PhD Candidate in Physics, 4th Year
Quantum Condensed Matter Physics
As a daughter of Chinese immigrants, Emily was always encouraged to pursue a career in a field with a stable income, like medicine or law. Thinking these were the only two options, her affinity for math and science drew her to the former when she was choosing her undergraduate program. She discovered her love of physics when taking her prerequisite first year courses, took a leap a faith and switched programs, and hasn’t looked back since.
Emily obtained her Bachelor of Science, Honours in Physics at the University of Ottawa. Having zero guidance on how to navigate the institutions of academia, and with the lack of representation of people that intersected with her many minority identities, Emily had no idea what to do with a physics degree or where she would fit into the field. That is, until her second year, when she attended her first Canadian Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CCUWiP). It was at this conference where she was exposed to the plethora of career options, and diverse physicists who were not only thriving in their careers, but also had fulfilling personal lives. This conference sparked her interest in equity, diversity, and inclusion in physics, and it was where she first learned about her future school of choice. At the graduate fair, Emily learned about the University of Toronto’s research in condensed matter theory – a field she didn’t know existed – which closely aligned with her own research interests. This, among many other reasons, drew her to choose U of T Physics for her graduate studies.
Emily works with Prof. Yong-Baek Kim as a condensed matter theorist, and her research focuses on quantum spin liquids. If Emily were applying for a grant, she would say that her research is going to facilitate the discovery of quantum spin liquid materials, giving rise to emergent laws of physics on your tabletop, with applications in topological quantum computation and quantum memory. However, Emily’s actual favourite part of her research is solving complex problems without exact solutions using numerical methods. The endorphin rush of her code finally working after many hours of debugging is what fuels her graduate studies and is precisely the kind of rush she intends to chase after her PhD.
Outside of physics, Emily does jiu jitsu and rock climbing, which she describes as her jock era. She also enjoys cooking, crocheting, and networking (with computers rather than people).