Katherine Lawrence, PhD

Katherine Lawrence is a machine learning bioinformatician at Oxford Nanopore Technologies

During her doctoral research at MIT, Lawrence pursued small-scale experiments in atomic, molecular and optical physics for hands-on involvement in probing essential questions of quantum mechanics.

A Yale undergraduate in physics, Lawrence hopes to use the unique properties of quantum systems to create novel states of matter and light. Her research explores questions of physics that can lead to a deeper understanding of quantum systems and their control. That in turn will enable advances in information processing (quantum computing and cryptography); telecommunications (photonics and all-optical devices); and condensed matter physics (simulation of superconductors).

Lawrence spent two years at the Large Hadron Collider located in the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva. There, an immense particle accelerator smashed protons together trying to grab a piece of the primordial fire, forces, and sub-atomic particles that may have existed a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Lawrence studied the production and decay of a type of particle called the tau lepton, critical to many questions in particle physics. Recently, CERN scientists announced that after the longest, most expensive search in the history of science, they had discovered a new particle, the Higgs boson, thought key to why objects in our universe have mass.