The Australian Institute of Physics is thrilled to welcome Professor Donna Strickland to Australia in July 2025 for the Quantum Year National Tour. Our thanks to Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) for supporting Donna’s tour as National Partner.
Donna’s groundbreaking work on Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA), pioneered during her PhD with Gérard Mourou, revolutionised laser technology and led to life-changing applications like LASIK eye surgery and ultra-precise smartphone glass cutting. Now a professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, Professor Strickland will be touring four Australian cities to share insights into her pioneering research, the future of laser physics, and her incredible journey to the Nobel Prize.
About the Tour
With the invention of lasers, the intensity of a light wave was increased by orders of magnitude over what had been achieved with a light bulb or sunlight. This much higher intensity led to new phenomena being observed, such as violet light coming out when red light went into the material. After Professor Gérard Mourou and I developed chirped pulse amplification, also known as CPA, the intensity again increased by more than a factor of 1,000 and it once again made new types of interactions possible between light and matter. We developed a laser that could deliver short pulses of light that knocked the electrons off their atoms. This new understanding of laser-matter interactions led to the development of new machining techniques that are used in laser eye surgery or micromachining of glass used in cell phones.
Each event will be unique, featuring a variety of lectures and a fireside chat format, offering personal insights and some opportunities for audience questions. Aimed at the general public, the talk provides a unique chance to explore the story behind this history-making science. The National Quantum Tour is free.
Tour Dates
MELBOURNE
Date: Monday, 7 July
Time: 6pm – 7.30pm
Venue: Capitol Theatre
Reserve your place
CANBERRA
Date: Thursday, 10 July
Time: 5.30pm – 7pm AEST
Venue: Shine Dome Canberra and livestreamed
Reserve your place
BRISBANE
Date: Monday, 14 July
Time: 6pm – 7.30pm
Venue: The Edge, State Library of Queensland and livestreamed
Reserve your place
SYDNEY
Date: Tuesday, 15 July
Time: 6.30pm – 7.45pm
Venue: Leighton Hall, John Niland Scientia Building, UNSW Sydney’s Kensington Campus
Reserve your place (Places are filling out quickly.)
About Professor Donna Strickland
Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 for developing chirped pulse amplification with Professor Gérard Mourou, her PhD supervisor at the time. They published this Nobel-winning research in 1985 when Prof Strickland was a PhD student at the University of Rochester.
She earned a B.Eng. from McMaster University and a PhD in optics from the University of Rochester. Prof Strickland was a research associate at the National Research Council Canada, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a member of technical staff at Princeton University. In 1997, she joined the University of Waterloo, where her ultrafast laser group develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations. She was named a 2021 Hagler Fellow of Texas A&M University and sits on the Growth Technology Advisory Board of Applied Materials.
Organising Partners
Thanks to the AIP’s organising partners in each city for their support of the Quantum Year National Tour.
