Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Weekly
Podcast.
I'm Hamish Johnston.
This is the second in a mini series
of episodes
that looks at physics careers.
Last week, I chatted with a retired physicist
about opportunities
for people in the third age of their
career.
In this episode, I meet an early career
physicist, and we talk about how she's made
the transition from academia
to industry
by calling on her passion for science communication.
I'm pleased to be joined here in Bristol
by Kirsty McGee,
who is scientific and technical writer at CRUISE,
a quantum software company based in Germany.
Kirsty wrote for Physics World as a member
of our PhD
student contributor network, and we began our conversation
by looking back at that experience.
Hi, Kirsty. Welcome to the podcast.
Hi. Thank you for having me. It's great
to be here. So, Kirsty, you were,
an early member, I think, of our or
or perhaps an intermediate member of our Physics
World, PhD student contributor network.
What got you interested?
What why did you join the network?
Well, I always loved writing. Even as a
child, I was, always, like,
writing stories and, yeah, really
enjoyed that, but I also enjoyed
science, physics, and and maths mainly.
And I think,
I guess, it's kind of similar everywhere. But
in The UK, there's a very big,
like, idea that if you do humanities and
arts,
it's not employable. So you're kind of pushed
towards science. So I ended up studying physics.
And then,
during my PhD, basically, I realized that
my favorite part was the writing, so the
reports and the papers. And,
most of my colleagues hated writing papers because
they were just desperate to get back in
the lab. And for me, if I
if I could just be the paper writer
for a research group and write everyone's papers,
that would be like I realized that, yeah,
that was, like, would have been a perfect
situation for me.
And then a friend told me about the
contributor network,
and I applied and was, yeah, luckily accepted.
And yeah.
So so what were you doing your your
PhD on?
Light matter coupling and semiconductor microcavities.
So I was doing organic
polaritons,
trying to get,
achieve boresine sign condensation in different materials,
and study that.
So I know I know I think later
on, you did write about that for physics
world in,
as a freelance rather than a,
a student contributor. But is it did when
you started off writing for Physics World, were
you writing about
polaritons and things like that? Or did you
decide to write about things that you weren't
studying for your PhD?
Yeah. I tried to
maybe, yeah, not do things that were, you
know, completely exactly what I was doing because
I was already reading those papers. So it
was a nice opportunity to see what else
was going on.
I think the first one I did was
ghost polaritons. I think you sent that one
to me as, like, a,
yeah. You'd seen it and you thought, oh,
well, Kirsty's. This is what Kirsty does. So,
but, yeah, I think I did a few
on two d materials and,
LEDs and
things yeah. Other kind of photonic material science.
I see.
And did that did did it help you
as a PhD student? Did you or was
it something completely separate from your existence
in the lab? Did did you find it
useful,
you know, in terms of
broadening your knowledge of your area of condensed
matter physics?
Yeah. I think I think so. It gave
me a better understanding of,
yeah, the kind of broader field, I think.
Yeah. When you're doing a PhD, you're so
focused on this one thing where you,
yeah, you just have your own project and
you may be only interested
in things that are directly related. So this
kind of maybe, yeah, gave me a broader
understanding
of the field and, yeah, what other people
were doing and maybe
gave some ideas or some insights into what
could be transferable between them. And,
yeah. So,
as part of it, you
once you've written your news article, you
contact the researchers to get a kind of
technical approval to make sure that you've represented
everything correctly because, yeah, if you're not an
expert, then maybe you've misinterpreted something or misrepresented
it somehow.
So So it was always nice to contact
them and get their feedback and kind of,
yeah,
understand
a little bit more about
the people behind it and not just, like,
this is a paper from
some
unknown researcher that's just like a name on
a bit of paper.
And and did did you also I mean,
part of the the role of a student
contributor is to read the work of other
contributors. Did you did you do that? Did
Yeah. I I did. Yeah. So reviewing
the yeah. Because there's, like, the the three
stage or, I guess, four stages of review
review. You review what you've written yourself first,
then send it to the, to the researchers
and get a
technical review. And then you want a review
from someone who's not directly involved in that
field,
to make sure that it's gonna be accessible
for people outside.
Maybe, yeah, like, the readers of physics world
are not necessarily doing PhDs in polariton. So,
yeah. So I also,
yeah, reviewed other people's, which was nice. I
remember doing, like, a biophysics one or something,
which is also something that I considered doing
for my PhD.
So, yeah, something that I'm interested in, but
I haven't necessarily had the time to
maybe, yeah, keep up with. So it was
nice to,
yeah, get a little bit
of variety,
because sometimes, yeah, just like I said, you're
so focused on your own thing that,
yeah, sometimes it's nice to actually hear what
else is going on.
So so did you I mean, you you
said that you enjoyed writing papers. Did you
did you find that working with physics world,
did that help you in that sense? And
was it, I suppose, just more practice in
terms of trying to explain scientific contact,
concepts in a relatively simple way.
Yeah. I think so. Especially, like, the,
I think a lot of scientists
just write, and they don't really think about
you know? A lot of the time, the
papers can get really long and kind of
out of hand, and the physics world stuff
was, like,
you know, not a strict limit, but, you
know, I had to make sure what I
was saying was concise. Because I think a
lot of the time, I would just
read the paper and then just write, and
then I would check it, and it would
be twice as long as it had to
be.
And then so it definitely helped me in
condensing and making things more concise. Because if
it's too long, then people aren't
necessarily gonna stay focused on it. They might
lose interest if there's too much detail. So
I think definitely and it ended up, yeah,
transferring these skills to my thesis. I think
I ended up having quite a short PhD
thesis because
I,
yeah, only put what was relevant, and I
developed these skills to be able to kind
of,
identify what was necessary and what is just
added stuff. I think, yeah, a lot of
the time physicists can just
tend to
just
write everything that they know in it.
But that that doesn't always make it better.
That that was were were the the people
who, who examined your PhD thesis. They must
have been happy Yeah. I think so. To
get a nice concise document.
Yeah. They they did say they were like,
yeah. This is one of the the shorter
theses we've read, but,
yeah, it still had all the correct content.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny it's funny when you
look at, you know, very old papers, you
know, like a paper from the
the nineteen twenties by Paul Dirac or something.
They they, you know, they can only be
you know, or they sometimes they're only one
or two pages long. Yeah. And, you know,
yeah, that's a key paper in the in
the history of quantum mechanics. Yeah. So it
can be done, I suppose. Definitely.
And so after,
you you finish your PhD, and so so
you left the student contributor,
program, and then you you went to Germany.
So, actually, where where did you do your
PhD? Was that here in The UK? Yeah.
I did my PhD in Sheffield. Ah, okay.
Right. That's why. Yeah.
Okay. And then,
you went to Germany
Yes. And did a post doc. So what
what was that were you also looking at
polaritons,
condensed matter physics, that sort of thing in
your post doc? Yeah. So I moved to
Leipzig,
which is, like, an hour south of Berlin.
And, yeah, I was doing so in my
PhD, I did organic polaritons. And then, this
one, the postdoc, I was doing,
inorganic polaritons, so copper iodide,
and kind of related copper halide materials.
But, yeah, basically yeah. I was I started
writing I wrote a grant application there, and
I enjoyed writing the grant application. But I
think at some point during that, I realized
that I didn't really want to be doing
research anymore. And,
yeah, I just didn't have the drive, I
think, needed for research. I felt that everything
was a bit too focused and too specific,
and I kind of I wanted to do
something where I would get a broader knowledge
of science and also, yeah, the chance the
chance to do writing because that was always
the the part that I enjoyed the most.
And and so you you've stayed in Germany,
and you work for a a a company
called Cruise, Cruise with a q.
Yeah. I do. Quantum Cruise Control.
Oh, I see. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Quantum Cruise
Control.
Did did did you come up with that?
No. No. That's that's a shame. That's before
my time.
So,
is is that also based in Leipzig or
is that in a different part of Germany?
It's actually a remote company. So it's,
based,
in Germany, but we have people all over
Europe. So and I think maybe
just under half or about 50% of the
people. There's only 22 people, I think, right
now. But, just under half the people live
in Germany, and we have people in France,
in Italy,
Spain,
all over. And,
yeah, I think the the idea is that,
they want the best people. And
if you are restricting people to living in
a certain city
or moving to a certain city, then
that maybe,
you lose a lot of candidates that way.
And because it's a software company,
we don't need labs or
people can just work from a computer.
And there's yeah. We have collaborations with labs
and,
access to,
for example, quantum processing units. We our main
focus,
has been quantum computing. So we have access
to QPUs in various labs around Germany and
elsewhere. But, yeah, it's
yeah. All over. I see. Okay. And so
so you you sort of hinted at what
the company does, quantum
cruise control. What's, what what exactly is that
about? How
what what what are you controlling?
So the idea is that the so, yeah,
our main focus has been quantum computing. Until
recently, we've,
in the, yeah, last year or so,
maybe longer, maybe almost two years, we've been
doing,
stuff for magnetic resonance. So MRI, NMR, EPR,
and, some quantum sensing. But the kind of
the majority of the work until now,
has been quantum computing.
And the idea is that we write machine
learning software to aid researchers in the lab
and to help,
accelerate development. So one of our software does
automated,
experiments. So, for calibration and characterisation
of qubits,
so that instead of researchers having to constantly
be redoing these calibration and bring up,
experiments,
then you can the software will run them
overnight and do the analysis, and then you
can the researchers have more time to actually
do
innovative science rather than,
yeah, doing this kind of repetitive stuff that
you, always have to do. We also have
lots. We have a software
for modeling, so creating digital twins. So when
you have your experiment and your theory,
you making
usually the assumption that everything's perfect, and then
the experiment and the model never match. So
the idea is that we use machine learning
to
create a much better model of your or
a digital twin of your device,
takes into account things like noise and other
errors so that you can understand,
yeah, where these errors are coming from and
how to, for example, increase your fidelities.
I see. And the the the machine learning
testing system, is that is that something that
it does it sort of make decisions as
it goes? It sort of tests and then
it thinks, oh, that voltage is a bit
too low, so I better do another test.
Is it is that the sort of thing
where it's it's it's sort of making decisions
as it's left
overnight?
Yeah. So it's doing gradient based optimization.
I don't know too much about that. I'm
not
oh, I mean, by training, I'm a scientist,
but for a cruise, I'm not a scientist.
But yeah. So things like,
yeah, the experiment
design is done with machine learning. So, yeah,
figuring out what order to run the experiments
in and how to to do this kind
of thing and,
yeah,
trying
different parameters to try and optimize. So it
doesn't just, for example, change the qubit frequency,
like sweep through parameters
individually. It will
optimize
simultaneously
for
80 parameters
in a way that,
yeah, a human can really do.
Right. I see. And so it proves your
role. You're a a science writer or scientific
writer? That's Yeah. So so what exactly does
that
entail?
So much.
Yeah. So, yeah, technically, the,
scientific writer, it's just me. Like I said,
we're a small company. So,
yeah, I do
the documentation for the software, so how to
kind of how to guides and
background glossary, all the kind of, yeah, documentation
that people customers using the software would need
to,
to use it.
I also do all of the marketing, so
press releases and news articles,
blogs, the social media.
Recently, I've started doing the website design,
and, making flyers for the conferences that we
go to and,
yeah, videos and yeah. So it's quite
it's quite weird. I mean, I I love
it. It's really fun. But yeah.
Yeah. Just designing a website is not something
that I thought that I would be doing.
But yeah. I I really like the variety
of
the creativity, I think.
Then maybe in research. There there's obviously an
element of creativity when you have to come
up with plans and maybe
problem solve
why things aren't working, what you could do
instead. But yet,
I'm really enjoying, yeah,
getting to kind of mess not mess around
with this stuff, but,
yeah, it's something that
I never had the chance to do before.
And it's really interesting learning how to,
yeah, things like what makes a website good
and
what's gonna catch people's attention on social media.
And,
yeah. And I also go I've been going
to conferences recently. So,
we usually have a table, a booth at
a conference, and then it's my job to
explain to people
what our company is, what our what our
software is, how it works,
to maybe potential customers
from industry or academia
and, yeah, maybe PhD students or whoever is
interested.
And yeah. So I have I have a
lot of different tasks, but,
yeah, I
think yeah. I feel like I'm always I've
been at Cruise now for nearly a year
and a half, and I still feel like
I'm always learning new things, which is really
nice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I I did
see you at the, the Global Physics Summit
in California.
I mean, that's my my only big trip
of the year, but it sounds like you're
you're going to lots of conferences. Are you
is it would it be like one a
month or
one every few weeks? Is it is it
a pretty busy schedule? Not quite that busy.
So I was at,
spin qubit six in Australia
in
November and then at the APS. And
next
week or in a few weeks, I'm going
to quantum matter in France. Right. And then
that's all that's lined up for now. But,
Wow. Well, California,
Australia, France, that's not Yeah. It's not bad.
Too bad. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sounds
to me like,
you're you're sort of using and, I suppose,
developing some of the skills that you you
picked up as a contributor at Physics World
in your in your current job. Is that
right? I mean, did did it did it
give you a decent grounding for what you're
doing at the moment?
Yeah. For sure. It was yeah. I think
I developed a lot of,
yeah, definitely developed a lot of skills at,
being
the student contributor.
And I think
it's also
probably one of the main reasons that I
got the job.
In the first place, I did.
Yeah. After I started the physics world stuff,
I also worked,
materials,
science,
research company,
as a science
writer,
which I think, yeah, they saw the physics
world experience and
then, yeah, were impressed by that. And then
my new job,
they were also, yeah, very interested
in the in the interviews asking about
what I'd done at physics worlds. And,
I think, yeah, it's a if I hadn't
had that experience,
I don't know, yeah, what
I don't think I would be where I
am now. Oh, well, that's well, that's great
because, you know, that was one of the
aims of of setting up the contributor network
is to, you know, sort of help,
early career
physicists gain,
you know, skills that, you know, from
beyond their lab skills and scientific skills. So
it's it's really it's really good to hear
that it's that it's worked out. So so
when you're,
you know,
writing material, let's say, for for the company,
who who are you writing for? Are the
the
I mean, is is is your is Cruise's
software used by
quantum computer experts,
or is it a wider range of of
people that you need to
communicate with?
Yeah. It's a bit of a mix.
Yeah. So there's obviously, yeah, the quantum researchers,
so
PhD students, postdocs, professors,
in other industries or people working at other
companies. We work quite closely with a lot
of the kind of main quantum hardware because,
yeah, we're software, but we need hardware and,
yeah, QPUs to test on. So,
yeah. And then, obviously, we're, yeah, doing the
MRI stuff and quantum sensing. So it's it's
a big audience, and it depends
exactly what I'm doing, who I'm writing for.
So, yeah, yeah, it kinda depends what I'm
writing,
who who it's aimed at. But in general,
I'm trying to make it understandable
to,
hopefully, most people that are would be interested
or that it's aimed at. But, yeah, it's
kind of yeah. It's difficult, and I never
know,
I guess, if it's how well it's landed
with
anyone. You can see the the metrics on
the website or LinkedIn or
things like this, but it's hard to know,
yeah, if people have read it, if people
read it and thought it was good, if
people read it and thought, I don't understand
this, if people
maybe thought it was too basic or too
detailed. Or,
so I kind of yeah.
I guess, usually, just see what other
other people are doing and try and,
learn from that.
So so it sounds like you're doing a
a sort of a wide range of things.
Is there one thing that you're doing at
the the moment that really excites you the
most?
A a project or,
something new maybe that you're working on.
Yeah. I think
I think I would say the the website,
trying to, yeah, decide because I think it,
yeah, pulls together a lot of,
different aspects and maybe different skills
that I have or that I want to
develop,
because you've
got to decide the content and you've got
to decide so this is, like,
description. So it's including, yeah, obviously, writing, and
then you've got to decide,
what you wanna show.
So the kind of marketing aspect of it,
do we show metrics? Do we show data?
What data do we show?
And then also the design, which is, yeah,
something that's quite new to me. And I'm
not like,
you know, we have a designer who makes
it pretty and has, you know, official training
in design, but I kind of, I guess,
come up with a basic scheme and how
it looks. And that's quite fun to just
play around with things and be like, oh,
you know, they should go here and moving
stuff around and, yeah, trying to, I guess,
put everything together in a way that someone
would look at and be like, wow. This
is really interesting.
And yeah. So I'm really enjoying kind of
figuring figuring that out. And I guess I'm
looking at other websites and seeing what other
companies are doing and but you also don't
want it to be
too similar. You've got to come up with
your own brand identity, which is something that
I've been it's kind of been left up
to me, which is
was originally quite daunting because I don't have
any,
official training in marketing or these kind of
things. So at first, I was like, oh,
you want me to decide?
But, yeah, it's been fun kind of figuring
it out. And,
yeah.
So you you mentioned that you, you know,
you you you started off without any,
I suppose, formal training in marketing. Is that
is that something that you've
you've you've become interested in in your year
and a half? I mean, have you have
you done courses on marketing, or have you
read books? Or are you just picking it
up as you go along, or is it
a bit of all three?
Mainly picking it up as I go along.
I've been doing, yeah, obviously,
reading online, like, for now I had to
write, how to write press releases, how to
write social media posts, etcetera. But, yeah, I
was I've actually been looking recently at, official
formal
courses.
I met someone at a conference from another
company, and he was kind of he's, yeah,
a marketing,
person.
And he's kind of the opposite to me.
He has official training. He was saying that
he had official training in marketing, but not
in quantum physics. And he's kind of had
to learn the quantum physics side of things
just on the job.
But he kind of recommended
that yeah. He'd said that, yeah, there's just
so much to know that you can't really,
yeah, pick it up, I guess, yourself. So
yeah, I've been looking into some courses trying
to figure out what what level or whether
yeah. How how deep and intense with that
I wanna go if I just want it
to be something on the side or,
yeah, how
yeah. If I can find one that's specifically
for science related things or just general marketing
or I mean, there's so much out there
that it's hard to kind of
yeah.
Yeah. It's funny. We we we, you know,
we were talking the other day about,
you know, the fact that, I mean, this
doesn't apply to you. It I suppose it
applies to the person you met at the
conference that, you know, as the quantum computing
industry grows, there's more and more
non physics people coming in. And, you know,
we were thinking
there's got to be a,
you know,
an opportunity there, a business opportunity for coming
up with a way of teaching
somebody like that. You know, just enough
quantum physics that they're not overwhelmed by it,
but they can, you know, chat with somebody
at a conference or,
you know, at least feel confident about talking
about quantum.
So,
yeah. It's, it it you know, it is
interesting, you know, how the industry is is
sort of moving along, and it's it's not
just
physicists anymore,
I suppose.
Yeah. Definitely. It's,
yeah. I mean, the kind of yeah, being
at these conferences, I've been able to meet
so many people, and it's really interesting to
see to hear where everyone's come from and
what they're doing now and how they they
managed,
yeah, how they how they got there.
And,
yeah, nice to actually see such variety
in people's paths and see that
yeah.
Yeah. Just that you don't have to always
do this traditional route where you
study physics and like, there are other ways
to kind of you can move around. It's
not, oh, I studied this, and now I'm
in this for the rest of my life.
You can kind of move sideways a little
bit sometimes as well.
Well, that's great. That let's,
let's move on.
In physics world,
in in print,
we have a section or a a feature
called ask me anything.
And, it's sort of a misnomer because,
we don't actually ask people anything. We ask
them three specific questions,
and we ask everybody,
specific questions.
And, and so Kirsty, you've agreed to,
to take part.
So here are are the three questions. So
the first question is,
what skills do you use every day in
your job?
Well, obviously, writing.
I wouldn't, yeah, be a very good science
writer if I I wasn't writing. So,
and, I use a lot of,
yeah, communication
skills. I have to
communicate with lots of different types of people.
So,
for example,
last week, we did a product launch for
our new,
magnetic resonance,
product.
And I had to write a press release
and make a new website page and make
a social media post. And then this, involves
a lot of
coordinating with different people. So then, like I
said earlier, like, the scientists are finding out
what's the, you know, what's the most important
features of the software that we want to
advertise, what data do we have to what
claims do we wanna make, what data do
we have to back up these claims,
what's the narrative?
And then I have to
yeah.
With the website,
I'm asking
yeah. To coordinate with the designer and the
website developer to, yeah, basically say, okay. We
need this and this and this and get
that
going. And and also, yeah, with the the
higher ups and the kind of general, like,
yeah, what do we what do we want
this to show? How do we
who is this aim for? So a lot
of the things yeah. It's after
yeah. Because I'm not an expert in these
things. I don't know everything about, like, the
business side or the other science side of
everything. So trying to,
yeah, coordinate with people to figure out
what's the best way that we can do
these kind of things.
So
yeah. Also, yeah, learning things quickly has become,
like, I guess, a new skill.
Because, yeah, I don't have training in or,
yeah, I I didn't study
quantum competing and or
MRI or magnetic resonance things.
So
but I obviously don't have or marketing,
but I don't have time to learn all
of these things. And like you were saying,
in super
good detail, it would also be good, yeah,
for me to have, like you say, some
sort of,
kind of accelerated course for the these are
the the bare facts that you need to
know in order to kind of survive.
So, yeah, I have to kind of pick
things up quite quickly sometimes, but, my colleagues
are always happy to to help with this.
Just jump on a Zoom call and,
kind of explain, yeah,
yeah, the basic principles of that.
And then, yeah, one skill that I'm still,
you know,
developing,
is, yeah, translating these complex ideas from
physicists and software to, yeah, a broader audience.
And, yeah, that is, like we said, something
that the,
student contributor network helped with was
taking, yeah, something that's very technical
and very niche that most people have never
even heard of and making
it not just understandable, but also interesting is,
yeah, something that is still difficult. But,
yeah, I think I'm I'm getting better at
it.
Well, that's great. And and so the next
question is, what do you like best and
least about your job? Okay.
Best,
I love the variety. I like yeah. That
I'm doing
so many different things all the time, and
I can
not pick and choose what I do. But
if there's a day that I'm feeling like
I want something a little bit lighter, I
can do the social media or the website,
something a bit more creative that doesn't require
really intense
thinking about physics.
Or, yeah, if I wanna get more from
feeling like,
yeah, I could really concentrate or
really wanna focus in detail on something. I
can write, like, the documentation or something, yeah,
a little bit more technical.
So, yeah, I really enjoy
that aspect of it.
And least
is there there's got to be something you
Yeah.
Yeah. No. I do I do really love,
working at Cruise. And,
yeah, I love the flexibility of the remote
working, but I do miss
going into the office and seeing people and
chatting to your colleagues and
kind of knowing them more than just, like,
as their as their research roles. And we
do meet in person.
We cruise every two months. We meet for
two days in person, which is really nice
because you
you can't really get to know someone very
well over, like, a Zoom screen.
So it's nice to be able to actually
have that time with them in person. But,
yeah, I'm I'm quite a social person, so
I do miss the kind of everyday interaction
that you would get in an office. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I'm I'm the same way. I
mean, after COVID, I it took it took
me a bit of persuasion
to come back to the office. But now
I'm in every day and loving it. So,
yeah, I definitely,
I definitely
agree with you on that one.
And so the third question, Kirsty, is what
do you know now that you wish you'd
known
when you were starting out in your career?
That's a hard one.
I guess it would be
it would be easy to say that I
wish I
knew earlier that I could
combine science and writing and, like, I could
make a career out of that. But I
think
if I'd known that, I maybe wouldn't have
done my PhD. I might have tried to
go straight into,
writing straight after my studies, and then I
wouldn't be where I am now. So it's
kind of hard to say that I wish
that I had known that in a way.
But I guess, yeah, I would say that
you don't always
have to
it's okay to not have a clear plan,
I think.
I kind of I think, yeah, there's always
this big stress on knowing what you want
to do.
Like, people always asking children, oh, when you
grow up, what do you wanna be? And
I think from you know, it's a pilot,
a nurse, or something, a train driver.
And for me, it was I wanted to
be a vet.
And from the age of four, I wanted
to be a vet, and I was so
clear on this. And then I went to
do some work experience
in a veterinary practice,
and I realized that I'm really squeamish.
And they were cutting into the animals and
doing stitches and needles, and I was like,
oh, I I don't think I can do
this. I feel really ill.
And then suddenly, yeah, I was 15, 16,
starting to think about what, like,
what, classes to take at school, what to
study at university.
And I thought, I don't know what I
wanna do. And I ended up doing physics
because I liked it, and I was good
at it.
But, yeah, I think there's a lot of
stress on, like, knowing what you wanna do
from quite early on. And sometimes
if you just
choose
by following the things that you like to
do, the things you love to do, You,
yeah, you end up getting somewhere that you
maybe didn't even know was something that you
could do, but, is actually
yeah. You're a perfect
perfect dream job.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's great.
And, yeah,
finally,
it's the International Year of Quantum Science and
Technology.
And,
you work for a quantum company.
And so whenever we have someone on the
podcast who is
quantum adjacent,
let's say Definitely adjacent.
We we always ask them,
well, we we try to remember to ask
them this question.
And the question is,
what does quantum mean to you?
Okay.
It's a big question.
For me,
I think
for me, it's
the quantum community. I think that's
something that's really nice that maybe I mean,
my my PhD was kind of during COVID,
so I didn't really get the chance to
go to conferences. But,
yeah, just from the few conferences that I've
been to, I've seen that the
just how vibrant and, like,
excited and engaging the quantum community is. And
I think it's really cool to see
people collaborating
so enthusiastically
on these things, and it's not
I don't know. It doesn't I think in
some fields, it can be very competitive
and very, like,
you know, people
people want to be the ones to to
make the the discovery, and maybe people are
quite secretive or I don't wanna help out
so much. But I think I found that
the maybe it's also different what what coming
from a company and not,
in academia, but I found that everyone has
just been very open and friendly and excited,
and,
I think that's that's really nice.
Well, that's great, Christy. I mean, it sounds
like you've, you've you've moved from being a
vet into a very, very, very nice
sector,
the quantum technology sector. So that's that's great
to hear, and thanks so much for coming
on the podcast. Yeah. Thank you for having
me. It's been really fun.
I'm afraid that's all the time we have
for this week's podcast. Thanks to Kirsty McGee
for joining me today, and a special thanks
to our producer Fred Ailes.
And there's much more about careers on the
Physics World website.
A good place to start is a new
feature article called,
Not sure what to do with your physics
degree?
Our expert panel
give their careers advice.
We'll be back again next week. See you
then.