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. [14] Later in 2012, Mack was a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow at the University of Melbourne. [17] Mack was involved with the construction of the dark matter detector SABRE. [18]
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. [19] [20] She joined the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in June 2022 as the inaugural Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication. [21] [22] The Canadian multidisciplinary research organization CIFAR named her one of the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars in 2022. [23]
Mack works at the intersection between fundamental physics and astrophysics. Her research considers dark matter, [24] vacuum decay, [25] the formation of galaxies, observable tracers of cosmic evolution, and the Epoch of Reionization. [26] Mack has described dark matter as "one of science's most pressing enigmas". [27] [28] She has worked on dark matter self-annihilation [29] and whether the accretion of dark matter could result in the growth of primordial black holes (PBHs). [30] She has worked on the impact of PBHs on the cosmic microwave background. [31] She has become increasingly interested, too, in the end of the universe. [32]
Public engagement and advocacy
Mack maintains a strong science outreach presence on both social and traditional media. [33] [34] In this wise she has been described by Motherboard and Creative Cultivate as a "social media celebrity". [9] [18] 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. [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] Mack's Twitter account has over 300,000 followers; her response to a climate change denier on that platform gained mainstream coverage, [41] [42] as did her "Chirp for LIGO" upon the first detection of gravitational waves. [43] [44] 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. [45] [46]
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. [47] In February 2019, she appeared in an episode of The Jodcast, talking about her work and science communication. [48] Mack was a member of the jury for the Alfred P. Sloan Prize in the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. [49] In 2019, she was referenced on the Hozier track "No Plan" from his album Wasteland, Baby! : "As Mack explained, there will be darkness again". [50]
She is a member of the Sloan Science & Film community, where she works on science fiction. [51] [52]
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. [53] [54] It considers the five scenarios for the end of the universe (both theoretically and practically), [53] and has received positive reviews both for the accuracy of its science outreach and its wit. [55] [56] [57] The book [58] 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 . [59] [60]
Mack hosted a podcast with author John Green called Crash Course Pods: The Universe [61] in 2024.
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