Dr Attrill has been studying and working in the field of Space Weather physics throughout her career, and has led the space environment research undertaken at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory since 2012. Dr Attrill is a Dstl Research Scholar and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Bath. She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.Her experience spans blue-skies solar physics research, funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council and NASA; a window into satellite operations of Hinode’s solar spectrometer as guest Chief Observer at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA); and more recently the design, build and test of satellite flight payloads: she is the lead for the Insitu and Remote Ionospheric Sensing (IRIS) suite comprising three UK payloads, on-board the US-UK Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction Cubesat Experiment (CIRCE), slated for launch via the US Department of Defense Space Test Program in 2021. Dr Attrill works both nationally and internationally with partners across government, academia, and industry. She represents the Ministry of Defence as a member of Space Environment Impacts Expert Group (SEIEG), established to provide scientific expertise to policy-makers, and on the Programme Board for SWIMMR (Space Weather Instrumentation, Measurement, Modelling and Risk), an initiative funded by wave 2 of the UK Research and Innovation Strategic Priorities Fund.Dr Attrill completed her Master’s degree at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, studying the aurora and radar diagnostics of space plasma in the High Arctic. Her PhD in Solar Physics from University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory included a fellowship at Kyoto’s Kwasan Observatory. Dr Attrill’s post-doctoral appointment at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics focused on signatures of solar eruptions, publishing the first observations from NASA’s STEREO satellites and Hinode’s X-Ray telescope. Dr Attrill’s work at Dstl is focused on mitigating the impact of the Space Environment on various systems and capabilities; at the interface where physics meets engineering.
