I’m living my second life as a research scientist in quantum physics, 19 years after the first ended. I work as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Theoretical Physics at the University of Bristol, with Professor Sandu Popescu. I started my first life with an undergraduate degree and Part III in Maths at Queens’ College, Cambridge. I then did a PhD in Physics, also at Bristol with Sandu Popescu, and concluded with a year at the University of Geneva with Prof Nicolas Gisin.
In between I worked for 18 years as a Quantitative Analyst on the trading floors of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and then the hedge fund Rokos Capital Management. My role was to deliver all the analytics needed for trading decisions. In practice most of this time was spent coding pricing models, risk and scenario reports for Credit Derivative Trading Desks. My highlight was being the first Credit Quant at Rokos and building their Credit Derivative Analytics from scratch. My most illuminating time was working on CDO’s in the financial crisis of 2008. In a crisis many things change very quickly, including some which seemed to be fixed in normal times.
Perhaps my research career really began with the popular science books my father brought home from the library when I was a child. My fascination about nature and the way it works stayed with me ever since. I love to read about science, particularly about concepts which are novel or surprising. As a researcher, fundamental quantum mechanics gives me the opportunity to explore new ideas, and to surprise people with my own discoveries.