed my skills in taking multidiscipline science to create teacher booklets, professional development sessions and posters for the classroom. Usefully, the computer game ‘Minecraft’ was the fodder for much of this work. The 10,000 students per year through the Centre also helped!

I started at ASTRO 3D in January 2022 to continue my outreach endeavours with a great bunch of people both here and across the nodes.

 Lara Sharp

_{Picture: Lara Sharp on the Galapagos Islands}