Louise Shanahan is a PhD in Physics student at the University of Cambridge and a Tokyo 2020 Olympian. She grew up in Cork, Ireland, and spent time studying in University College Cork; University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Cambridge. While studying in Berkeley, Louise saw a sign saying, "Remember when Cancer wasn't treatable over the counter?". This sparked her interest in applied physics and how we can use physics to improve our understanding of other topics, particularly biology and medicine.

Suppose a physicist is someone who tries to understand how the universe behaves, and a biologist is someone who studies living things. What do we call someone who puts diamonds inside cells and uses quantum physics to measure cellular temperature? Interdisciplinary research is becoming increasingly popular as researchers from different backgrounds work together to tackle increasingly complex questions. However, this summer, our speaker faced a new interdisciplinary question - 'How does one qualify for the Olympic Games in the middle of a PhD?'