About Karlie Noon: Growing up in the small town of Coledale, near Tamworth NSW, Karlie Noon’s maths journey began when she was just 8 years old, playing maths games with an older woman who was a close family friend.
Years later, this same love of maths would eventually lead Karlie to the University of Newcastle, where she became the first Indigenous Australian in NSW to obtain a double degree in maths and science, majoring in physics.
After graduating, Karlie then began a Masters of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University and the CSIRO. She is the first Indigenous student to attend the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at ANU.
In addition to her masters research, Karlie is an advocate for Indigenous scientific knowledge and the importance of multiple knowledge systems.
Karlie has a passion for making STEM accessible to people of all different backgrounds, and along with being a program manager for the Indigenous STEM Awards program at CSIRO, she’s also a research assistant for the Indigenous STEM Education Project’s monitoring and evaluation, a mentor and tutor for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in the ASSETS program, and a research assistant to John Giacon in the production of a Gamilaraay language phrase book.
Karlie is also doing research into Indigenous astronomy, looking for hidden Aboriginal traditional knowledge within dreamtime stories.
