Research and career
After earning her doctorate, Mack joined the University of Cambridge as a Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) postdoctoral research fellow at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology. [13] Later in 2012, Mack was a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow at the University of Melbourne. [16] Mack was involved with the construction of the dark matter detector SABRE. [17]
In January 2018, Mack became an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at North Carolina State University and a member of the university's Leadership in Public Science Cluster. [18] [19] She joined the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in June 2022 as the inaugural Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication. [20] [21] The Canadian multidisciplinary research organization CIFAR named her one of the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars in 2022. [22]
Mack works at the intersection between fundamental physics and astrophysics. Her research considers dark matter, [23] vacuum decay, [24] the formation of galaxies, observable tracers of cosmic evolution, and the Epoch of Reionization. [25] Mack has described dark matter as "one of science's most pressing enigmas". [26] [27] She has worked on dark matter self-annihilation [28] and whether the accretion of dark matter could result in the growth of primordial black holes (PBHs). [29] She has worked on the impact of PBHs on the cosmic microwave background. [30] She has become increasingly interested, too, in the end of the universe. [31]
Public engagement and advocacy
Mack maintains a strong science outreach presence on both social and traditional media. [32] [33] In this wise she has been described by Motherboard and Creative Cultivate as a "social media celebrity". [8] [17] Mack is a popular science writer and has contributed to The Guardian , Scientific American , Slate , The Conversation , Sky & Telescope , Gizmodo , Time , and Cosmos , as well as providing expert information to the BBC. [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] Mack's Twitter account has over 300,000 followers; her response to a climate change denier on that platform gained mainstream coverage, [40] [41] as did her "Chirp for LIGO" upon the first detection of gravitational waves. [42] [43] She was the 2017 Australian Institute of Physics Women in Physics lecturer, in which capacity she spent three weeks delivering talks at schools and universities across Australia. [44] [45]
In 2018, Mack was chosen to be one of the judges for Nature magazine's newly founded Nature Research Awards for Inspiring Science and Innovating Science. [46] In February 2019, she appeared in an episode of The Jodcast, talking about her work and science communication. [47] Mack was a member of the jury for the Alfred P. Sloan Prize in the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. [48] In 2019, she was referenced on the Hozier track "No Plan" from his album Wasteland, Baby! : "As Mack explained, there will be darkness again". [49]
She is a member of the Sloan Science & Film community, where she works on science fiction. [50] [51]
Her first book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2020, the firm having won the rights in an eight-way bidding battle. [52] [53] It considers the five scenarios for the end of the universe (both theoretically and practically), [52] and has received positive reviews both for its science outreach accuracy and its wit. [54] [55] [56] The book [57] was also a New York Times Notable Book and featured on the best books of the year lists of The Washington Post, The Economist, New Scientist, Publishers Weekly, and The Guardian . [58] [59]
Mack hosted a podcast with author John Green called Crash Course Pods: The Universe [60] in 2024.
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