This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features the Nobel laureate Ferenc Krausz. He is director of the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and a professor at LMU Munich, both in Germany, and CEO and scientific director of the Center for Molecular Fingerprinting in Budapest, Hungary.

In a conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman Krausz talks about his research into using ultrashort-pulsed laser technology to develop a diagnostic tool for early disease detection. He also discusses his collaboration with Semmelweis University to establish the John von Neumann Institute for Data Science, and describes the Science4People initiative, a charity that he and his colleagues founded to provide education for children who have been displaced by the war in Ukraine.

On 13–14 May, The Economist is hosting Commercialising Quantum Global 2025 in London. The event is supported by the Institute of Physics – which brings you Physics World. Participants will join global leaders from business, science and policy for two days of real-world insights into quantum’s future. In London you will explore breakthroughs in quantum computing, communications and sensing, and discover how these technologies are shaping industries, economies and global regulation. Register now and use code QUANTUM20 to receive 20% off. This offer ends on 4 May.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features the materials scientist Paul Meredith, who is director of the Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials (CISM) at the UK’s Swansea University.

In a conversation with Physics World’s Matin Durrani, Meredith talks about the importance of semiconductors in a hi-tech economy and why it is crucial for the UK to have a homegrown semiconductor industry.

Founded in 2020, CISM moved into a new, state-of-the-art £50m building in 2023 and is now in its first full year of operation. Meredith explains how technological innovation and skills training at CSIM is supporting chipmakers in the M4 hi-tech corridor, which begins in Swansea in South Wales and stretches eastward to London.

This podcast features Alonso Gutierrez, who is chief of medical physics at the Miami Cancer Institute in the US. In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, Gutierrez talks about his experience using Elekta’s Leksell Gamma Knife for radiosurgery in a busy radiotherapy department.

This podcast is sponsored by Elekta.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Panicos Kyriacou, who is chief scientist at the UK-based start-up Crainio. The company has developed a non-invasive way of using light to measure the pressure inside the skull. Knowing this intracranial pressure is crucial when diagnosing traumatic brain injury, which a leading cause of death and disability. Today, the only way to assess intracranial pressure is to insert a sensor into the patient’s brain, so Crainio’s non-invasive technique could revolutionize how brain injuries are diagnosed and treated.

Kyriacou tells Physics World’s Tami Freeman why it is important to assess a patient’s intracranial pressure as soon as possible after a head injury. He explains how Crainio’s optical sensor measures blood flow in the brain and then uses machine learning to deduce the intracranial pressure.

Kyriacou is also professor of engineering at City St George’s University of London, where the initial research for the sensor was done. He recalls how Crainio was spun out of the university and how it is currently in a second round of clinical trials.

As well as being non-invasive, Crainio’s technology could reduce the cost of determining intracranial pressure and make it possible to make measurements in the field, shortly after injuries occur.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features William Phillips, who shared the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on cooling and trapping atoms using laser light.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Phillips talks about his long-time fascination with quantum physics – which began with an undergraduate project on electron spin resonance. Phillips chats about quirky quantum phenomena such as entanglement and superposition and explains how they are exploited in atomic clocks and quantum computing. He also looks to the future of quantum technologies and stresses the importance of curiosity-led research.

Phillips has spent much of his career at US’s National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland and he also a professor of physics at the University of Maryland.

This podcast is supported by Atlas Technologies, specialists in custom aluminium and titanium vacuum chambers as well as bonded bimetal flanges and fittings used everywhere from physics labs to semiconductor fabs.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Global Physics Summit (GPS) in Anaheim California, where I rubbed shoulders with 15,0000 fellow physicists. The best part of being there was chatting with lots of different people, and in this podcast I share two of those conversations.

First up is Chetan Nayak, who is a senior researcher at Microsoft’s Station Q quantum computing research centre here in California. In February, Nayak and colleagues claimed a breakthrough in the development of topological quantum bits (qubits) based on Majorana zero modes. In principle, such qubits could enable the development of practical quantum computers, but not all physicists were convinced, and the announcement remains controversial – despite further results presented by Nayak in a packed session at the GPS.

I caught up with Nayak after his talk and asked him about the challenges of achieving Microsoft’s goal of a superconductor-based topological qubit. That conversation is the first segment of today’s podcast.

Up next, I chat with Atharva Lele about the physics of manu jumping, which is a competitive aquatic sport that originates from the Māori and Pasifika peoples of New Zealand. Jumpers are judged by the height of their splash when they enter the water, and the best competitors use a very distinctive technique.

Lele is an undergraduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, and is part of team that analysed manu techniques in a series of clever experiments that included plunging robots. He explains how to make a winning manu jump while avoiding the pain of a belly flop.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

When physicists got their first insights into the quantum world more than a century ago, they found it puzzling to say the least. But gradually, and through clever theoretical and experimental work, a consistent quantum theory emerged.

Two physicists that who played crucial roles in this evolution were Albert Einstein and John Bell. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast the theoretical crypto-physicist Artur Ekert explains how a quantum paradox identified by Einstein and colleagues in 1935 inspired a profound theoretical breakthrough by Bell three decades later.

Ekert, who splits his time between the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore, describes how he used Bell’s theorem to create a pioneering quantum cryptography protocol and he also chats about current research in quantum physics and beyond.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Ileana Silvestre Patallo, a medical physicist at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, and Ruth McLauchlan, consultant radiotherapy physicist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, Patallo and McLauchlan explain how ionizing radiation such as X-rays and proton beams interact with our bodies and how radiation is being used to treat diseases including cancer.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, we explore how computational physics is being used to develop new quantum materials; and we look at how ultrasound can help detect breast cancer.

Our first guest is Bhaskaran Muralidharan, who leads the Computational Nanoelectronics & Quantum Transport Group at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. In a conversation with Physics World’s Hamish Johnston, he explains how computational physics is being used to develop new materials and devices for quantum science and technology. He also shares his personal perspective on quantum physics in this International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

Our second guest is Daniel Sarno of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, who is an expert in the medical uses of ultrasound. In a conversation with Physics World’s Tami Freeman, Sarno explains why conventional mammography can struggle to detect cancer in patients with higher density breast tissue. This is a particular problem because women with such tissue are at higher risk of developing the disease. To address this problem, Sarno and colleagues have developed a ultrasound technique for measuring tissue density and are commercializing it via a company called sona.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, online editor Margaret Harris chats about her recent trip to CERN. There, she caught up with physicists working on some of the lab’s most exciting experiments and heard from CERN’s current and future leaders.

Founded in Geneva in 1954, today CERN is most famous for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is currently in its winter shutdown. Harris describes her descent 100 m below ground level to visit the huge ATLAS detector and explains why some of its components will soon be updated as part of the LHC’s upcoming high luminosity upgrade.

She explains why new “crab cavities” will boost the number of particle collisions at the LHC. Among other things, this will allow physicists to better study how Higgs bosons interact with each other, which could provide important insights into the early universe.

Harris describes her visit to CERN’s Antimatter Factory, which hosts several experiments that are benefitting from a 2021 upgrade to the lab’s source of antiprotons. These experiments measure properties of antimatter – such as its response to gravity – to see if its behaviour differs from that of normal matter.

Harris also heard about the future of the lab from CERN’s director general Fabiola Gianotti and her successor Mark Thomson, who will take over next year.