Meet our new academic staff from the Department of Mathematics

What first attracted you to the field of Mathematics?

It's difficult to precisely pinpoint. From an early age I had a fascination with numbers and patterns and enjoyed mathematics throughout school for its logical reasoning and usefulness throughout science.

 I remember enjoying a text-based maths-related computer game at primary school (which I was surprised to see has a Wikipedia page: L - A Mathemagical Adventure), and later being fascinated by zooming in on the Mandelbrot set where infinite structure is hidden in a simple equation.

What subsequently pushed me into the field I'm in came in part from reading popular science books, especially the Emperor's New Mind, and learning about Bell's Theorem, one of the most striking examples where quantum mechanics destroys intuition.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about mathematicians?

I once met someone who, when told I was a mathematician, asked me to multiply two three digit numbers in my head – quite a misconception!

More generally though, there is a common image of a mathematician as someone who works alone, going into a mathematical hibernation to prove a deep theorem. I guess there are some who work like that, but for the majority it is a much more social activity, where progress is made by brainstorming with others, and ideas are best communicated through talks and discussions.

People also often think of mathematicians as the opposite of creative, but it is a very creative discipline. It's just that it's harder to convey that creativity to non-specialists.

What's the biggest mystery in science you'd love to solve or see solved?

What is the right way to think about reality? Quantum mechanics presents us with a huge mystery in this respect. It tells us that the world evolves under a deterministic evolution governed by Schrödinger's equation, in which everything should be in a giant superposition (with the possibility of cats being simultaneously dead and alive).

But this is in stark contrast with the way I experience the world. Why are these two things so different, and how will science resolve this?

What research are you working on now and how does it fit into the wider research landscape?

My main focus of work at the moment is on a form of cryptography that is provably secure without the need to trust the devices used to implement it. This task, which may initially sound impossible, is a key application of entanglement, and exploits the possibility of quantum correlations that defy classical explanation.

Although experimentally difficult to implement at present, in the long term this could become an important technology that would provide security guarantees for communication, and I'm working on new protocols and theoretical techniques to make this more practical.

The UK Government has put out a set of ambitious Quantum Strategy Missions, one of which is to deploy the world’s most advanced quantum network at scale, pioneering the future quantum internet. Through the Integrated Quantum Networks Hub, a multi-million pound national project, of which I and now King's is a member, we are taking the first steps towards this, implementing quantum networks of various scales, from regional networks over fibre to international connections via satellite.

Is your work interdisciplinary, if so how?

Quantum Information is about utilising the properties of quantum systems for information processing tasks. As a theorist working on this, we typically develop and use mathematical techniques to probe these questions, requiring an understanding of the underlying physics, and also bringing in tools and ideas from computer science.

Parts of my work have involved carrying across ideas from fundamental physics into information theory, developing them, and then exploiting the developed consequences to enhance understanding of physics.

For instance, thinking about security proofs for quantum cryptography led us to formulate new uncertainty relations, which can be seen as statements about the kind of correlations quantum theory allows.

What do you do in your spare time?

My two young children occupy most of my spare time and I enjoy playing tennis when I get the chance.