Written by Tuesday, 17 February 2009 23:15
He spent 13 years in Thailand, 11 of which was working on the Thai-Burmese border with the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, performing fundamental research on the nature and treatment of highly resistant malaria strains among Burmese and Karen displaced people.
He returned to Australia in 2003 to work for the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, where he managed a field laboratory in the West Papua province of Indonesia for another malaria program.
The father of two children, aged eight years and six months, who is married to a Burmese national, is currently completing a graduate diploma in astronomy at Swinburne University
“I have long been a serious amateur astronomer with a special interest in digital astrophotography,” he says.
“The thought of taking my amateur interests to a professional level only occurred to me when I saw an advertisement for ‘space weather physicist’ at the Learmonth Solar Observatory.”
Dr Brockman filled the criteria - an interest in space weather, a science background and the ability to
live and work in a remote location and get along with foreign nationals.
“I joined as the second physicist but with the retirement of the principal physicist within six months of my joining, I took on the chief job in an acting role and was made permanent late last year after a successful application,” he says.
Dr Brockman and the other scientists at the observatory play a key role in better understanding how the sun affects our planet and its atmosphere, as well as the technological systems we have become so dependent upon in the last hundred years.
“By its very nature, and due to its distance, all data derived from the Sun comes to us through remote sensing,” says Dr Brockman.
“The basic types of sensors have changed very little in the last century except many detectors had to wait for the space age to allow space-borne instruments to detect and measure radiation and particulate matter that would not normally reach ground-based detectors.
“In addition, exotic particles such as the ghostly neutrino have only been put in our physics textbooks within the last 10 to 20 years.”
Dr Brockman says our understanding of the solar-terrestrial link has deepened in recent decades but there remains a pressing need to also monitor interplanetary space and the space environment around Earth.
The observatory plans to host an open day this year to join the IYA 2009 celebrations.
