Katie Perry studied physics at the University of Surrey in the UK, staying on there to do a PhD. While at Surrey, she worked with the nuclear physicist Daphne Jackson, who was the first female physics professor in the UK. Perry later worked in science communication – both as a science writer and in public relations.
She is currently chief executive of the Daphne Jackson Trust – a charity that supports returners to research careers after a break of at least two years for family, caring or health reasons. It offers fellowships to support people to overcome the challenges of returning, ensuring that their skills, talent, training and career promise are not lost.
What skills do you use every day in your job?
One of the most important skills is multitasking and working in an agile and flexible way. I’m often travelling to meetings, conferences and other events so I have to work wherever I am, whether it’s on a train, in a hotel or at the office. How I work reminds me of a moment I had towards the end of my physics degree when suddenly everything I’d been learning seemed to fit together; I could see both the detail and the bigger picture. It’s the same now. I have to switch quickly from one project or task to another, while keeping oversight of the overall direction and operation of the charity.
I am a strong advocate for part time and flexible working, not just for me, but for all my staff and the Daphne Jackson fellows. As a manager, a key skill is to see the person and their value – not just the hours they are working. Communication and networking skills are also vital as much of my role involves developing collaborations and working with stakeholders. I could be meeting a university vice chancellor, attending a networking reception, talking to our fellows or ensuring the trust complies with charity governance – all in one day.
What do you like best and least about your job?
I love my current role, and at the risk of sounding a little cheesy, it’s because of the trust’s amazing staff and the inspiring returners we support. The fact that I knew Daphne Jackson means that leading the organization is personal to me. I’m always blown away by how inspirational, dedicated, motivated and talented our fellows are and I love supporting them to return to successful research careers. It’s a privilege to lead the charity, helping to understand the challenges and barriers that returners face – and finding ways to overcome them.
Leading a small charity requires a broad set of skills. I enjoy the variety but it’s a challenge because you’re not so much a “chief executive officer” as a “chief everything officer”. I don’t have huge teams of people to help me with, say, human resources, finance or health and safety, which makes it struggle to do them as well as I’d like. It’s therefore important to have a good work-life balance, which is why I recently took up golf. I’ve yet to have a work meeting while out practising my swing, but one day my diary might say I’m “on a course”!
What do you know today, that you wish you knew when you were starting out in your career?
If I could go back in time, I’d tell myself – like I now tell my daughter – that it’s fine not to have a defined career path or plan. Sure, it helps to have an idea of what you want to do, but you have to live and work a little to discover what you like and – more importantly – don’t like. Careers these days are highly non-linear. Unexpected life events happen so you have to adapt, just as our Daphne Jackson fellows have done.
If someone had said to me in my 20s, when I was planning a career in science communication, that I’d be a charity chief executive I wouldn’t have believed them. But here I am running a charity founded in memory of the physicist who was such a great mentor to me during my PhD. When one door closes, a window often opens – so don’t be afraid to take set off in a new direction. It can be scary, but it’s often worth the effort.
I’d also tell my younger self to network like crazy. So many opportunities have opened up because I love speaking to people. You never know who you might meet at events or what making new connections can lead to. Finally, I wish I’d known that “impostor syndrome” will always be with you – and that it’s okay to feel that way provided you recognize it and manage it. Chances are, you may never defeat it completely.
Royal approval (Clockwise from top left) The Duke of Edinburgh with IOP group chief executive Tom Grinyer; talking to Selina Ambrose from Promethean Particles; the exhibition he toured; and speaking after the panel debate. (Courtesy: Carmen Valino)
The Duke of Edinburgh visited the headquarters of the Institute of Physics (IOP) in central London on 5 February to learn about the role that physics plays in supporting the green economy.
The event was attended by about 100 business leaders, policy chiefs, senior physicists, and IOP and IOP Publishing staff. It highlighted how physics research is helping to deliver clean energy solutions and support economic growth.
A total of 12 companies took part in an exhibition that was visited by the duke. They included two carbon-capture firms – Nellie Technologies and Promethean Particles – as well as the fusion firm Tokamak Energy and Sunamp, which makes non-flammable “thermal batteries”.
The event included a panel debate chaired by Tara Shears, the IOP’s vice-president for science and innovation.
It featured ex-BP boss John Browne, who now works in green energy, along with Sizewell C energy-strategy director David Cole, Nellie Technologies founder Stephen Millburn, solar-cell physicist Jenny Nelson from Imperial College, and Emily Nurse from the UK’s Climate Change Committee.
After the debate, the duke said the event had showcased “some of the brilliant ideas that are trying to solve some really challenging issues through creativity and imagination”. He expressed particular delight that people are central to that mission.
“Our ability to evolve the right skills for the future has been well demonstrated here,” he said. “It comes down to creating the right climate to allow these ideas to flourish and come to market. We simply cannot drop this issue.”
Tom Grinyer, group chief executive of the IOP, reminded delegates that physics is fundamental to the UK economy. “We’re seeing how research is translating into real-world solutions that matter today, from clean power and climate intelligence, to advanced materials and future technologies,” he said.
But he warned that long-term investment in young people will be vital to create the physicists and business leaders who can tackle those challenges.
Chimoio’s winning entry is an article covering the work of the South African physicist Lindiwe Khumalo, who carries out experiments on quantum sensors in a former gold mine 3 km underground.
Khmalo uses the natural shielding from 3 km of rock to test muon-based sensors and ultralow-noise interferometric measurements, contributing to dark-matter detection, neutrino studies and precision metrology.
“It’s a compelling human story about an African physicist working in an extreme environment usually associated with heavy industry, not quantum physics,” says Chimoio, whose article will be published in Physics World soon.
Chimoio is a Zimbabwean-born investigative journalist, now based in South Africa. He specializes in geopolitics, technology, security and socioeconomic issues, with some of his writing appearing in Nature Africa and Africa Uncensored.
Adepoju’s winning piece – describing the discovery of large-scale galactic motion using the emission produced by tiny quantum “spin-flips” in hydrogen atoms – is published today in Physics Magazine.
Adepoju is a freelance journalist and podcaster based in Ibadan, Nigeria, who has written for publications such as Nature, New Scientist and Scientific American.
In his pitch-winning story, Adepoju describes the recent discovery of rotation within a galaxy-filled filament that stretches over 50 million light-years. The cosmic winding, which had never been directly measured in a single filament, was found using hydrogen-emission data from the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa and could lead to a new way to probe dark matter.
Physics World and Physics Magazine would like to thank all of the writers who submitted pitches to the contest. We hope that this endeavour will lead to more quantum-inspired stories by science journalists across the world.
I hear it all the time: physics students have only the haziest idea of what they can do with a physics degree. Staying in academia is the obvious option but they’re often not sure what else is out there. With hefty student debts to pay off, getting a well-paid job in finance seems to top many physicists’ wish lists these days. But there are lots of other options, from healthcare, green energy and computing to education, aviation and construction.
Some of the many things you can do with a physics degree are covered in the latest edition of Physics World Careers, which is out now. This bumper, 96-page digital guide contains profiles of physicists working across a variety of fields, along with career-development advice and a directory of employers looking to hire physicists. Now in its 10th year, the guide has become an indispensable source of careers information for physicists setting out in the world of work.
The 2026 edition of Physics World Careers includes, for example, an article featuring two leaders from the UK’s intelligence agency GCHQ, a spotlight on the many jobs in nuclear energy, as well as careers tips from a recent Physics World Live panel. Remember that if you’re ready to start your job search, you can find all the latest opportunities on the Physics World Jobs portal, which has vacancies in physics and engineering for people at all career stages.
A great example of where a physics degree can take you is Rob Farr, a theoretical physicist who’s spent more than 25 years in the food industry. He’s a wonderful illustration of a physicist doing something you might not expect, in his case going from the chilly depths of ice cream science to the dark arts of coffee production and brewing. But that’s the beauty of a physics degree – it provides skills, knowledge and insight that can be applied to very different areas.
I used to set myself the challenge every December of predicting what might happen in physics over the following year. Gazing into my imaginary crystal ball, I tried to speculate on the potential discoveries, the likely trends, and the people who might make the news over the coming year. It soon dawned on me that making predictions in physics is a difficult, if not futile, task
Apart from space missions pencilled in for launch on set dates, or particle colliders or light sources due to open, so much in science is simply unknown. That uncertainty of science is, of course, also its beauty; if you knew what was out there, looking for it wouldn’t be quite as much fun. So if you’re wondering what’s in store for 2026, I don’t know – you’ll just have to read Physics World to find out.
Having said that – and setting aside the insane upheaval going on in US science – this year’s Physics World Live series will give you some sense of what’s hot in physics right now, at least as far as we here at Physics World headquarters are concerned.
The first online panel discussion will be on quantum metrology – a burgeoning field that seeks to ensure companies and academics can test, validate and commercialize new quantum tech. Yes the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology officially ends with a closing ceremony in Ghana in February, but the impact of quantum physics will continue to reverberate throughout 2026.
Another of our online panels will be on medical physics, bringing together the current and two past editors-in-chief of Physics in Medicine & Biology. Published by IOP Publishing on behalf of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, the journal turns 70 this year. The speakers will be reflecting on the vital role of medical-physics research to medicine and biology and examining how the field’s evolved since the journal was set up.
Medical physics will also be the focus of a new “impact project” in 2026 from the IOP, which will be starting another on artificial intelligence (AI) as well. The IOP will in addition be continuing its existing impact work on metamaterials, which were of course pioneered by – among others – the Imperial College theorist John Pendry. I wonder if a Nobel prize could be in store for him this year? That’s one prediction I’ll make that would be great if it came true.
Until then, on behalf of everyone at Physics World, I wish all readers – wherever you are – a happy and successful 2026. Your continued support is greatly valued.
The International Year of Quantum Science and Technology has celebrated all the great developments in the sector – but what challenges and opportunities lie in store? That was the question deliberated by four future leaders in the field at the Royal Institution in central London in November. The discussion took place during the two-day conference “Quantum science and technology: the first 100 years; our quantum future”, which was part of a week-long series of quantum-related events in the UK organized by the Institute of Physics.
As well as outlining the technical challenges in their fields, the speakers all stressed the importance of developing a “skills pipeline” so that the quantum sector has enough talented people to meet its needs. Also vital will be the need to communicate the mysteries and potential of quantum technology – not just to the public but to industrialists, government officials and venture capitalists.
Two of the speakers – Nicole Gillett (Riverlane) and Muhammad Hamza Waseem (Quantinuum) – are from the quantum tech industry, with Mehul Malik (Heriot-Watt University) and Sarah Alam Malik (University College London) based in academia. The following is an edited version of the discussion.
Quantum’s future leaders
Future leaders Matin Durrani (far right) chairs a panel debate at the Royal Institution with (from left to right) Muhammad Hamza Waseem (Quantinuum), Sarah Malik (University College London). Mehul Malik (Heriot-Watt University) and Nicole Gillett (Riverlane) on 5 November 2025. (Courtesy: Tushna Commissariat)
Nicole Gillett is a senior software engineer at Riverlane, in Cambridge, UK. The company is a leader in quantum error correction, which is a critical part of a fully functioning, fault-tolerant quantum computer. Errors arise because quantum bits, or qubits, are so fragile and correcting them is far trickier than with classical devices. Riverlane is therefore trying to find ways to correct for errors without disturbing a device’s quantum states. Gillett is part of a team trying to understand how best to implement error-correcting algorithms on real quantum-computing chips.
Mehul Malik, who studied physics at a liberal arts college in New York, was attracted to quantum physics because of what he calls a “weird middle ground between artistic creative thought and the rigour of physics”. After doing a PhD at the University of Rochester, he spent five years as a postdoc with Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna in Austria before moving to Heriot-Watt University in the UK. As head of its Beyond Binary Quantum Information research group, Malik works on quantum information processing and communication and fundamental studies of entanglement.
Sarah AlamMalik is a particle physicist at University College London, using particle colliders to detect and study potential candidates for dark matter. She is also trying to use quantum computers to speed up the discovery of new physics given that what she calls “our most cherished and compelling theories” for physics beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry, have not yet been seen. In particular, Malik is trying to find new physics in a way that’s “model agnostic” – in other words, using quantum computers to search particle-collision data for anomalous events that have not been seen before.
Muhammad Hamza Waseem studied electrical engineering in Pakistan, but got hooked on quantum physics after getting involved in recreating experiments to test Bell’s inequalities in what he claims was the first quantum optics lab in the country. Waseem then moved to the the University of Oxford in the UK, to do a PhD studying spin waves to make classical and quantum logic circuits. Unable to work when his lab shut during the COVID-19 pandemic, Waseem approached Quantinuum to see if he could help them in their quest to build quantum computers using ion traps. Now based at the company, he studies how quantum computers can do natural-language processing. “Think ChatGPT, but powered with quantum computers,” he says.
What will be the biggest or most important application of quantum technology in your field over the next 10 years?
Nicole Gillett: If you look at roadmaps of quantum-computing companies, you’ll find that IBM, for example, intends to build the world’s first utility scale and fault-tolerant quantum computer by the end of the decade. Beyond 2033, they’re committing to have a system that could support 2000 “logical qubits”, which are essentially error-corrected qubits, in which the data of one qubit has been encoded into many qubits.
What can be achieved with that number of qubits is a difficult question to answer but some theorists, such as Juan Maldacena, have proposed some very exotic ideas, such as using a system of 7000 qubits to simulate black-hole dynamics. Now that might not be a particularly useful industry application, but it tells you about the potential power of a machine like this.
Mehul Malik: In my field, quantum networks that can distribute individual quantum particles or entangled states over large and short distances will have a significant impact within the next 10 years. Quantum networks will connect smaller, powerful quantum processors to make a larger quantum device, whether for computing or communication. The technology is quite mature – in fact, we’ve already got a quantum network connecting banks in London.
I will also add something slightly controversial. We often try to distinguish between quantum and non-quantum technologies, but what we’re heading towards is combining classical state-of-the-art devices with technology based on inherently quantum effects – what you might call “quantum adjacent technology”. Single-photon detectors, for example, are going to revolutionize healthcare, medical imaging and even long-distance communication.
Sarah Alam Malik: For me, the biggest impact of quantum technology will be applying quantum computing algorithms in physics. Can we quantum simulate the dynamics of, say, proton–proton collisions in a more efficient and accurate manner? Can we combine quantum computing with machine learning to sift through data and identify anomalous collisions that are beyond those expected from the Standard Model?
Quantum technology is letting us ask very fundamental questions about nature.
Sarah Alam Malik, University College London
Quantum technology, in other words, is letting us ask very fundamental questions about nature. Emerging in theoretical physics, for example, is the idea that the fundamental layer of reality may not be particles and fields, but units of quantum information. We’re looking at the world through this new quantum-theoretic lens and asking questions like, whether it’s possible to measure entanglement in top quarks and even explore Bell-type inequalities at particle colliders.
One interesting quantity is “magic”, which is a measure of how far you are from having something that can be classically simulable (Phys. Rev. D110 116016). The more magic there is in a system the less easy it is to simulate classically – and thereforethe greater the computational resource it possesses for quantum computing. We’re asking how much “magic” there is in, for instance, top quarks produced at the Large Hadron Collider. So one of the most important developments for me may well be asking questions in a very different way to before.
Muhammad Hamza Waseem: Technologically speaking, the biggest impact will be simulating quantum systems using a quantum computer. In fact, researchers from Google already claim to have simulated a wormhole in a quantum computer, albeit a very simple version that could have been tackled with a classical device (Nature612 55).
But the most significant impact has to do with education. I believe quantum theory teaches us that reality is not about particles and individuals – but relations. I’m not saying that particles don’t exist but they emerge from the relations. In fact, with colleagues at the University of Oxford, we’ve used this idea to develop a new way of teaching quantum theory, called Quantum in Pictures.
We’ve already tried our diagrammatic approach with a group of 16–18-year-olds, teaching them the entire quantum-information course that’s normally given to postgraduates at Oxford. At the end of our two-month course, which had one lecture and tutorial per week, students took an exam with questions from past Oxford papers. An amazing 80% of students passed and half got distinctions.
For quantum theory to have a big impact, we have to make quantum physics more accessible to everyone.
Muhammad Hamza Waseem, Quantinuum
I’ve also tried the same approach on pupils in Pakistan: the youngest, who was just 13, can now explain quantum teleportation and quantum entanglement. My point is that for quantum theory to have a big impact, we have to make quantum physics more accessible to everyone.
What will be the biggest challenges and difficulties over the next 10 years for people in quantum science and technology?
Nicole Gillett: The challenge will be building up a big enough quantum workforce. Sometimes people hear the words “quantum computer” and get scared, worrying they’re going to have to solve Hamiltonians all the time. But is it possible to teach students at high-school level about these concepts? Can we get the ideas across in a way that is easy to understand so people are interested and excited about quantum computing?
At Riverlane, we’ve run week-long summer workshops for the last two years, where we try to teach undergraduate students enough about quantum error correction so they can do “decoding”. That’s when you take the results of error correction and try to figure out what errors occurred on your qubits. By combining lectures and hands-on tutorials we found we could teach students about error corrections – and get them really excited too.
Our biggest challenge will be not having a workforce ready for quantum computing.
Nicole Gillett, Riverlane
We had students from physics, philosophy, maths and computer science take the course – the only pre-requisite, apart from being curious about quantum computers, is some kind of coding ability. My point is that these kinds of boot camps are going to be so important to inspire future generations. We need to make the information accessible to people because otherwise our biggest challenge will be not having a workforce ready for quantum computing.
Mehul Malik: One of the big challenges is international cooperation and collaboration. Imagine if, in the early days of the Internet, the US military had decided they’d keep it to themselves for national-security reasons or if CERN hadn’t made the World Wide Web open source. We face the same challenge today because we live in a world that’s becoming polarized and protectionist – and we don’t want that to hamper international collaboration.
Over the last few decades, quantum science has developed in a very international way and we have come so far because of that. I have lived in four different continents, but when I try to recruit internationally, I face significant hurdles from the UK government, from visa fees and so on. To really progress in quantum tech, we need to collaborate and develop science in a way that’s best for humanity not just for each nation.
Sarah Alam Malik: One of the most important challenges will be managing the hype that inevitably surrounds the field right now. We’ve already seen this with artificial intelligence (AI), which has gone though the whole hype cycle. Lots of people were initially interested, then the funding dried up when reality didn’t match expectations. But now AI has come back with such resounding force that we’re almost unprepared for all the implications of it.
Quantum can learn from the AI hype cycle, finding ways to manage expectations of what could be a very transformative technology. In the near- and mid-term, we need to not overplay things and be cautious of this potentially transformative technology – yet be braced for the impact it could potentially have. It’s a case of balancing hype with reality.
Muhammad Hamza Waseem: Another important challenge is how to distribute funding between research on applications and research on foundations. A lot of the good technology we use today emerged from foundational ideas in ways that were not foreseen by the people originally working on them. So we must ensure that foundational research gets the funding it deserves or we’ll hit a dead end at some point.
Will quantum tech alter how we do research, just as AI could do?
Mehul Malik: AI is already changing how I do research, speeding up the way I discover knowledge. Using Google Gemini, for example, I now ask my browser questions instead of searching for specific things. But you still have to verify all the information you gather, for example, by checking the links it cites. I recently asked AI a complex physics question to which I knew the answer and the solution it gave was terrible. As for how quantum is changing research, I’m less sure, but better detectors through quantum-enabled research will certainly be good.
Muhammad Hamza Waseem: AI is already being deployed in foundational research, for example, to discover materials for more efficient batteries. A lot of these applications could be integrated with quantum computing in some way to speed work up. In other words, a better understanding of quantum tech will let us develop AI that is safer, more reliable, more interpretable – and if something goes wrong, you know how to fix it. It’s an exciting time to be a researcher, especially in physics.
Sarah Alam Malik: I’ve often wondered if AI, with the breadth of knowledge that it has across all different fields, already has answers to questions that we couldn’t answer – or haven’t been able to answer – just because of the boundaries between disciplines. I’m a physicist and so can’t easily solve problems in biology. But could AI help us to do breakthrough research at the interface between disciplines?
What lessons can we learn from the boom in AI when it comes to the long-term future of quantum tech?
Nicole Gillett: As a software engineer, I once worked at an Internet security company called CloudFlare, which taught me that it’s never too early to be thinking about how any new technology – both AI and quantum – might be abused. What’s also really interesting is whether AI and machine learning can be used to build quantum computers by developing the coding algorithms they need. Companies like Google are active in this area and so are Riverlane too.
Mehul Malik: I recently discussed this question with a friend who works in AI, who said that the huge AI boom in industry, with all the money flowing in to it, has effectively killed academic research in the field. A lot of AI research is now industry-led and goal-orientated – and there’s a risk that the economic advantages of AI will kill curiosity-driven research. The remedy, according to my friend, is to pay academics in AI more as they are currently being offered much larger salaries to work in the private sector.
We need to diversify so that the power to control or chart the course of quantum technologies is not in the hands of a few privileged monopolies.
Mehul Malik, Heriot-Watt University
Another issue is that a lot of power is in the hands a just a few companies, such as Nvidia and ASML. The lesson for the quantum sector is that we need to diversify early on so that the power to control or chart the course of quantum technologies is not in the hands of a few privileged monopolies.
Sarah Alam Malik: Quantum technology has a lot to learn from AI, which has shown that we need to break down the barriers between disciplines. After all, some of the most interesting and impactful research in AI has happened because companies can hire whoever they need to work on a particular problem, whether it’s a computer scientist, a biologist, a chemist, a physicist or a mathematician.
Nature doesn’t differentiate between biology and physics. In academia we not only need people who are hyper specialized but also a crop of generalists who are knee-deep in one field but have experience in other areas too.
The lesson from the AI boom is to blur the artificial boundaries between disciplines and make them more porous. In fact, quantum is a fantastic playground for that because it is inherently interdisciplinary. You have to bring together people from different disciplines to deliver this kind of technology.
Muhammad Hamza Waseem: AI research is in a weird situation where there are lots of excellent applications but so little is understood about how AI machines work. We have no good scientific theory of intelligence or of consciousness. We need to make sure that quantum computing research does not become like that and that academic research scientists are well-funded and not distracted by all the hype that industry always creates.
At the start of the previous century, the mathematician David Hilbert said something like “physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists”. I think quantum computing is also somewhat becoming too challenging for the quantum physicists. We need everyone to get involved for the field to reach its true potential.
Towards “green” quantum technology
(Courtesy: iStock/Peach)
Today’s AI systems use vast amounts of energy, but should we also be concerned about the environmental impact of quantum computers? Google, for example, has already carried out quantum error-correction experiments in which data from the company’s quantum computers had to be processed once every microsecond per round of error correction (Nature638 920). “Finding ways to process it to keep up with the rate at which it’s being generated is a very interesting area of research,” says Nicole Gillett.
However, quantum computers could cut our energy consumption by allowing calculations to be performed far more quickly and efficiently than is possible with classical machines. For Mehul Malik, another important step towards “green” quantum technology will be to lower the energy that quantum devices require and to build detectors that work at room temperature and are robust against noise. Quantum computers themselves can also help, he thinks, by discovering energy-efficient technologies, materials and batteries.
A quantum laptop?
(Courtesy: iStock/inkoly)
Will we ever see portable quantum computers or will they always be like today’s cloud-computing devices in distant data centres? Muhammad Hamza Waseem certainly does not envisage a word processor that uses a quantum computer. But he points to companies like SPINQ, which has built a two quantum bit computer for educational purposes. “In a sense, we already have a portable quantum computer,” he says. For Mehul Malik, though, it’s all about the market. “If there’s a need for it,” he joked, “then somebody will make it.”
If I were science minister…
(Courtesy: Shutterstock/jenny on the moon)
When asked by Peter Knight – one of the driving forces behind the UK’s quantum-technology programme – what the panel would do if they were science minister, Nicole Gillett said she would seek to make the UK the leader in quantum computing by investing heavily in education. Mehul Malik would cut the costs of scientists moving across borders, pointing out that many big firms have been founded by immigrants. Sarah Alam Malik called for long-term funding – and not to give up if short-term gains don’t transpire. Muhammad Hamza Waseem, meanwhile, said we should invest more in education, research and the international mobility of scientists.
This quiz was first published in February 2025. Now you can enjoy it in our new interactive quiz format and check your final score. There are 18 questions in total: blue is your current question and white means unanswered, with green and red being right and wrong.
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