In 2002, undergraduate student Emma Spanswick walked down a University of Calgary Physics department hallway and changed the course of both her career and global space science. She had just been turned down for a summer job when she ran into physics professor Dr. Eric Donovan, PhD.
Months earlier, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) had handed Donovan control of Canada's ground array of riometers broad-beam radio telescopes "set on an unfortunate frequency where space weather gets in the way (of clear signals)," explains Spanswick.
At the time, few people wanted to work with the messy pile of information the riometers were collecting, and the government was about to shut them down permanently.
