She also spent six months on a scholarship as a research fellow, department of electrical engineering, at Oregon State University, US, in Corvallis while writing up her PhD.
[3] Foley made significant contributions for the comprehension of superconducting materials and to the evolution of devices that use superconductors to detect magnetic fields and locate deposits of minerals.
[17][18] At Macquarie University, Foley and Tansley authored a series of highly regarded papers on indium nitride semiconductor films.
Subsequently, her work at CSIRO lead to the development of high temperature superconducting Josephson junctions used in high-sensitivity magnetic field detectors used in applications such as underground deep mineral deposit detection.
[25] Foley was awarded a public service medal on Australia Day in 2003 and in the same year won the Eureka Prize for the promotion of science.