Shohini Ghose on revolutions – quantum and social

Shohini Ghose is a professor of quantum science at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is also the founder and director of Laurier’s Centre for Women in Science (WinS) and an NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering. In this episode, she takes Lauren and Colin on a journey into the subatomic realm to explore concepts like entanglement, superposition, and her personal favourite quantum quandary: uncertainty. She explains how ideas in quantum science can translate to questions of identity, and how that drives her efforts to improve equity and diversity in science. She also thoughtfully answers questions submitted by elementary school students, and provides a sneak peek into the topics of her upcoming book. Learn more about the her work in equity and diversity with these online resources from WinS: laurierwins.medium.com. View the episode transcript here.

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Conversations at the Perimeter is co-hosted by Perimeter Teaching Faculty member Lauren Hayward and journalist-turned-science communicator Colin Hunter. In each episode, they chat with a guest scientist about their research, the challenges they encounter, and the drive that keeps them searching for answers.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
(bright ambient music)

(00:08):
- Hello, everyone and welcome back
to "Conversations at the Perimeter."
On this episode, Laurenand I had the pleasure
of chatting with Shohini Ghose.
She's a professor in quantum science
at Wilfrid Laurier Universityright here in Waterloo,
and she's also the founder
of the Laurier Centrefor Women in Science.
She takes Lauren and I on a little journey
through the world of quantum mechanics

(00:29):
and quantum information throughconcepts like entanglement
and superposition, and her favorite,
quantum phenomenon uncertainty.
- Shohini also tells us a lotabout the concept of identity,
both in science and society,
and what I really loveabout Shohini's work
is that a lot of herinsights are fundamentally
at the intersection of quantum science

(00:50):
and inclusion and diversity work.
She also tells us about a bookthat she has coming out soon
that I can't wait to read.
- We've been looking forwardto chatting with Shohini
for quite a while now, andit does not disappoint.
It was a very inspiring conversation.
So, without any further ado,
let's jump in and hear from Shohini.
- Hi, Shohini.

(01:10):
Thank you so much for joining us
for "Conversations at the Perimeter."
- Thanks for having me.
- Before I even ask you any questions,
I just feel like I have totell you that I've just been
such a huge admirer of yourwork for so many years,
and ever since we startedtalking about this show,
you've been right at thetop of the list of people
I wanted to talk to,
so I just wanted to tellyou that I've been excited
about this conversation eversince I heard you were coming.

(01:33):
- Thanks so much, you're very kind.
- I'm gonna add ditto to that,
because I remember we first met years ago,
but I remember seeing yourTED Talk for the first time
and now I realize that5 million other people
have seen it as well, whichis, yeah, it's pretty,
there's a big community of us out there
who are fans of your work.
- Thank you so much,and I'm a big fan of PI,
so this is great.
We're a mutual appreciation society.

(01:53):
- We're all excited today.
- Yes.
- So to start, I thoughtmaybe you can just tell us
about the types of problemsthat you're most interested
in studying in your work.
- I have a broad range ofinterests, I would say,
but I guess the thing thatperhaps ties it all together
is I'm a big fan of uncertainty.
I'm more interested in what we don't know
than what we do know, which in a way,

(02:13):
it's kind of like beingright at that boundary
of what we call research, which is all,
if you think about it, nomatter what area you're in,
it's about pushing that boundary.
So, within that very broadumbrella of what do we not know
is a lot of stuff, in factmost things we don't know,
I think, and in physics,that obviously leads it
naturally into quantumfor me, where of course,

(02:35):
not knowing has a entirelydifferent meaning,
where the idea of uncertainty
is baked into the theory itself,
so that took me to a whole new level
when I started out exploringthis idea of uncertainty
and not knowing and knowledge in general
and how we describe the universe,
but that, of course,also extends to questions
of uncertainty aboutwho we are and questions

(02:57):
around identity and societyand all of that is, of course,
very, very much intermingled.
All of those areas actually interest me,
and that's what I focus on invarious research projects now.
- Thinking of uncertainty,
I think when you first hear that word,
you can think of it as maybe a weakness,
but are there ways that we can frame this
as actually a strength?
- Absolutely, so this has been,

(03:18):
I think for me, also a personal evolution
where being uncertain sometimesis absolutely worrying.
There's no doubt.
It would be nice if wecould predict our lives
and our careers, for example,and things like this.
We can't actually predict any of it,
and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
So for me, I guess quantumhas really taught me deeply
that there is power to uncertainty,
that the universe itself is telling us,

(03:41):
stop with all of thisprecision measurements
and stop with trying to know it all.
The universe is saying, yeah,let's not be know-it-alls,
and that's not a bad thing in the sense
that we now of coursehave started harnessing
quantum uncertainty and all of these weird
quantum properties that we largely ignored
since the beginning of the theory,

(04:02):
which was developedover a century ago now,
but only recently have wereally started exploring
and digging deeply intothe stranger properties
of superposition, entanglement,
all of which have quantumuncertainty underlying them,
and realizing that these are knobs
and they are powerfultools that we can use
to not only do information processing,

(04:24):
which is of course a fieldof quantum computing,
but also to dig deeper intowhat the universe really is,
what exists, what doesn't.
That to me is really, it blowsmy mind to think about that
we actually have tools toeven ask those questions,
let alone answer them.
- For someone who lovesuncertainty, it seems like quantum
is the perfect field for you to be in.
- Right?- In your TED Talk,

(04:45):
you said something thatmade the audience laugh.
You said if you are confused by quantum,
don't worry, you're getting it.
Can you elaborate on what you meant
by don't worry about the weirdness
because it's sort ofinherent to this field?
- Absolutely.
So I actually wanted toflip the script a little,
because I think there's, ofcourse other much more famous,
smarter people have saidthat and pointed out
that you shouldn't beavoiding quantum uncertainty.

(05:07):
If you're confused byquantum, join the club,
but more in a, oh, we'restuck with it kind of way,
just shut up and calculateapproach, but for me,
I wanted to flip it andsay, no, that's exciting.
It's exciting to knowthat we cannot ignore
all of this fluid universe that we live in
and perhaps we should embrace it,
so that's where I was going with that.

(05:28):
- You also use terms likeentanglement and superposition,
which are those termsare, I think, at the heart
of what a lot of people findso vexing about quantum theory.
Can you help us get agrasp on those ideas?
- Probably not, becauseof course if you do,
then you're not getting it.
Only when you're confused.
- Help me lose my grasp on them.
- Okay, I'll do my best.
That I can do.

(05:50):
- So the theory is essentially
what we call a probabilistic theory,
meaning the fundamental descriptionof any quantum particle,
whether it's electrons or photons
or any of these particlesthat we don't even see,
is that we cannot actuallyknow every quantity precisely,
so if we wanted to know where it's going,
then we don't know whereit's located or vice versa.

(06:14):
There's this sort ofbalancing act all the time,
and it doesn't matter howwell we try to measure,
we just can't.
That's really what it means tobe fundamentally unknowable.
All we can do is talk about the likelihood
of all of these different properties.
- And that's only thecase in the quantum realm.
That's not the case in oursort of day-to-day existence?
- That's a great questionbecause ultimately,

(06:34):
we are made up of quantum particles,
electrons and atoms and so on,
so we're up the chain, andat some point seems like
we do seem to know moreprecisely where we are
and what we're doing, to some extent.
I mean, we even make GPSinstruments to tell us these things
and our phones tell us even these days,
so the fundamental question is why is it

(06:55):
that at the quantum level,that idea of uncertainty
plays a much bigger role?
It's not that we don't haveuncertainty at our scale,
it's just the scale isdifferent, so at our macro scale,
somehow quantum uncertaintydoesn't seem to play a role,
and there are many otherprocesses that actually
sort of wash out andwipe out quantum features
such as entanglementand other cool things,

(07:16):
and at the quantum level,
if we have just these isolated particles
that are not talking tothe rest of the universe
and we can sort of observethem and play with them,
then we start seeing that these effects
are big on that scale, sothat's really what's happening.
- You've mentioned quantumentanglement a couple of times,
and I was thinking alittle bit about your work
before this conversation.
I work in quantum matter,and I think the goal

(07:37):
of explaining quantum entanglement
is something we have incommon, and I have to say,
I always have a reallyhard time explaining it
to someone outside of the field.
Do you have a good way of explaining it
to someone that's new to the concept?
- I have some way, but thisis why I cleverly said,
well, if you're confused, that's fine,
because then I have away out, being too big.

(07:59):
- You're hedging your bets a little bit.
- Right, but that being said,
a lot of times you hear that entanglement
is about how there'ssome instant connection
and there's something faster than light.
That's not actually true.
Of course, we have to beclear that there's no way
to use entanglement or a connection
between two quantum particles
to communicate faster than light

(08:19):
or transfer information faster than light,
so there are limits towhat entanglement can do,
but it is true that it's aboutconnection between particles,
that part is true, orwhat's really amazing,
and the part that's differentfrom regular connection,
for example, you canthink about connection
as some kind of pairing, right?
For example, a left glove andright glove, that's paired,

(08:39):
or a knife and a fork.
Those things are notsurprising entanglement.
We don't call them entangled cutlery
because actually they're not.
- Well, I will from now on.
- Maybe, but there issomething extra about the way
that connection, the pairingworks at the quantum level
of electrons or photons and so on,
and that is that not onlyis there this pairing of,

(09:01):
let's say, this is going back to cutlery,
if one of the electrons is like a knife,
the other one's a fork, sure,
but what's interesting isthat both of them already
at the individual level havethat uncertain fluid identity,
so it's not clear which one isa knife, which one is a fork.
In fact, they have thissort of possibility
of being knife or fork,but we don't know for sure,
so it's this combinationwhere we don't know

(09:24):
which is a knife and which isa fork, but if one is a knife,
the other one's instantly a fork
no matter where they are onopposite ends of the universe,
so it's that balance betweenhaving that probabilistic
fluid identity combined withperfect connection and pairing.
That's what's missing inregular knives and forks,
because they are not that fluid,
which is probably a goodthing when you're eating,

(09:45):
but not as powerful asquantum knives and forks
because those can be used for tools
to do novel kinds of application and such.
I don't know, I dunno ifthat was clear or not,
but that's the way I like.
- It's the first knife andfork analogy I've heard
for entanglement, and I knowthat entanglement is a concept
that has racked people's brainsfor a century or so, right,

(10:07):
that we're not the only peoplewho have been confused by it,
but this bears out in experimentand over and over again.
We see that it's a real thing.
So how does that differfrom superposition,
which is the other sort ofuniquely quantum phenomenon
that you mentioned?
- Well, they're connected in the sense
that we typically talk aboutsuperposition as this idea
of not having to choose one or the other.

(10:30):
Superposition is the andrather than the or description
where we talk about howmaybe we should talk instead
of knife before get back into
maybe quantum computing language,
where the knife wouldprobably be called a zero
and the fork would be called a one.
So instead of talking about zero or one,
we would talk about probabilities,
some kind of a description that allows us

(10:50):
to talk about probability ofzero and probability of one,
and that kind of a description
which encompasses bothaspects of zero and one
is what we call the superposition.
And of course, you can have superpositions
of multiple such quantum bits or qubits,
and when you get to thoselarger superpositions,
some of those types of superpositions
that have this characteristicconnection piece

(11:12):
are the ones that we callentanglement, so in a way,
entanglement is built into superposition.
Once you allow yourself tothink about superposition
and describe that,entanglement naturally emerges
from those descriptions,mathematically at least.
- You wrote a really nice articlefor "Morals and Machines,"
and I guess the themewas kind of how quantum

(11:33):
can help us go beyond the binary,
so I really loved this article'cause it was teaching us
lessons both within science and outside.
So, what are some of theways that we can learn
about non-binary thinkinginspired by quantum mechanics?
- Well, everything in quantum mechanics
is about letting go ofspecifics and precision.

(11:55):
The idea that science and theway we think about science
can impact society is not new.
As our science evolves, oursocial thinking also evolves,
and for example, all of youknow the Industrial Revolution
and thinking around precisionsand mass marketing and scales
of how we think about things,as well as knowing exactly
one thing or anotherthat has all absolutely

(12:17):
shaped the way we behave socially as well,
so to me, it feels likewhether we like it or not,
this whole new revolutionwith new quantum technologies
that actually harness thesestranger properties of quantum,
we're already using quantumtechnologies, of course,
the laser and electronics,
all of that is based on quantum ideas,
but now we're getting to the parts

(12:38):
that we were kind of ignoring,
like the uncertainty and entanglement,
and once we start buildingthat into our technologies
and we're talking about these ideas more,
it will absolutely, I think,
inevitably shape this moving away,
just like we move away inscience from zero or one
and go to zero and one,perhaps in society too,
we will naturally startexpanding our choices

(13:00):
from right and wrong toa more broader spectrum,
and not just right or wrong, yes, no,
or anytime we try to havethis sort of polar opposite
kind of thinking, I thinkperhaps that will start evolving
and we will get to newerways and newer approaches,
which can influence so manyaspects of our behavior,
whether we're choosing whatwe want to eat at a restaurant

(13:21):
versus our politics and our policies,
and so many, manyaspects of our identities
that honestly we arelearning more and more
are not about just one or the other.
We are the intersection of somany different environments
and influences and our ownhuman characteristics that,
if you think about it that way,
it feels narrow thatwe've not really embraced

(13:43):
that kind of thinking already.
- Is that why the term revolution comes up
when we talk about thesequantum technologies,
because it's such a fundamentallynew way of thinking?
- I think so, I think itstarted as an idea revolution
rather than about just the technology,
this idea that you flipagain the script of saying,
let's ignore what we don't know

(14:05):
to let's embrace not knowing to be a tool,
just like knowing is a tool.
I'm not saying we ignore precision,
of course we do need precision too,
but that the combination is more powerful
than ignoring one or the other,
so I think that's the idea that,
the thinking of embracingthese as extra tools,
ways that we can deeplyunderstand the universe

(14:27):
as well as expand on ourtechnologies and our applications,
so I think, yeah, for methat's the revolution,
and maybe it'll eventuallylead to a bigger revolution
that I think of as a social revolution,
'cause technologies alwaysend up going in ways
that we definitely can'tcontrol, which is a little scary,
but it always changes everything.
- So you would call this aquantum social revolution?

(14:48):
- I think it will be.
The question is what kindof of social revolution,
one that can be, perhaps we engage in it
in a more knowing way where we understand,
in the history of science and technology,
the way society develops hand-in-hand
with technology gives usa lot of ways to learn
how we could perhapsshape this next revolution

(15:09):
rather than just getcaught up in the flow.
We will be anyway, butwhat if we could actually
choose to be more structuredand more, for example,
deliberate and inclusive, for example,
in the way we embrace anduse these technologies,
who has access to these technologies?
That would be kind of arevolutionary approach
to a technologyrevolution, which will then

(15:30):
lead to a completelyradical social revolution.
- It may have been in the same article
that Lauren mentioned,
you wrote that, "Quantuminformation science being new,
"it offers what you calleda rare opportunity to embed
"inclusive practices from thestart and build a responsible
"and sustainable roadmapfor quantum computing,"
so I think that's whatyou were getting at.
We have a chance,

(15:50):
because in the broadsweep of human history,
quantum theory isbasically a brand new thing
in the past century,
and we haven't quite developedour intuitions and mindsets.
Do you think that's somethingthat will come over time?
Quantum will seem more naturalto us, more intuitive to us,
and we'll be able to buildour sort of social practices
around that kind of thinking?
- I don't know if it'llbecome more intuitive,

(16:12):
because the reality is
that we are not probabilisticcreatures ourselves
in the sense that ourthinking is actually,
because we're pretty vague often, right?
We're not always aboutthe way we would, perhaps,
imagine a true artificial intelligent
based on binary computing, you know,
yes and no kind of choices.
We don't actually think that way,
so we do naturally alreadyhave some of these qualities,

(16:33):
but we don't consciously acknowledge them,
so perhaps that partwill become more natural
where we allow ourselvesto explore our thinking
and how we make decisionsand how we behave.
Whether or not that will bemore intuitive, I don't know,
but perhaps it'll become more widespread.
- Can you think ofexamples of how we could,

(16:55):
in the field of quantum computing,
develop the field in away that's more inclusive
and sort of egalitarian than, let's say,
an older branch of science like chemistry?
- Sure, absolutely.
In fact, that's part of what I wanted
to write that article for.
Often what we do with technology,
especially on the science side,
and I'm sure we've all been guilty of it,
is that we are so curious.
We're like, let's just tryit and see what happens.

(17:16):
What if we did this, whydon't we do this now,
why don't we build this thing,which is fun because that is,
we are inherently curious,which is wonderful,
but what if we could askthe what if questions
and also include those whoask what will happen next,
because that too is a creative process
because you can't quitepredict it until it happens,
and humans are veryunpredictable, so maybe we learn

(17:38):
more about how to predict humanbehavior too in the future,
but for now, there areexperts who will understand
human behavior, perhapsjust the way I study physics
and the laws of physics.
There's others who study social sciences
and things like identity and inclusion,
and often me as a physicistwill perhaps not think

(17:59):
they should be part of whateveris the research project
I'm doing to build thisnew quantum application
to do something with healthcare,
so, but healthcare would impact humans,
so perhaps we shouldget some human experts
into that kind ofresearch and development.
So that's one example of wherewe could be more deliberate.
As we develop the technology,
we don't have to limit whatwe do, but we should ask,

(18:20):
what's the impact?
Who's using it?
Why are we doing this?
Where will it lead?
What's the environmentalkinds of concerns we have?
Is it sustainable?
There's so many other questions
that we don't typicallyask all at the same time.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could do that
in a more structured fashion?
- The Industrial Revolution,
we know that it essentiallybuilt the 20th century

(18:40):
and into the 21st century,
but it had some serious repercussions
for our environment and for our health.
Some good, lots bad.
Are you sort of proposingthat quantum information
is a field that's so youngthat it would kind of
be like going back to the startof the Industrial Revolution
and saying we could planahead a little bit better
and have fewer of thenegative repercussions?

(19:01):
Do we have the wisdom of hindsight now
with a new revolution that's starting?
- That's exactly the kind of what if game
that would be great to play.
What if we could go back to the beginning
of the Industrial Revolution
and make a few decisions, key decisions?
What would we have decided,knowing everything we know now?
What would we have done different?
And from that kind of an exercise,

(19:22):
can we learn something aboutstarting this new revolution
and ask what if we usethose kinds of lessons
to try to put into place
whatever are those keydecisions and policies?
It would require, obviously,some kind of ability
to predict where we're goingand we'll never get that right,
because there's just no way.
- But history does havesome guidance for us.

(19:43):
- Exactly.
Right now, our approach
is we don't even look back at history.
We know Industrial Revolutionhappened, but that's about it.
We don't really take it as a lesson
that we now use for the future.
There are, as I said, expertscholars who do actually
think about history, thinkabout political science
and their causalities and correlations,
so I think it's happening,

(20:04):
but we don't necessarily then include that
as we roll out the technologies.
It's all being done in silos,
which has always been kindof a problem with research,
so here's a chance forus to break those silos.
- Are there particular tips or strategies
that you think the leaders and developers
of these technologies should have in mind
as they roll out new devices?

(20:24):
- If there's a leaderwho's in a policy meeting,

first thing's first: look around the table. (20:27):
undefined
Who's at the table and who's missing?
That would be number onestep, and it's amazing
how much you can learnjust from that alone,
because I don't think there'sgoing to be one person
who will be able to makeall the right decisions,
so find the team that can reallybring in all of the skills
and the expertise you mightwant to think about, at least.

(20:48):
So I don't have all the answers,
so that's part of the problem.
I would wanna lookaround the table and say,
who would I collect to answerall these wonderful questions?
But just right now, in the fewminutes we've been talking,
we've had so manyquestions that I feel like
would need a lot of time toeven explore and understand
how we would go about actually rolling out

(21:09):
a more deliberate approach to technology,
and it doesn't have to be just quantum.
Quantum is one examplewhere it's a young field,
so we have that chance,but so is machine learning,
and there's, they'reprobably going to intersect.
They already are, to some level,so this could be something
that becomes a frameworkof how we as a society
engage with technology going forward.

(21:29):
- In this conversation,
we've been using theword identity many times.
I think you first startedtalking about the identity
of a fork or a knife or a spoon,
and then of course we can also think
of this in a more personal context,
but it seems like this isa pretty fundamental word
to a lot of the thingsthat you're thinking about.
Can you tell us a littlebit more about identity
and why you think it's soimportant to be considering?

(21:50):
- It's something that'scentral in, both to our,
to the physical world that we interact
and to our social spaces andjust more broadly everywhere,
whatever we do, it's abouthow we interact with it,
whether it's other humanbeings or with other objects
or even our imaginations
and even things that arenot there that don't exist.

(22:11):
Everything is about thatinteraction and then engagement,
and that has everythingto do with who we are
and what shapes us, so to meit is really an important piece
that connects many of the projects
that I work on personally,where, other than physics,
I do think a lot aboutwho I am too as a person,
because whenever we meet new people
and we introduce ourselves,we have, we say hi,

(22:33):
my name is so and so andI am such and such, right?
And who am I, right?
For one thing, the factthat am is the key word
is already interesting.
Instead of telling peoplewhat I do or what I love
or what I'm interested in,we always lead with the,
this is what I am, whichhonestly seems like, again,
one of these very knownconcepts where somehow,

(22:53):
I'm supposed to already know that I am,
there is no room for uncertainty there.
I am such and such.
So, this is what I mean.
It's built in, this ideaof knowing everything,
so questioning thatautomatically means questioning
not just my own identity,
but what does society mean about who I am,
and whether I'm a physicist,
or let's say I'm an immigrant to Canada,

(23:16):
or a woman or a certain age,or I have certain abilities,
whether I'm healthy orif I, whether I have.
There's so many things, I can't even think
about all the differentidentities we have,
so to me it's important to explore that,
and it can't really beseparated out and say, okay,
here I do physics here andthen I think about it here.

(23:38):
To me they must connect,and they always do.
- It's interesting becauseI think a traditional
look at science wouldsay there's the science
in one compartment of your life
and then there's therest, the personal stuff,
and at what point in your life or career
did you realize that they'renot separate domains,
that they're intermingled likethat and evolving over time?

(23:59):
- I started absolutelytraditionally as you described,
as in thinking abouteverything very separately,
and when I was grad student physics,
and I've talked about thisoften where I did notice
that it was kind of lonely,
because there weren't thatmany women in the room
and there were certainlynot many people of color.
I did all of my grad studiesin the US in the Midwest,

(24:22):
but back then I thought, okay, who cares?
That's not relevant.
I'm in a physics classroom,
I'm doing physics work,so if I do great physics,
nothing else is relevant.
That was my approach,that if I do physics,
that's going to be everything,
and it took a long time forme to eventually realize
that it's not just about whetherI do good physics or not,
because it's not who I am andhow I'm perceived does matter,

(24:45):
and it's not necessarily alwayseven a level playing field
in terms of how yourwork is perceived or not,
so even if I do great work,perhaps it won't really
get acknowledged, dependingon who we are and who's there,
and the fact that there are few women
and there's challenges,absolutely systemic barriers
and challenges and biases that we all have

(25:05):
that impact how we can do our physics
or whatever other areathat we're talking about.
So that's how it startedevolving, where I'm like, okay,
I'm forced to face it in myown career and in my own life,
and then I realized thatit's not just me alone.
So the more I thought aboutit, the more I'm like,
I don't know much aboutwhat it means to be a woman
or a physicist and all ofthese identity questions.

(25:27):
I'm not an expert on any of that.
And all universities doexactly what you describe,
which is separate out, okay,you go into the arts degree
or the science degree,everything is very separate,
so I didn't know studentswho were able to discuss
these kinds of questions,and we're told to ignore it,
so I was a very wellprogramed science student.

(25:48):
It took a while to break out and realize,
well, maybe I should go find others
who know more about this,which, it didn't happen
until my early days asa junior faculty member
that I got to interactwith other researchers
from other faculties who werein psychology, social science,
gender studies, and thatreally opened my eyes
and I realized, yes, there'sresearch, there's expertise,
I can understand more aboutthese kinds of questions

(26:11):
of context, and it wentfrom there to eventually
realizing I have to deprogram myself
and try to think more holistically,
and it does align with my physics
in the sense that that's whatI'm doing already in quantum,
where I'm deep programmingfrom the zero or one
and trying to embrace thisnew framework of computing
and new way of thinking, whichcould absolutely be expanded

(26:34):
to new ways of being broader
and intersecting all ofthese different aspects, so.
- Well, we also had aquestion that was sent in
about how you find thisbalance in your work
or how you incorporate someof these different ideas
at the same time.
So this question wassent in by Priyal Bordia,
who just completed herundergraduate degree in physics

(26:54):
from Mumbai University.
She asked, "Being a physicistand a strong advocate
"of inclusion, diversity,equity and accessibility,
"what were or are thechallenges that you faced
"or are still facing to maintain balance
"between the differenttypes of work that you do?"
- Great question.
So I'll answer by sayingI don't see it necessarily

(27:16):
as a balance, as in there'ssome ideal proportion
of 30% of this and 70% ofthat, or on Tuesday it's that,
and then Wednesday it's something else.
- That's the urge for certainty
that is contrary tothe quantum urge, yeah.
- Exactly, and this kindof leads into similar
kinds of questions comeup with work-life balance,
because a lot of, Idon't see my work really

(27:37):
as work-life balance becauseit's all work-work to me,
but, so I don't havebalance, in other words.
So this idea of here's a bar,we've already decided it,
we've set it, because weknow it and now we'll all try
to strive for it, which barsare great, but you gotta,
I mean, I think of bars asaspirational, to be honest,
which is we all need aspirations,
but reality is much more messy,

(27:59):
which to me exactly aligns withreality is much more fluid.
So going forward, to meit's not about thinking,
well, did I achieve the balance now
between the physics thing andgender identity questions,
anything like that.
Because they're so mixedtogether, they're a superposition.
I'm sorry, I just had to go there.
And balance to me is aboutwhatever feels right.

(28:23):
So my bar is really not about
whether things are in proportion.
My bar is am I achieving mygoals of what I would set
as this is where I wanna be?
What's my purpose?
Where do I wanna go?
What do I wanna do,and does it satisfy me?
So, those are my ways oftrying to evaluate and assess

(28:44):
where I want to be rather thango for that balance question.
- Directly related to that,
we do have a question froma young woman named Summer,
so could we play that?
- Hi Shohini, I'm Summer fromWaterloo, and I'm wondering
if you have words ofinspiration for young women
looking to pursue anexciting career in science?
- Wow, thanks, Summer.
I'm not sure about what wouldbe an inspiring thing to say,

(29:08):
but I can say that for in myown life, as I just mentioned,
I switched away from tryingto think about who I am
to what I wanna do, so I wouldsuggest think about that.
What do you want to do?
Is it something that you feelyou can contribute something?
Will it help the worldin some way, even better,

(29:29):
and are you good at it?
Then even better, if you canput those three things together
as you follow a career in science,
then I think you'll find a verysatisfying project, perhaps,
or somebody who you can talk to
that would help withthose kinds of questions,
or an example where you're like, yeah,
they did something that's really great.

(29:49):
I wanna do that, ratherthan I wanna be that.
So that's one thing I wouldsay, and the other thing is,
as a scientist in acareer in science myself,
being a woman and a person of color,
these have been, of course, important,
but I wanna tell everybody who's out there
who's feeling like I did oftenin classes where I'm alone.
I would say, you are actually not alone.

(30:10):
I remember hearing thisactually in a conference.
Somebody else mentioned that you know,
if all of the so-calledminorities in science
or any other fields got together,
they're really no longera minority, right?
So, often we feel like we're the only ones
who are feeling that wayor, and we feel isolated.
Loneliness and isolation canbe two of the biggest factors

(30:30):
that make us stop followingour dreams and our goals,
and in science, forsure, that happens a lot
when you don't see others like you.
My message is that infact you are not alone.
It's not you, it's justthat we have to do better
and build that inclusive community
that I keep talking about,but you can be part of it.
I hope that's inspirational.
- Looking back on your own journey

(30:52):
towards being thephysicist that you are now,
how did you make the decisionto pursue this career path?
- Well, when I was a kid,I was always curious.
I was exactly that kidwho loved "Star Trek."
I mean that show, man,that must have influenced
so many kids like me.
- There are a lot ofscientists at Perimeter

(31:12):
who have said the same thing.
- Right, isn't that incredible?
I mean, I think they know, though,
the "Star Trek" crew, right?
You know, I once went and talked also to,
this is a bit of a digression,
but I had a little chat with Neil Gaiman,
who's the author of the "Sandman" show,
which is now, well it's now a TV show,
but back in the day whenI was a grad student
when I would get very stressed,

(31:33):
I read the Sandman comics, right?
And so I had this chanceto talk to Neil Gaiman
and I said, thank you, Neil Gaiman,
you got me through myPhD, and he was so amazed
because he knew that, ofcourse, he had a lot of fans,
no doubt, but he really felt that
being able to help withkeeping me on track in science,

(31:54):
that was really something thathe really enjoyed hearing,
so I feel like we shouldtell the "Star Trek" creators
how many people have goneinto science because of them,
but now I've forgottenwhat your question was.
- I think that you exactly answered it.
- That was how you got into science.
- How you got excited about science.
So it's "Star Trek," right?
- I'm curious whatresonated about "Star Trek"
and was there a character or a storyline

(32:16):
that stuck in your mind and?
- It was this vision, justthe idea that human beings
altogether with, just working together.
Each person on the crew
had their own contribution they made,
so there was always somethingwhere sometimes it was,
Sulu and sometimes it wasSpock and Kirk and so on.

(32:37):
Well, Kirk was always a leader,
but everybody did have a role to play,
and of course, being ableto see that such a variety
of different activities happening in space
and being able to transcendall of our limited
sorts of worries on Earthand we'll leave it all behind
and think that big, to me,that idea was just wonderful.

(32:59):
I would just sit therewith my jaw on the floor
most of the time, no matterwhat the show was about.
It was just that beingable to share in that
was really special.
- And how about decidingto pursue quantum?
Is that, was that also somehowsparked from "Star Trek,"
that you decided to explore quantum?
- You wanna to supportpeople, beam them up?
- I have no idea, I had no idea

(33:20):
one day I'd be able to sitsomewhere and say, yeah,
I just wrote this paperabout teleportation.
I mean, oh my gosh, if I couldtell my younger self that.
That would be.- Yeah, what would she think
if her older self said,
oh, you're studyingteleportation for real.
- She, yeah, you're analien from a future world
trying to trick me into something.

(33:40):
- That's the "Star Trek"skepticism building.
- Exactly.
But no, I think that forme, quantum, of course,
was not connected backto when I was a kid.
I did do a summer projectas an undergraduate.
I highly recommend that,if you can get a chance,
if you're an undergraduatestudent and you want
to explore what science is allabout, then a summer project

(34:02):
is great because in classyou learn a lot, sure,
but you don't get to explore on your own.
You don't get to dip yourtoes into these waters
where you don't quite know the answer.
For me, perhaps, that'sa moment where I started
really understanding, oh, notknowing is really fun for me,
'cause I didn't knowanything in that project.
My professor was super patient,
he gave me this calculation to do.

(34:23):
Later on I realized itwas about a particular
quantum Hamiltonian and so on.
I didn't even know what any of that meant.
I was just calculating blindly,
but I kind of had to get the code to work
and calculate something, andI knew there was a new thing,
and eventually it wouldbe used to understand
something about electrons and so on.
So that was my first taste of quantum.

(34:44):
I could do the calculation,
so my professor suggested that I should
perhaps think aboutgrad school in quantum,
and that's how it started,and once I was in,
I'm like, well yeah, this is for me.
Nobody knows anything
and you're supposed to not know things.
(room laughs)
Obviously.
- You're starting on the right foot.

(35:05):
- Well, we had anotherquestion that was sent in
kind of of how your researchhas evolved since that time,
and this one was actuallysent in by a former student
of yours and a former podcastguest of ours, Meenu Kumari,
who's a postdoctoralresearcher here at Perimeter.
- Hi Shohini, this is Meenu.
My question is related toyour PhD and postoc times.

(35:25):
Given the current revival ofthe field of quantum chaos
in multiple contexts,would you like to briefly
tell us a bit about yourfundamental research
in quantum chaos in your PhD and postdoc?
It would also be great ifyou could first recount
how you started working in this field
in your PhD in the first place.
Thank you.
- Thanks, Meenu.

(35:46):
I'll start with the lastquestion with how I started.
So in grad school I wasworking on this one project.
Again, when you start,
you don't quite know what you're doing.
So my professor, this was mygraduate school professor,
Ivan Deutsch, who was myPhD supervisor, he said,
why don't you explore this one system
that we've been thinkingabout for a long time?
It has to do with an electronagain in a particular system

(36:08):
controlled with certainmagnets and lasers and so on.
Why don't you model itand try to understand
what's quantum about it, andin order to understand what,
when something is quantum,
you want to compare it towhen it's not quantum, really.
So his project to me waswhy don't you model it,
but not as a quantum particle.
Model it as just a regularwhat we call a classical model,
so that's what I did.

(36:29):
I went and wrote down the modeland I started coding it up,
trying to see what would the behavior be,
what would the trajectorieslook like as this electron
feels all these forces,a pretend model, really,
of classicality, and it wouldn't work.
My code, no matter what I did,
I kept getting this weird sort of,
everything looked random all the time,
and when I changed something small,

(36:49):
everything again changed a lot.
I had no idea.
It didn't strike me that, of course,
that is the signature of chaos:
when you change something very small,
it's like the butterfly flaps its wings
and then you get these storms.
That's really what I wasseeing, but I didn't know it,
and luckily, when I showedit to my supervisor,
there was somebody else in the team
who was able to recognize and say, oh,

(37:11):
are you sure that's not chaos?
So that's how it started,and then of course,
I went and learned all aboutit, and it indeed it was chaos,
and for me that becamesuch a key question to me:
what's quantum about quantum?
So over the years, thesystems I've studied
to understand chaos have evolved.
Turns out it's still one ofthe open questions in quantum,
as in we don't quite knowwhy we have this phenomenon

(37:34):
that we see in theweather patterns and so on
at our macro level,but we don't quite know
how it manifests at the quantumlevel or if it does at all.
That's a pretty big thing not to know.
See, I'm like, wow, bigthing that's unknown,
this is like a magnet for me.
- That's amazing.
- Yeah, and so that's whyI continued in that area,

(37:55):
and my next step was to try tothink of how can we actually
even study some of this in the lab
rather than just do thecalculations and simulate it,
and luckily at the time, my supervisor,
Ivan Deutsch was working quite closely
with an experimentalgroup led by Poul Jessen
at the University of Arizona,
so that's how I gotconnected to that group,
and over the years we endedup developing an experiment

(38:18):
to try to see what happens
when you have these individual electrons
that are evolving in this particular model
that I had already modeled classically,
so classically, we sawthis chaotic behavior.
The question is, could wesee any glimpse of that
at the quantum level inthe actual experiment?
And you know, turns out it's,of course, quite difficult.
For me, it was easy,

(38:39):
I could just change somenumbers on the computer,
but to map that into anexperiment and do it,
of course, took a lot of time and effort,
and the group at Arizona wasamazing, but eventually we did,
we did an experiment wherewe could actually observe.
We took photos of this,individual electrons
that were evolving in this particular

(38:59):
controlled sort of Hamiltonian,
which is really just a fancyword for a controlled system
where we control allthe lasers and magnets.
So we took photos, or imagesreally, not real photos,
but a way to make a photo ofwhat this system is doing,
and then you overlay all thephotos at different times
and put them all together,and it's a movie.

(39:21):
So we watched this atom evolve,
whatever these controlled fields were,
and it did actually reflectthis chaotic behavior,
so it was just wonderful to see that,
and that was the first time anybody
had seen that kind ofchaos, so, and after that,
of course, that became sortof my central focus area
and I'm still working inquestions on quantum chaos
and different types of systems

(39:41):
and different kinds ofquestions around what happens
when we try to characterizesomething like entanglement,
which we think of as a quantum thing.
What happens to entanglement
when we think about a chaotic system
where there's all ofthis at the macro level,
but entanglement doesn'thave a classical analog,

(40:01):
so would it have this classicalchaotic signature at all?
These are open questions,and actually, with Meenu,
we've learned a lot aboutthese kinds of systems,
and she's herself discoveredthese lovely sort of ways
to think about entanglement and chaos
and how they're connected,
and there's definitely relationships,
so we we're trying togeneralize some of them.

(40:22):
- When I was rewatching your Ted Talk,
I jotted down a few of my favorite lines,
and this is related to just the enthusiasm
that you speak about this stuff with.
You said it's a lot of funbeing a quantum physicist,
I highly recommend it,
which got a nice laugh from the audience,
but can you elaborate on that?
Like what, where is the fun in what seems
like really difficultmath and there's coding

(40:45):
and there's experiments, andthe line about recommending it,
do you recommend it to anyone or is it,
does it take a certain type of person
to want to dive intothis certain type of fun?
- Well, I think there's onecommon fundamental requirement
if you want to do quantum,
I guess maybe it's even beyond quantum,
but definitely for quantum,since that's my area.
That's you gotta be curiousand you have to be okay

(41:06):
with not knowing everything,as in you have to be okay
with being right at the edgeand being frustrated often,
because our limited minds,where we keep seeking intuition,
it really isn't there,so if you happen to be
the kind of person wholikes that kind of mystery,
then I feel like this wouldbe a good area for you.
But fundamentally, yes,is there math involved?

(41:28):
Of course.
Do you have to do a lot of learning?
Sure, but if you wanted to,let's say, be a ballet dancer,
it's not like you're notgonna have to put in the work.
It's not all fun.
You wanna play basketball,that's fun too, but guess what?
You really wanna play it well,
you gotta do the work, andthis is why it's important
to find that area, whetherit's quantum or something else,
find the area that you knowwhere you wanna go with it.

(41:48):
What's the purpose?
Why did you choose that field?
Because then, when itgets hard and you fail,
which you will oftenin almost every field,
certainly quantum, you'regoing to have that energy
to get up again, because youknow what your passion is.
So that's why peopletalk a lot about passion,
because passion is whatmakes you get over failure.
- You've hit dead endsand had failures, and.

(42:09):
- Yeah, it happens a lot, so.
- More than success?
- Yeah, we write all of our papers
and do the presentation that talks about
these rare moments of success,like watching those movies.
We don't write about the sixyears of movie after movie
where all you see is darkness.
Imagine papers like that.
(room laughs)
- I feel like we should have that.
- The Journal of Failed Experiments.

(42:30):
- That would be great.
- I sometimes think we shouldwrite about those more,
though, because sometimes it can actually
save another person work, first of all,
but it also can be inspiring to see
how long it actuallytakes to see the success.
- I think so.
- At least we should do a summary.
In every talk, we should have one slide of
this is everything that we went through,
and this was a level of pain.
We should have a little,bar, right, scale for us.

(42:53):
Everybody's scale would max out, I think.
- I would love it if in one of your talks,
you just started with amovie that was just darkness.
- That's such a good idea.
Maybe I will.
- Thank you.
- So for you, what's theequivalent of the ballet dancer
actually dancing or the basketball player
shooting the winning basket?
Like, what's the equivalentfor a quantum scientist
in terms of the fun?

(43:13):
- The fun is seeing that non-dark movie,
when you do that, or often it's, I mean,
I was lucky that it was actually a movie,
but often it's one little numberor something you calculate
or a little plot whichgoes just slightly up
rather than down, those are the moments,
and then there are also theseother unexpected moments.
So one time, I'd given thisstudent a calculation to do.

(43:36):
They came back with the calculation
and it looked completely wrongfrom what I had expected.
I'm like, are you surethat's even correct?
Oh wait, it's obviouslywrong, go and check it again.
So I checked and came backlike, it's actually correct.
I can prove it, here it is.
And turns out it was correctand it was unexpected
because again, the intuitionthat I had about what to expect
was completely wrong, andwhat he found was in fact

(43:59):
so interesting because itwas not what we expected
that we wrote a whole paper about that
and why it was completely different,
so those moments are just fabulous.
- I can see your face lightup when you talk about it.
- Yes, because those are very rare,
but days and months or yearsof not getting anywhere,
all of it becomes worthit when that happens.

(44:19):
- And Shohini, in additionto being a professor in,
working in this quantum research,you're also the Director
of the Laurier Centrefor Women in Science.
Can you tell us a littlebit about this center
and what the goals are for it?
- So this center, again,arose from this evolution
in my own personal journeywhere I realized that,
to really be engaged in good science,

(44:43):
I have to also engage inunderstanding my own identity,
the context of scienceand things like this.
So the center is unique in thatwe wanted to bring together
scientists like me, andnot just in physics,
but in all of the naturalsciences, with social scientists
who did think about questionslike gender and identity,
and this one focused on women in science
just because that was an area

(45:04):
that there were a lot of researchers
that I knew were in the field,
so we brought them in,and it was about bringing
those two pieces that wereusually siloed together
and getting new conversations started
and then developingscholarship-based initiatives
to try to be moreinclusive, and I find out
what the problems are and thenaddress them going forward,

(45:25):
so that's what we'vebeen doing in the center.
- And what are some of thekey problems you've identified
in some of the solutionsyou've been working towards?
- What we've been focused on,actually, for a long time,
is how can we do things like girls camps,
or outreach that interestsgirls in science.
Turns out, girls are quiteinterested in science,
and then there's all the math camps

(45:47):
who try to make girls better at math,
but girls actually areoutperforming boys at math,
and we're still havingmath camps for girls.
So. what we found is that the initiatives
are often not aligned withwhat is a real problem.
Similarly with things like mentoring,
women are over mentored,to be honest, right now,
because it's all about let'shelp and support them somehow.

(46:09):
It's not that that's what's missing,
it's about is the systemproviding enough opportunities
in an equal way?
No amount of mentoringwill help if already,
there's a totally skewed sort of system
where there's no way for a woman
to climb beyond a certain point.
So really what, the discovery was that
there are all kinds ofsystemic barriers and biases

(46:31):
that are not being focused on.
On the other hand, allthe initiatives are more
about fixing the women ratherthan fixing the system,
so our big model became fixthe system, not the women.
I think that applies toeverything that we do.
So for example, we're notdoing things like math camps.
We are doing mentoring,but framing it as something
that's really about adaptingto a system that is flawed,

(46:54):
so until the system is fixed,
of course we need more of that mentoring
and we need to have that extra help
and support that's missing,
because everybody's notstarting at the same point
and given the same push,
so that's why we areaddressing these questions.
But the long term goal is fix the system,
which is why we were involved in things
like Canada's Dimensions Charter,

(47:15):
which is about a systemicevaluation across Canada
and trying to build policies,
a culture of change ratherthan just individual help.
- And this problem ofbuilding a culture of change,
I think it can sometimesfeel very overwhelming
and hard to know exactly what to do,
but I know for myselfsometimes some of the moments

(47:36):
that have felt mostinspiring is when I realized
that just a very simplechange that I could make
writing something differentlyon a course outline
or something like this,which I can very easily do,
can actually have a bigimpact on some students
that I'm working with or something.
Are there any small things like that
that any theoreticalphysicist could implement

(47:56):
to make academic environmentsa little bit more inclusive?
- So many.
Where to start?
We do actually have lists,and I'm happy to provide them.
For example, to buildon what you were saying
about small changes in the classroom,
if you were to open anyphysics textbook today
and look for names of physicists,
you'd find Newton and Einsteinand perhaps Bohr and Maxwell.

(48:20):
You will never find a single woman's name.
Not even Marie Curie is actually included
in physics textbooks, perhapsin chemistry textbooks,
but not physics, so there are zero names,
so that's one thing that as an educator,
if you happen to be teaching a course,
if you look at the topic you're teaching
and do a little bit ofdigging, it'll be amazing
how many women have contributed

(48:40):
who are not being mentioned at all,
and there's so much inspirationto be had in their stories,
because typically they did it
while they were facingmany challenges and biases,
so that's something that can be done
that we can all work on.
As a researcher, onething that I've been doing
in my own papers is there's always
an acknowledgement section that we put in
where we thank peoplewho were involved in it,

(49:01):
and I put in a land acknowledgement,so that is documented
that we are on this landof indigenous peoples,
so I think that'ssomething we could all do.
Imagine how many research papers
are submitted andpublished every single day.
Imagine if we all did that
That's true documentation,
goes beyond just what we do today,
because it's in the record,

(49:22):
so that's another examplewhere it takes zero effort.
Once you have it, you putit into all of your papers.
- Well, this seems likemaybe a good time to mention
the book that you're working on.
Can you tell us about that project?
- Yes, so my own effortto exactly do my part
to tell these stories about all the women

(49:44):
who have been ignored is tosit down and write about them,
so for the pandemic,that's been my big project.
- Yeah, that's your lockdown activity?
- Yes, it's the kind of thingwhere I can do it by myself,
so that was good, but I feltlike I wasn't alone doing it,
just 'cause all these womenthat I was writing about
and researching, they seemto be there all the time.
It was really actually very inspirational

(50:04):
and the best therapy, so.
I've been writing aboutall these women physicists
who some of them have,
we know if you happen to be in the field,
but they're not widely knownthe way we know Einstein
or you know Newton and so on.
So I wanted to tell their stories,
not just the science theydid, but also the context,

(50:25):
and the fact that a lotof their experiences
are still relevant today,
so I approach it throughmy own experiences.
So that's what the book is about,
and it's going to be published next year,
and I hope lots of peopleknow about lots of women
from all around the world
who've actually transformed physics.
- Without any spoilers,
could you maybe tell usabout one particular woman
that you learned about in this process

(50:46):
that maybe you didn't know much about,
and just a story thatreally resonated with you?
- Being born and raised in India,
when I was a student, I hadnever heard about this woman,
even until quite late in my own career.
Because I engage a lot withtrying to understand women
role models and trying to find them,
that's how I got to know about this woman,
but she's really notthat well known as yet,

(51:08):
a little more than before,
and her name is Bibha Chowdhuri,and it's amazing to me,
because she's actually Bengali like I am.
She's from Bengal and shehas this incredible story
because she was born andraised and did most of her work
while India was still a colony.
In that context, she got a PhD in physics,
worked with two differentNobel Prize winners,

(51:29):
was involved in the discovery
of two different fundamentalparticles in nature.
Never got acknowledgement forany of it, but she published
four different articles in"Nature" itself, the journal,
which is unheard of eventoday to have that many,
and she just publishedthem back to back. (laughs)
I know.
She was really an incredible person,
and it somehow didn't seem to bother her

(51:52):
that she didn't get thekind of acknowledgement
and recognition that otherswere getting for work
that she herself was doing,and that was, of course,
a very common thing, unfortunately,
but that combined withthe context of India
under British rule and lackof funding, lack of support,
lack of infrastructure,and yet there she was

(52:14):
discovering everything about the universe.
And all the women havethese kinds of huge stories.
We're not talking about small discoveries,
discoveries at that levelthat we just don't celebrate,
which doesn't make sense.
Imagine being a littlegirl growing up in India
and not knowing this woman's name.
Mind boggling.
- Does the book have a title yet?

(52:34):
- The working title
is "Invisible," in parenthesis, "Figures."
Of course, it's about shining a light
on all these invisible discoveries.
- So as you said, many of these scientists
have been invisible for many years,
but I guess there's also many other women
who could have been amazing scientists
who didn't get to becauseof the systems that we have,

(52:56):
so do you have hope that thisis gonna change in the future,
that there can be more womenthat can benefit all of us?
- I absolutely have hope,but I know that the numbers
are quite flat in thesense that we haven't
seen much of an increaseover the last decade.
It's, there's been some,but at the rate we're going,
we're talking about a centuryor more before we even get

(53:16):
to equal numbers of women at higher ranks,
and the thing is it takes time, of course.
So for example, right nowwe know in Canada at least,
that we're roughly at about20% of high school students
when they choose what major they want,
about 20% choose physics,
but that means that 10, 20 years later,
professors in Canada at max,

(53:37):
unless we get many from outside,
at max, we're gonna have 20%of our physics professors
are gonna be women, andthat will be 20 years later,
so this is why it'll take about a century,
so we need to start nowand we need to do it better
than what we're doing now.
Is it changing?
Yes, but not fast enough.
- You mentioned the need, notfor more mentoring for girls
and young women, but forthe system to change.

(53:59):
With the effort that's being put into
this sort of systematicchange, do you think
we're seeing thattimeline shrink, ideally,
between now and when wecan see a real positive,
tangible difference?
- I hope so, but I feel like I,
as we've been talkingthroughout our conversation,
we can't just say this onething or that one thing,
specifically what will help or not.

(54:21):
It's a mixture of somany different factors,
including all of the influenceson young girls and boys
from outside of even physics, right?
Go to any toy store and golook at the girls section
compared to the boys section.
They're not the same.
It makes no sense whythey should be different,
but they are, so until we canchange all the toy stores,
all the bookstores, what we see on TV,

(54:41):
what we are doing in gatherings,
how parents are interactingwith their kids,
there's just so many pieces.
Until we can change all of that,
we're not really going to address issues.
Is it possible to speed it up?
It's very difficult,let's put it that way,
but that doesn't meanwe'll give up, of course.
- It's an unsolvedproblem, like you enjoy.

(55:01):
There's uncertainty, so you're.
- It's big and kinda hardand challenging, I'm in.
- That's amazing.
- Yeah, I had been planning to ask you
how you stay motivated
for such a difficultand frustrating problem
that this is, but Ithink we have the answer.
You love uncertainty andyou love hard problems, so.
- And also I think everysingle young person

(55:22):
who can take one more steptowards that to me is a success.
So sometimes I'll get anemail from somebody who says,
oh, I mean, I think I wanna do more
of what you were talking about.
That to me is just, it'slike having turbo engines.
It keeps you going.
So yeah, that's really important.
You know, one person at a time.
We're gonna get there.

(55:42):
- I really love seeing some of the lessons
that you've been able toshare that really come
from the intersection of makingenvironments more inclusive,
but also your quantum work.
We talked about how this can teach us
about not being susceptibleto binary thinking.
I know you also, in one of your talks,
talked about how the universedoesn't care about gender,
so we shouldn't either, things like this.
I mean, are there any other unique lessons

(56:03):
that you've really only been able to learn
because of working at this intersection?
- There's no such thing as failure.
The good thing wheneverything is uncertain
is that there's no realfailure because failure itself,
either it means you'vediscovered something new
because something old hasfailed, or you've discovered
that there's no one thing that is success,

(56:24):
so either you have to try to go around
whatever is a barrier, because yeah,
that's a real failure andyou, it just won't work,
but that means you have to adapt,
or it means that maybethere's just not one answer.
There's more than one.
So to me, that's beenalso another great lesson,
as in failure just rolls off now,
so another failure,yay, I'll celebrate it.

(56:44):
As you said, we shouldhave that as a slide
in all of our presentations,
or I'll start showing thefailure movie or something.
- Makes the success more exciting.
- Celebrate the failure, I say.
- You also do a lot of this kind of thing,
where you talk about science to audiences
that are not scientists.
Why do you do so much of that?
- Couple of reasons.
Firstly, I feel like there'sso many exciting things

(57:06):
in physics that I've learned myself
that feels like a big secretif I don't talk about it,
right, so it's almost like Ican't stop talking about it,
which is probably not a goodthing in some situations.
- It's perfect for this situation.
- You're a captiveaudience, but often you say,
hi, I'm so and so,whatever, you're at a bar
and say hi, and I'm doing physics,
and people will turn around and run away,

(57:26):
so it's not always that I talk about it,
but I think it is important to not just
talk to fellow physicists, of course,
because yeah, we all get it.
We start from the assumptionthat I'm not the only one
who gets this excitedand giddy about physics.
In fact, everybody inphysics is kind of like that.
We just don't show it, becausewhen we give our talks,
we're very objective,and I don't know why,
because I know I'd prefer tobe just excited all the time.

(57:49):
But this is where we start from,
already that assumptionthat we're all super into it
and we really want to learnmore about the universe,
but perhaps somebody outsidephysics doesn't get it,
as in why are these dry equations
so important or interesting,
and that's why I think it'simportant to tell the story

(58:09):
behind those equations andthe story of who we are,
why do we do physics andhow do we do it in ways
that are about its relevance
and how it connects toour everyday lives too,
'cause it is one of thereally unifying things.
We are all part of the sameuniverse, so the more we know,
the more it helps us know ourselves too,

(58:32):
so I feel like that's the reason
that it's important toget everybody engaged.
Not to mention, we've justseen throughout the pandemic
the importance of reallyunderstanding science
and making decisions
and also knowing how to becritically thinking about it.
What's the good science?
What's the bad science?
All of that can only happen
if we reach outside ofour own communities.
To me that's a, it's a critical piece.

(58:55):
- Well, Shohini,
thank you so much forsitting down with us today.
This has been an amazing conversation.
Thank you so much forsharing your time with us.
- Thank you, I had a lot of fun.
- Thanks so much for listening.
Perimeter Institute is a not for profit
charitable organization
that shares cutting edgeideas with the world,
thanks to the ongoingsupport of the governments

(59:16):
of Ontario and Canada, andthanks to donors like you.
Thanks for being part of the equation.
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