Dr Cathy Foley from the CSIRO’s Materials Science and Engineering Division was awarded the NSW Nokia Business Innovation Award in the Telstra Business Women’s Awards on 15 October.
Foley leads CSIRO’s work in materials physics, instrumentation, engineering and the Advanced Materials Research Platform. The CSIRO says she is renowned as one of the country’s top applied physicists.
Foley was recognised for inventing a highly sensitive magnetic field sensor by using a high-temperature superconductor.
Her LANDTEM mineral exploration tool has been commercialised with the help of BHP Billiton and Canadian mining company, Falconbridge.
The tool has since been licensed to an Australian start-up company, Outer-Rim Development and has helped to unearth around $6 billion of new mines worldwide, the CSIRO says.
Mineral deposits of nickel, gold and silver that are buried deep below the surface are often hard to find using conventional coil magnetic sensors because they are too ‘electrically conducting’ or buried beneath ancient conducting soils.
LANDTEM uses highly sensitive magnetic sensors known as Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) to differentiate the ore from other conductive material.
Foley is also very active in promoting women in science.
She was the first woman to be elected president of the Australian Institute of Physics in 2007.
Foley says the award is an enormous acknowledgement of the progress of women in science and physics.
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