Date and Time
February 17, 2011
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Speaker
Meghan McGarry - PhD Student University of Wisconsin at Madison

Meghan McGarry is currently a graduate student in plasma physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and expects to complete her Ph.D. in 2012. She is planning to pursue a career in science policy, and is currently studying high powered microwave (HPM) weapons. Her policy research is focused on the technical and policy issues with HPM weapon design and its feasibility for use in space. Specifically she plans to determine which actors, if any, could create a viable threat to satellites using this technology. She presented this work at the 2009 Summer Symposium on Science and World Affairs, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. She has also studied American and Chinese energy policy issues. Her Ph.D. research uses soft x-ray emission to study magnetic topology and evolution of a toroidal plasma. Prior to graduate school, she was an analyst for the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in Cambridge, MA, where she provided mission planning support and did research on anomalous x-ray pulsars. She received a bachelor's degree in physics and astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002.