Veronica Combs: Hello, I’m Veronica Combs, and this is the Quantum Spin by HKA. For season four, we decided to do something a little different. In March, we attended the APS Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California. We took advantage of this amazing event to talk to the leaders in academia, industry, as well as the creative folks who helped make the event such a compelling experience.

I hope you enjoy these conversations that really reflect what’s happening in the industry right now. Today I am talking with Kirsty McGhee, who is a scientific technical writer for Qruise. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Kirsty McGhee: Thank you for having me.

Veronica Combs: How did you arrive here in the quantum industry?

Kirsty McGhee: My PhD was in light matter coupling and semiconductor microcavities, and I realized very early on there that the thing that I was most interested in was the writing. So while my colleagues, when they were writing papers, they were just desperate to get back into the lab.

I really enjoyed the paper writing and even like my thesis writing, and I would half joke, half not joke that if I could be in the research group and only write everyone’s papers, I would be really happy with that. I was lucky to get some good experience. I worked for Physics World as a student contributor writing about, polaritons and like the Blake’s polaritons papers that came out. And then I worked for Ossila as a content writer. So they make materials and research tools for researchers in solution processing semiconductor research like photovoltaics and OLEDs and things like this. And then I also did a week’s work experience at Springer Nature, in the Nature Reviews Physics. So that was also really cool to see what it’s like to be a scientific editor of proper academic journal and basically, when I saw this job from Qruise come up, it looked like my dream job. Not to be too like, perfect: intense writing combined with thought.

Yeah. Yeah. And I didn’t have any quantum computing experience. I hadn’t done anything since quantum mechanics in undergrad. My writing experience was enough. They thought, we know the quantum computing, we can teach her that; she has the writing experience and then together it can, it works out.

Veronica Combs: It one of the things we talk about a lot here on the podcast is how to take, like you said, complex topics or physics, chemistry, and explain them to a broader audience so that you’re accurately representing the work, but also not just speaking in jargon. So how do you work with the scientists and engineers at Qruise to explain these complex topics?

Kirsty McGhee: My team are very helpful with this. Obviously, like I say, I don’t have this quantum computing background, so it’s not just that I need to explain it to the readers. It also needs to be explained to me as well. I’ve been at Qruise for just over a year now, but I’m still learning so much like every week, every day.

We’re a remote company, so we meet up in person every six weeks or two months for two days of in-person meetings and meals and things like this. It can be a bit harder trying to, I can’t just go to someone in the office and be like, Hey, I have a question. So usually it takes the form of a Zoom interview where I just ask as many questions as possible and do my best to make sure I fully understand, not fully because you know there’s only so much time in the day. Yeah. But, yeah, if I don’t understand it ,on like a basic level, then anyone reading what I’m writing isn’t going to understand it. So I take as many notes from interviewing my colleagues, and then it goes back and forward a few times with different drafts. And together we work it all out.

Veronica Combs: Whenever we’re working with a new client, I do have to do research and to, like you said, to be able to ask questions and to at least get a very high level understanding of, superconducting or topological or whatever the topic might be. So it’s an ongoing learning process, I think for sure. Yeah. And when you’re revising or when you’ve maybe given a presentation or written a blog post, how do you gauge your audience or how do you think about how a message landed?

Kirsty McGhee: It’s hard as a writer. A lot of the stuff I’m doing, it’s for the careers website or with the social media posts. I get the reactions, the reposts the impressions, but it’s hard to know who the people are that are liking it, why they’re liking it. If it’s just because they know Qruise and they like a post or whether they’ve actually read it and understood it.

I get obviously feedback from my colleagues, but they’re experts. So, yeah I don’t always know if it’s being translated, okay.  So in the end, I guess I just have to trust that I know what I’m doing.

I read a lot. Both fiction, non-fiction science, non-science. I love reading, so I just try and do it as much as possible and take inspiration and think what’s good and what’s not good.

Veronica Combs: And the people that use Qruise’s technology are pretty highly informed themselves. I think national labs and researchers and universities, those are the people that you’re writing for, right? Yeah.

Kirsty McGhee: And companies and yeah, basically people in the quantum ecosystem. We’re also doing some MRI stuff and quantum sensing.

Veronica Combs: So you’re not talking to newcomers?

Kirsty McGhee: Not so much. Maybe for new master’s students or PhD students? So I write the software documentation, things like our experiment catalog and we have a kind of brief run through for each experiment of what it is and what it does and how the measurement actually works just on a physics level.

Veronica Combs: And is there any topic or article or post that you’ve written over the last few months that, that stuck out to you as a particular challenge? One thing that was harder than another?

Kirsty McGhee: Actually, yeah, the experiment catalog. So we have over 40 characterization experiments for qubits, and I’ve never done any characterization experiments in qubits. And then some of the people who’d written the experiments are no longer at the company. They’ve moved on. So it was speaking to some of the people who are still here and reading the code as someone who’s only just beginning to learn Python as well and reading papers and just trying to piece together a story, figure out how the experiment works like 40 times.  So that was, yeah, I guess a challenge.

Veronica Combs: Give us an example of one of the experiments,

Kirsty McGhee: yeah. So it’s the characterization experiments: pulsed qubit, spectroscopy, for measuring the qubit frequency and the gates, like a pulse and readout discriminator. The characterization experiments so the researchers can see what they, what their qubit is actually doing.

Veronica Combs: Oh, okay. Okay. To better understand your qubits.

Have you thought about videos or, I know you said you do some social media posts. Is that mostly for LinkedIn?

Kirsty McGhee: Yeah, so yeah, I’m in charge of the, we have LinkedIn, X and Blue Sky. We have LinkedIn as the biggest one. At least for the people that we’re interested in and they’re interested right in us.

We talked about doing some videos, but right now the software is just changing so quickly. Videos are so much work that if we spend, days, weeks, making a video, chances are the software is, it’s already outdated by the time it’s finished. So we have a kind of overview video and we’re trying to make more overview videos of the software in general. We have some old videos that are just like completely obsolete now. So yeah, it’s mainly on the writing, but the videos is hopefully in the future.

Veronica Combs: Yeah. Yeah. For your audience, those specific descriptions of the experiments, that’s what they need. They don’t really need an overview video. They need to know what tests they need to run on their qubits.

Kirsty McGhee: Videos would work for explaining the experiments, but I don’t know. And people learn in different ways, so for me, videos are just not really that helpful. I would much rather have a page of written text, but Right. Yeah. It’s trying to cater to everyone,

Veronica Combs: Right, it’s a challenge. What advice would you have for a person who wanted to get into the industry who maybe doesn’t have a background in quantum computing?

Kirsty McGhee: I would answer from like a writing, science, communication perspective rather than as someone who wants to get into research. But I’d say just getting as much experience as you can. Like I said earlier, I had the opportunities with Physics World and Springer Nature. So I think in the end, that was what stood out on my CV on my resume. I think if you’re a researcher, obviously you have papers but you have to prove yourself on your CV. You’re saying, oh, I’m really good at this. I have these skills, dah, dah, dah. I have experience in this kind of lab or analysis or whatever. With writing you have a portfolio. You can just show, look, I can do this. This is, this is my stuff.  So if you can show that and say, I published this thing in this respected magazine journal, whatever, then that kind of speaks for itself in a way. I would also say speaking to people who are in the field making connections. A lot of the things that I did, I found through friends or through colleagues that knew that I was interested in this kind of thing and told me that these opportunities were available or that they, they put me in touch with someone.

You never know who’s going to have something that’s useful for you.

Veronica Combs: Right. It’s so true. I don’t know if this is the same level of problem in, in Europe as it’s here in the States, but I know lots of folks are, skeptical of research or skeptical of vaccines, or I’m doing my own research, quote unquote.

It’s hard. I try to always think of the audience like, who am I writing for? What are they interested in? What are their priorities? What will appeal to them? But it is pretty hard to appeal to people who have just this sort of sturdy skepticism of science. Do you find that a problem as much in your work?

I guess not with your customers, but I’m just curious as a writer what you think about that challenge we face in communicating some of this complex stuff to people who just, I don’t know, maybe have already made up their mind regardless of the evidence?

Kirsty McGhee: The advantage of writing the things that I do for the audience that I do is that, the people are invested in quantum, they’re interested, they believe it. So it’s yeah, I don’t, it’s easier or a little bit, there’s a little bit of skepticism on like small things, but in general it’s something that people, do believe will work and is worth investing in researching. But yeah, there’s so much false information on lots of things, and yet I think not just in the US it’s everywhere.

Veronica Combs: I think you’re right. Is it worth investing my time and understanding this? I guess that’s the dismissal, isn’t it? Like I don’t believe it, so I’m not going to try to understand

Kirsty McGhee: Yeah, I guess making it more understandable, a lot of people who have these views, they don’t understand it. It’s not necessarily because they’re choosing to be difficult. No one’s maybe taken the time to explain to them in a way that they understand and people aren’t going to do that if it’s difficult. So we need to remove those barriers,

Veronica Combs: Yeah. And I think use language that’s not meant to make people feel stupid, I think that’s a big part of it. Try to avoid jargon. All the rules. Yeah. But I think definitely, that’s a big part.

Kirsty McGhee: Yeah. Physicists are, yeah, I think pretty bad for using jargon and acronyms which doesn’t really help it become more accessible,

Veronica Combs: I always check up people’s LinkedIn profile before our conversations, and so you’re learning quantum, Python and German all at the same time, is that right?

Kirsty McGhee: I’m trying my best. Yeah. I live in Germany. I have for two and a half years, so yeah, trying to learn German and yeah, the Python is part of the work. For one of our software products, it’s Python notebooks, for simulating modeling mm-hmm. Quantum systems and my job is to write tutorials of how to, for example, model a transmon qubit. And in order to write the tutorial, I also need to understand how to use the code. So I’m not writing Python, but I’m learning to be able to read it.

Veronica Combs: Yeah, it’s become a very common, job requirement for lots of folks. I think in science, Python is so very commonly used, right?

Kirsty McGhee: I think so, definitely in the direct community around me, and it seems to be the main one the language of choice. Yeah. But it’s cool to have so much opportunity to be constantly learning these new things and be surrounded by experts and people who are happy to help and want to help.

Veronica Combs: You must be building all kinds of new neural pathways, right? Isn’t that what you do once you’re learning something.

Kirsty McGhee: new? Yeah, it’s. Overwhelming, but in a very nice, exciting way.

Veronica Combs: So have you had any time to, to go to any talks during the summit or are you mostly, in the booth telling people about Qruise.

Kirsty McGhee: It’s very really nice getting to meet so many people and find out what everyone else is doing and get to know the community just a bit better. And

Veronica Combs: yeah, it’s amazing just the energy and the variety of people and from all over the world and all different points in their careers. It’s really been a dynamic crowd I feel like.

Kirsty McGhee: Yeah, it’s crazy. This is my first time at APS and all the conferences I went to before were much smaller. It’s really interesting to just see, so many people and everyone is just so interested. They have so many questions and it’s nice to feel part of something that’s so dynamic and exciting.

Veronica Combs: The sense of exploration and curiosity. Those are the best, best folks to hear. Yeah, definitely. So there’s been so much talk lately about is this chip real? And when are we going to see actual use cases that businesses care about? But I’ve been asking everyone this week, if you jump ahead to a fault tolerant quantum computer, is there a use case or a global problem or something that you would like to take on yeah. Where to start? I know there’s no shortage of global problems to solve, that’s for sure.

Kirsty McGhee: Yeah, it feels especially. Right now, but I’m sure everyone at every point in time has felt, oh, especially right now, we, we have all these problems. My PhD felt very far from applied and it felt so far from anything that would actually have any direct benefits for society. It does feel like in quantum computing we are actually doing things that are useful or will be useful at least hopefully soon. Right, I would want to focus on things that,

and have these direct benefits for society. Things like trying to reduce inequality and by optimizing resource distribution and trying to get a better understanding of complex things like economic systems or biological processes so that we can make healthcare more accessible and more efficient for everyone.

As well as, advancing renewable energies things like solar cells and energy storage issues to try and make a better, more sustainable future for everyone, right?

Veronica Combs: Yes, for all of us. I think that is what drives a lot of folks in the industry, right? That I hope for the future, and I hope for, for better understanding and more equality. Thanks so much for taking time to talk with us. It’s so interesting to hear about Qruise and we’ll definitely be staying in touch and looking for your LinkedIn posts. Yeah, thank you. Thanks.

Veronica: Thanks for joining us for another episode of the quantum spin by HKA. You can find all episodes on our website, hkamarcom.com. Of course you can find us in all your favorite podcast platforms as well. Follow us on LinkedIn under HKA Marketing Communications if you have an idea for a guest, or if you’d like to be on the podcast yourself, you can reach me on LinkedIn, Veronica Combs, or you can go to our website and share your suggestion via the contact us page. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.