This week we interview Tara Murphy, who tells us about her experience about presenting her work at APS 2025.
Can you begin by briefly reminding us what your PhD is about?
I'm a NanoDTC student working across the Departments of Physics and DAMPT. My PhD focuses on the simulation and autotuning of quantum dot technologies and I collaborate closely with experimentalists at Quantum Motion, one of our industry partners based in London. Right now, I’m working on how different machine learning algorithms can be used to automate the tuning of quantum devices.
You attended a conference recently to present your research, can you tell us about it?
Yes, I attended APS, which was in Anaheim, Los Angeles — I spent a week there! I'd never been to America before, so the whole experience was really exciting.
For those who don’t know — what is APS?
APS stands for the American Physical Society. It’s one of the biggest physics conferences in the world and it’s quite chaotic! There are hundreds of talks running in parallel each day, so you must plan carefully to catch the ones you're really interested in. Sometimes you wish you could be in two places at once!
You gave two talks — can you tell us more about them?
Yes! I presented two talks based on my first-year research. The first one was about a quantum dot simulator — essentially a digital twin of experiments being carried out by experimentalists in the lab.
The second was a more theory-focused talk. We were observing some puzzling behaviour in the lab that we didn’t fully understand. Using the simulator I built; we were able to understand the underlying mechanisms behind those experimental results.
It was amazing to see how much interest there was in my work — people came up to chat after my talks and even in the days that followed. There was a real mix of people from industry and academia who wanted to learn more!
How did you find America?
It definitely wasn’t what I expected. I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland — like I had shrunk and everything else got huge!
What was the highlight of the trip?
Traveling with some of my peers and catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a while. A particular highlight was reconnecting with a friend who’s also working at Quantum Motion’s lab in Australia — we’re collaborating at the moment, so meeting again in person was really special.
Thanks so much for your time, Tara!