Talks and Outreach

Teaching

I try to involve myself in teaching at UCL as much as I can.

• In March 2017, I gave a guest lecture for the Quantum Computation course in the CDT in Quantum Technologies on the HHL algorithm. This is a quantum algorithm for solving linear systems of equations that under certain conditions is exponentially faster than any classical method. My typed notes can be found here.

• In the 2017/18 academic year I demonstrated for the Principles of Programming course for the UCL Computer Science Department. This course is a first introduction to programming for undergraduates, using C.

• In the 2016/17 academic year I demonstrated for the MATLAB course for the UCL Computer Science Department. This course is designed to help graduate students unfamiliar with programming to be able to carry out and analyse the experiments for their research using MATLAB.

Public engagement

I’m a big fan of communicating science to non-specialists. Here are some of the projects I’ve been involved with in public engagement.

Talks

• In February 2018, I gave a talk to year 9 students about careers in science, as part of the TechGirls Challenge 2017. The talk was a small part of a larger event, in which the students got to experiment with the IBM Quantum Experience.

• In February 2017, I gave a talk to a group of A-level students at Graveney School in Tooting, London. The talk was a general introduction to Quantum Computation, titled The Future of Computing in a Quantum Age. The slides can be found here.

Quantum Secrets of Photosynthesis

My colleagues in Alexandra Olaya-Castro’s Group in the Physics department at UCL have an outreach programme for their research, the Quantum Secrets of Photosynthesis. They describe what they do most elegantly:

Our research aims to elucidate fundamental quantum principles underlying energy capture, transfer and conversion at the biomolecular level.

In the summer of 2016, I volunteered at their exhibit for the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, where we wowed the public with interactive displays illuminating how plants and bacteria use quantum mechanics to absorb and transfer energy more efficiently than thought possible.

In fact, the exhibition was such a success that it continued on to Glastonbury Festival the next year (2017). It was fun.