Associate Professor Sally Shrapnel (1987)
From GP to quantum physicist—leaning into the learning curve
Some of Sally Shrapnel’s fondest memories of Brisbane Girls Grammar are the stuff of other people’s nightmares: bonus servings of physics and maths.
To her, the mysteries of a bigger universe were unfolding one formula at a time, and her teachers—recognising this hunger for knowledge—kept the work coming. The more challenging, the better.
Little wonder Sally’s life beyond school has been driven by the same intense curiosity about, well, everything. It also explains an extraordinary career arc that has seen her transition from GP to quantum physicist.
`I’m one of those people who thrives on learning, I’m happiest when I’m on the steep part of a learning curve,’ Sally says.
And she’s not overstating it. As a trainee doctor in her 20s, Sally juggled shifts at London hospitals and an AIDS hospice, while completing a Master of Science (in physics and engineering) at Imperial College London. She graduated top of her year and was offered a PhD place at Cambridge University, but chose to return to Australia to continue her medical career.
Here, she fell in love with general practice in rural Tasmania, but still found time to complete a computer programming course at the University of Tasmania.
For a while, motherhood and a medical career kept her occupied, but in her 40s, with her sons happily settled in school, Sally once again felt the pull of learning.
And, given she’s not one for half measures, she plunged into a PhD in quantum physics at the University of Queensland.
`I had no idea it would be something that could actually lead to a job. I was just doing it purely out of interest and curiosity while I was working as a GP.'
Today, Sally is Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, where her passion for understanding how things work—from computers to the human body, to the universe—have perfectly positioned her to work at the leading edge of quantum research in a city, and state, that is a global player.
`Queensland just punches way above its weight in terms of quantum physics,’ Sally says. `If you look at most of the really big, funded start-ups in quantum computing around the world—for example, PsiQuantum and Xanadu—most of them have someone from UQ as either founder or CEO.’
PsiQuantum, co-founded by UQ alumni Jeremy O’Brien and Terry Rudolph, is aiming to build the world’s first `useful’ quantum computer—one that can be used by researchers and industry without significant error—in Brisbane by 2027.
Sally credits her PhD supervisor, Emeritus Professor Gerard Milburn, with helping propel Queensland physicists onto the world stage by securing funding in 2011 to establish the pioneering research incubator EQUS—the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems—which links quantum researchers from universities around the country through a lead node at UQ.
Milburn had the foresight to see the vast possibilities that could flow from finding commercial applications for quantum research —essentially taking ideas and turning them into technologies.
`He just brought all the best people around the world, hired lots of people into UQ and created this physics department that had this incredible talent pool, and it has created an incredible legacy we’re only just beginning to capitalise on.’
Throughout this time, Sally served as Deputy Director at EQUS, not only furthering research in quantum physics but leaving an equally important legacy of social change by championing women in science.
Her drive to expand inclusivity, traces some of its origins back to a negative experience from her own formative years.
Although she doesn’t discuss it much, Sally’s career `second act’ has actually been a return to her first love. At school, physics and maths were her passion, and she excelled at both, acknowledging maths teacher Mr Gary Bromiley and physics teacher Dr Sally Stephens, who nurtured and extended her curiosity.
`I loved Sally Stephens. She was so inspired about the physics. She clearly loved it the way I did. She was really engaged in understanding the way the world worked, and I just really clicked with her.’’
After graduating from Girls Grammar, Sally pursued physics at university, but in seeking to understand how the world worked on a theoretical level, she made an uncomfortable discovery about how it worked on a practical level—at least in the 1980s.
A lecturer’s disparaging comments about female aptitude for maths and science, along with a very male-dominated and stand-offish cohort, prompted her to rethink her career ambitions and transfer to medicine.
Sally eventually found her way back to physics, and has fiercely-loved her medical career, but says the experience fuelled a determination to advance the culture of physics as much as the theory.
`It’s one of the things that really motivated me so much in my job as Deputy Director of EQUS, to make sure that we’re constantly addressing the cultural aspects of quantum physics because it’s been a very male-dominated field. In the eighties, less than 3% of physicists in Australia were women. I think it's now up around 23 per cent.
`We’ve had a lot more female hires into physics at UQ. We’ve worked very hard to create support programs for women to make sure they don’t feel isolated. And we educate the men to be inclusive and to recognise the value of diversity in their teams—also, don’t hold meetings in the pub at 5pm!’
This year marks another milestone for quantum physics at UQ, with EQUS winding up. But rather than being a sad event, it is being celebrated as `the end of the beginning’, marking a transition to more specialised quantum-research hubs.
For Sally, ending her 14-year tenure at EQUS, is a chance to focus more on her key research areas:
—the foundational (and mind-boggling) question of what quantum theory reveals about the nature of reality; and
—causal inference: a field that aims to transform machine learning by taking AI beyond just pattern recognition to a point it can unearth and predict complex relationships of cause and effect from huge data sets. Sally is Program Lead at the Queensland Digital Health Centre (QDHeC), which hopes to use quantum analysis insights guide delivery of healthcare.
Her advice to other Grammar Girls about to embark on a career in maths and science?
`Find people who recognize that your curiosity and desire to learn is the number one thing to support and nurture.’