Women of Impact: Interview with Shufang Su
Shufang Su, professor and head of the physics department, discusses particle physics and how her field of study is represented in a book series recently adapted by Netflix.
In the "Conversations with Women of Impact" interview series, Women of Impact award winners provide perspectives on the future of their fields, share what inspires them, and discuss what they've been up to over the last year.
Please tell us about your work.
My primary research interests are in theoretical particle physics, focusing on important connections between theory and experiments as well as links between particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology.
What’s new in your world since the 2023 Women of Impact awards celebration last year?
After two years of community study to identity a vision for the future of particle physics, the report of the 2023 Particle Physics Project Priority Panel (P5) was released in December 2023. The report recommended programs represent the most promising avenues of investigation for the next 10 to 20 years in particle physics.
What is something you want people to know about inclusion?
Physics is really for everyone!
What are your expectations for your field and the ways in which it might grow or evolve over the next 20 years?
We are at the turning point of particle physics. With major investment in future colliders and Astrophysical and cosmological experiments, it will open a new world that has never been explored before.
What advice would you give to a younger version of yourself?
Enjoy what you love to do and be good at it.
If your field has been featured in books, movies or TV shows, what did you enjoy about the representation? What didn’t you love?
I recently started watching the Sci-fi TV Series “Three Body”, which was based on a book that I read a few years back. It is about how humans dealing with invasion of an alien civilization that is much more advanced than the Earth. In the story, all particle experiments on Earth went wrong, with results cannot be explained by the laws of Physics. I enjoy the integration of particle physics and cosmology into the story line. And of course, I didn’t like the part that many particle physicists committed suicide in the first 30 min of the first episode. I still recommend it.