WEBVTT
1
00:00:03.761 --> 00:00:07.160
(chilled music)
2
00:00:07.160 --> 00:00:07.993
I Remember leaving one day
3
00:00:07.993 --> 00:00:10.320
and there was this 10-year-old with his mum.
4
00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:11.420
They had walked somewhere and they needed a rest,
5
00:00:11.420 --> 00:00:13.450
and she was just walking back, and he was looking through
6
00:00:13.450 --> 00:00:15.500
the window of the labs and she was trying to explain
7
00:00:15.500 --> 00:00:16.730
what it was but she had no idea.
8
00:00:16.730 --> 00:00:18.780
So, I said, "I'll tell you what it is a scanning something."
9
00:00:18.780 --> 00:00:20.757
And he said, "Oh is this where the quantum computer
10
00:00:20.757 --> 00:00:21.770
"is being built?"
11
00:00:21.770 --> 00:00:24.400
And I said, there's this ten year old - he'd heard of it.
12
00:00:24.400 --> 00:00:25.630
I said, "Yeah yeah do you want to see it?"
13
00:00:25.630 --> 00:00:27.040
And he's like, "Oh Yeah!"
14
00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:29.620
So I took him in, and I showed him one
15
00:00:29.620 --> 00:00:32.229
of the chips being measured and you could see everything.
16
00:00:32.229 --> 00:00:34.896
(chilled music)
17
00:00:37.629 --> 00:00:40.180
I was always a very curious child.
18
00:00:40.180 --> 00:00:42.080
I looked around the world, and I used to think,
19
00:00:42.080 --> 00:00:45.440
gosh, how does that plane get off the ground.
20
00:00:45.440 --> 00:00:47.310
I had a bicycle and I remember fixing my bike,
21
00:00:47.310 --> 00:00:48.190
and then right trying to figure out
22
00:00:48.190 --> 00:00:49.900
how every part of it worked.
23
00:00:49.900 --> 00:00:52.800
And so as I grew older, and older, I suddenly realised
24
00:00:52.800 --> 00:00:54.270
that I liked things that were difficult.
25
00:00:54.270 --> 00:00:56.590
And understanding how things work was very interesting.
26
00:00:56.590 --> 00:00:59.960
At the age of 13, I realised I love physics.
27
00:00:59.960 --> 00:01:01.660
I'd started doing it at school,
28
00:01:01.660 --> 00:01:05.030
I could see that you could describe the world with words,
29
00:01:05.030 --> 00:01:07.480
descriptively, but you could also do it mathematically.
30
00:01:07.480 --> 00:01:09.430
And that's what physics was, it was kind of the combination
31
00:01:09.430 --> 00:01:11.904
of both and I just thought that was fantastic.
32
00:01:11.904 --> 00:01:13.290
(chilled music)
33
00:01:13.290 --> 00:01:15.610
I'd finished doing my Ph.D. and I did some
34
00:01:15.610 --> 00:01:17.050
research at the Cavendish in Cambridge,
35
00:01:17.050 --> 00:01:19.870
and I realised there that I loved quantum physics,
36
00:01:19.870 --> 00:01:22.690
so the more involved the harder the subject
37
00:01:22.690 --> 00:01:24.930
that I took on and at Cambridge it was very fundamental
38
00:01:24.930 --> 00:01:26.760
quantum physics, which I loved,
39
00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:28.910
but then I really wanted to build something.
40
00:01:28.910 --> 00:01:31.470
I wanted to do something that would be useful.
41
00:01:31.470 --> 00:01:33.670
And at that time there was a researcher in Australia
42
00:01:33.670 --> 00:01:35.710
who was actually from the labs in the U.S.
43
00:01:35.710 --> 00:01:37.910
and he was here for three years on a research fellowship,
44
00:01:37.910 --> 00:01:41.680
and he wrote a paper that said if you could control
45
00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:42.850
the world at the level of atoms,
46
00:01:42.850 --> 00:01:44.470
you could build a new type of computer
47
00:01:44.470 --> 00:01:46.180
that would be much more powerful.
48
00:01:46.180 --> 00:01:47.670
And the research I was doing in Cambridge
49
00:01:47.670 --> 00:01:49.610
was very similar to that, and I suddenly thought
50
00:01:49.610 --> 00:01:51.780
hey, I've got the skill set that could actually help
51
00:01:51.780 --> 00:01:52.946
realise that project.
52
00:01:52.946 --> 00:01:55.140
(chilled music)
53
00:01:55.140 --> 00:01:56.630
The research that we're doing is really
54
00:01:56.630 --> 00:01:59.510
designing new hardware, a new computer chip for the future,
55
00:01:59.510 --> 00:02:02.060
and really honestly when we first said that this
56
00:02:02.060 --> 00:02:05.160
theoretical paper came out and it said if we could
57
00:02:05.160 --> 00:02:08.990
do this, this is the kind of speed-up you would get.
58
00:02:08.990 --> 00:02:10.580
And I remember thinking that science is right on
59
00:02:10.580 --> 00:02:12.120
the edge of what's possible now,
60
00:02:12.120 --> 00:02:14.580
as of that day which was back in 1999.
61
00:02:14.580 --> 00:02:16.790
And then we literary wrote out an eight point plan.
62
00:02:16.790 --> 00:02:17.623
How do we do it?
63
00:02:17.623 --> 00:02:19.820
Eight different stages and when we published that plan
64
00:02:19.820 --> 00:02:22.530
people said it looks great, but none of those stages
65
00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:24.580
have been realised and the chances of doing
66
00:02:24.580 --> 00:02:25.774
all eight is pretty impossible.
67
00:02:25.774 --> 00:02:27.490
(chilled music)
68
00:02:27.490 --> 00:02:29.450
But really the first couple of stages was bringing
69
00:02:29.450 --> 00:02:31.510
two technologies together that haven't worked,
70
00:02:31.510 --> 00:02:33.550
and that is the ability to manipulate atoms,
71
00:02:33.550 --> 00:02:35.570
which requires a certain kind of tool,
72
00:02:35.570 --> 00:02:37.430
with it the ability to encapsulate them,
73
00:02:37.430 --> 00:02:39.360
without them moving away from where you've put them.
74
00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:41.410
So that's another tool, and that was really
75
00:02:41.410 --> 00:02:42.750
the concept at the time,
76
00:02:42.750 --> 00:02:46.780
can we bring those two tools together, and make a device
77
00:02:46.780 --> 00:02:49.130
taking it through both tools and then bring it out again?
78
00:02:49.130 --> 00:02:52.790
I remember that point of signing off for the tool,
79
00:02:52.790 --> 00:02:54.870
knowing that if it didn't work this is probably
80
00:02:54.870 --> 00:02:56.200
the end of my career.
81
00:02:56.200 --> 00:02:58.350
We had a prediction of what we were expecting to see
82
00:02:58.350 --> 00:03:00.300
once the tool was operating and it actually turned out
83
00:03:00.300 --> 00:03:02.520
to be a factor of six better than we predicted,
84
00:03:02.520 --> 00:03:04.630
and so I remember when I saw the result
85
00:03:04.630 --> 00:03:07.520
for the first time thinking yes! (laughing)
86
00:03:07.520 --> 00:03:10.020
Nothing beats that really and I've had that many times
87
00:03:10.020 --> 00:03:11.840
in my life, that something, yes!
88
00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:13.970
It was just fabulous and running around
89
00:03:13.970 --> 00:03:15.690
and showing everybody the image of what
90
00:03:15.690 --> 00:03:18.360
it looked like and you know everyone going, "Oh Wow!"
91
00:03:18.360 --> 00:03:19.960
'Cause we weren't expecting it to be that good.
92
00:03:19.960 --> 00:03:21.880
(chilled music)
93
00:03:21.880 --> 00:03:24.750
One of the great things about the kind of techniques
94
00:03:24.750 --> 00:03:27.090
that we've developed is it's very open ended,
95
00:03:27.090 --> 00:03:29.770
so we are, at one level trying to build
96
00:03:29.770 --> 00:03:31.440
the hardware for a new type of computer
97
00:03:31.440 --> 00:03:33.600
and that is a very focused programme.
98
00:03:33.600 --> 00:03:35.600
But I'm conscious that we're developing technology
99
00:03:35.600 --> 00:03:37.300
that could be used for many other things,
100
00:03:37.300 --> 00:03:39.670
and certainly my goal is really just to see
101
00:03:39.670 --> 00:03:42.200
if we can understand the world at the level of atoms.
102
00:03:42.200 --> 00:03:44.790
So my hope is that, that fundamentally
103
00:03:44.790 --> 00:03:46.690
is the biggest benefit for what we do,
104
00:03:46.690 --> 00:03:48.780
because we will design new tools,
105
00:03:48.780 --> 00:03:50.733
and we'll have new models to understand the world
106
00:03:50.733 --> 00:03:52.880
at that level and that will help us to understand
107
00:03:52.880 --> 00:03:55.340
how things form, eventually, hopefully, it will help us
108
00:03:55.340 --> 00:03:57.250
to understand how the human body forms,
109
00:03:57.250 --> 00:03:58.100
and how the brain works.
110
00:03:58.100 --> 00:04:01.180
That's the long term goal that I'd love to see.
111
00:04:01.180 --> 00:04:03.260
I realise there's a huge possibility out there
112
00:04:03.260 --> 00:04:05.150
and I just really just want to push it
113
00:04:05.150 --> 00:04:06.872
as far as we can to see what it can do.
114
00:04:06.872 --> 00:04:09.539
(chilled music)
115
00:04:11.590 --> 00:04:13.890
Working with Selina it was absolutely fantastic,
116
00:04:13.890 --> 00:04:16.370
for me getting to work with a professional
117
00:04:16.370 --> 00:04:19.570
at the top of their game, because I'm a physicist
118
00:04:19.570 --> 00:04:21.550
I have understanding of importance of a light
119
00:04:21.550 --> 00:04:26.450
and the setting, so I was fascinated to see what she did.
120
00:04:26.450 --> 00:04:29.270
It's very relaxed, very calm, thoroughly enjoy the day.
121
00:04:29.270 --> 00:04:31.090
It was absolutely fantastic,
122
00:04:31.090 --> 00:04:35.083
and I've seen the portrait it's absolutely fabulous.
123
00:04:35.083 --> 00:04:36.900
(chilled music)
124
00:04:36.900 --> 00:04:41.323
Yes, well I was very excited, and slightly nervous.
125
00:04:42.550 --> 00:04:45.470
But when I heard it was Professor Michelle Simmons,
126
00:04:45.470 --> 00:04:48.160
I was all on board, I was super excited
127
00:04:48.160 --> 00:04:49.830
to meet this impressive woman,
128
00:04:49.830 --> 00:04:52.710
and because I'd been obsessively researching about her,
129
00:04:52.710 --> 00:04:54.800
I kind of became a bit of a fan girl,
130
00:04:54.800 --> 00:04:56.510
and so I was quite nervous.
131
00:04:56.510 --> 00:04:59.470
And it's very true you start looking at all the articles,
132
00:04:59.470 --> 00:05:03.630
and watching videos, and formulating ideas
133
00:05:03.630 --> 00:05:07.270
and options of how you can photograph them
134
00:05:07.270 --> 00:05:09.972
in ways that they haven't been photographed before.
135
00:05:09.972 --> 00:05:13.400
(chilled music)
136
00:05:13.400 --> 00:05:17.650
In my art practice the environment is just as important
137
00:05:17.650 --> 00:05:20.280
as the subject, and so it's about the relationship
138
00:05:20.280 --> 00:05:21.290
between the two.
139
00:05:21.290 --> 00:05:24.580
So I was quite keen on looking around the
140
00:05:24.580 --> 00:05:27.880
University of New South Wales campus.
141
00:05:27.880 --> 00:05:32.880
And ultimately that environment was the final location
142
00:05:33.130 --> 00:05:34.150
for the actual portrait,
143
00:05:34.150 --> 00:05:35.910
and that's what I love about those shoots,
144
00:05:35.910 --> 00:05:40.910
is that it's often the option that you hadn't planned for
145
00:05:41.900 --> 00:05:46.900
that has that special quality about it, that magic.
146
00:05:47.334 --> 00:05:50.001 line:15%
(chilled music)