41. Interview with physicist, author and science communicator, Associate Professor Suzie Sheehy

Happy New Year and welcome to another season of Let’s Talk SciComm! We’re excited to be back for another year of podcasting about our very favourite topic – science communication. And we’re launching Season Six with a bang, talking with Associate Professor Suzie Sheehy. Suzie is an accelerator physicist who specialises in novel particle accelerators and beam dynamics, with a current focus on medical applications. Her research at The University of Melbourne investigates novel particle therapy accelerators and beam delivery systems, compact linear electron accelerators (X-band) and improving accelerator reliability in Low and Middle-Income countries (STELLA project) to address global health challenges. She also retains an active research role at the University of Oxford, where she is now Visiting Lecturer, focusing on intense hadron beams. She has held prestigious research fellowships from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 (Brunel Fellowship 2010-2013) and the Royal Society (University Research Fellowship, 2017-2022). Suzie is also an award-winning public speaker and science communicator, dedicated to sharing science beyond the academic community. Her 2018 TED talk on ‘The Case for Curiosity Driven Research’ has been viewed around 2 million times, and her first popular science book ‘The Matter of Everything: Twelve Experiments that Changed Our World’, is published worldwide with 11 translations and selected as Times and Sunday Times Best Books of 2022 and Waterstones Best Books of 2022. You can follow Suzie and learn more about her work here: https://www.suziesheehy.com/ (you can order Suzie’s book under the ‘book’ tab) https://twitter.com/suziesheehy https://www.instagram.com/drsuziesheehy/ https://au.linkedin.com/in/drsuziesheehy https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/16/dr-suzie-sheehy-the-eureka-moment-may-come-once-in-your-career-or-never https://www.ted.com/talks/suzie_sheehy_the_case_for_curiosity_driven_research Transcript: https://go.unimelb.edu.au/ix6s