Daisy Shearer

I’ve been an anxious person for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t until late high school that I started to develop depression, and I was not formally assessed for my mental illnesses until the penultimate year of my MPhys degree.

Just as topological insulators provide protection to electrons travelling along their edges and surfaces, photons can also be topologically protected. This can occur when photon scattering modes are associated with just one spin state. Now, researchers in India and the Netherlands have found that spin-selective or spin asymmetric scattering modes can be observed using a twisted nematic-liquid-crystal-based spatial light modulator.

For those of us whose neurology differs from the ‘norm’, it can be difficult to find space in science as we often work in unconventional ways. By embracing neurodiversity and listening to the stories of neurodivergent scientists, I believe we can find ways to better support atypical neurotypes and tap into our unique and often outside-the-box thinking.

You may know that there are two classes of fundamental particles — fermions and bosons — underlying what we normally think of as matter. Neutrons, protons, and electrons are all fermions; photons are an example of bosons. Fermions repel each other, and bosons don't. These quantum statistics are well-known. But physicists have now observed particles that don’t fall under either category.

Researchers in Switzerland and Italy have developed a method for generating currents of electrons with a known quantum spin without the need for large external magnetic fields. This could enable the development of devices that are compatible with superconducting electronic elements, paving the way for the next generation of highly efficient electronics.

My name is Daisy Shearer, and I’m a second-year PhD candidate at the University of Surrey, U.K., where I work within the Photonics and Quantum Sciences Group at the Advanced Technology Institute. I also attended the University of Surrey for my undergraduate integrated Masters (MPhys) degree, where I studied physics for four years, including one year doing research in an industry setting for my master’s dissertation. I was placed at the Centre for Integrated Photonics where I had the amazing opportunity to do R&D on electroabsorption modulated lasers for long-haul telecommunications applications. This research experience gave me a taste for experimental quantum physics, and I haven’t really looked back since!

In March, everyone in our research institute was advised to work from home if possible, and our labs shut down soon after. Although my PhD project is mostly experimental, I am lucky in that I had already started incorporating some computational modelling into my work. The reason I did this is because, as an autistic person, I am not always able to physically go to campus: I sometimes find the myriad of sensations there overwhelming, and social interactions can leave me fatigued. So, I was already searching for ways to make meaningful progress on my research while working remotely for longer periods.