Women2Watch 2019 awards

Women2Watch awards 2019

Emily with her parents Professor Tom Barnes and Mrs Julia Barnes after her Cambridge graduation last year with a PhD in Theoretical Physics.

The W2W Awards recognise and celebrate the achievements of Old Girls under the age of 36. The 2019 winners, Sheryl Tan (2006) and Emily Adlam (2008), were honoured at a School assembly in June.

Sheryl Tan

A neuroscientist, Sheryl is a research associate at the Spinal Cord Injury Research Facility at the University of Auckland. She attended Dio for her last three years of school and is grateful to her parents for supporting her education. Science, in particular biology, was her passion at school. Sheryl was an active member of the Academic Council for science and in her final year represented New Zealand at the Bio Futures Forum in Brisbane with financial assistance from the Heritage Foundation. Sheryl credits her biology teacher, Dr Jacquie Bay, for encouraging her to choose a career in science. Sheryl says she was painfully shy, but despite tears on her first day, she persevered. “I left Dio a little more confident, with a passion for all things science and resolute in having a career that would benefit others,” she says.

Sheryl went on to earn a Bachelor of Science (1st Class Honours) Biomedical Science from the University of Auckland. In 2015 she received a PhD in Biomedical Science and her thesis was on the Dean’s Honours List. She was offered two doctoral scholarships and accepted the Brian de Luen Doctoral Scholarship from the Auckland Medical Research Foundation. Sheryl’s doctoral thesis ‘Towards understanding the structure and plasticity of the human olfactory bulb in the normal and Parkinson’s disease brain’ was ranked among the top 10 percent of doctoral theses for 2015.

Dr Sheryl Tan with her partner Andy Plunket

As an honours and doctoral student, Sheryl was attached to the University’s Brain Research Institute – one of very few centres in the world where there is a brain bank. People bequeath their brains to the Institute for research purposes, creating a unique resource.

Sheryl says the wonders and mystery of the human brain never fail to amaze her.

“That all the parts of the nervous system operate so intricately and harmoniously allowing us to think, move, touch, see and emote – essentially to be – to see this disruption of harmony manifest in awful neurological conditions, robbing one’s ability to be is something I find quite unsettling and it’s what got me into neuroscience in the first place.”

After completing her doctorate, Sheryl undertook postdoctoral research as a fellow at the Max Planck Research Unit for Neurogenetics in Frankfurt, Germany. Since 2017, she has been a research associate at the Spinal Cord Injury Research Facility at the University of Auckland. Her main project is investigating the potential of the drug Tonabersat to modulate spinal cord injury. She is currently researching whether things can be done in the first few hours following an accident to get better outcomes for the patient, aiming to keep people out of wheelchairs following a spinal injury. New Zealand has one of the world’s highest rates of spinal cord injury, making the research very significant. Sheryl is also responsible for running laboratory operations for the research group and maintaining health and safety standards in conjunction with others. She also assists postdoctoral research fellows and students.

“I hope to be part of the work that will ultimately lead to therapies or even cure diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injuries and motor neurone disease, to name a few,” she says. “Knowing these projects are part of something much bigger, and the desire to learn something new every day, is what gets me out of bed.”

Sheryl also works part time as Deputy Research Development Officer for the Auckland Medical Research Foundation. She processes project grants, invites academics to take part in the review process and helps organise public lectures. Sheryl has co-published and lectured in her field, including at the 2018 Australasian Winter Brain Conference in Queenstown.

Outside of work, Sheryl is an under-53kg weightlifter. She admits to not liking sport until about three years ago when she realised she was perfectly built for weightlifting! She placed third in the National Weightlifting Championships in 2017 and 2018.

Sheryl acknowledges having experienced and witnessed burn-out, anxiety and despair. “I had to take time away from science in order to fall in love with it again,” she says. “But showing up every day with enthusiasm, determination and the pursuit of excellence in mind really counts for something.”

She encouraged those at the assembly to be grateful for the opportunities presented to them. “Pursue them relentlessly with heart, passion and integrity, even in the face of adversity. Don’t be afraid to wear your heart on your sleeve and, above all, don’t forget to smile.”

Emily Adlam

Emily Adlam lives in London where she is a quantitative researcher at G Research. She was unable to attend the assembly, but her grandmother, Old Girl Christine Wilton (Holdgate), accepted the award on her behalf.

Emily started Dio in Year 3 and is arguably one of the most exceptional students the School has seen. She was Dux of the Junior School, and Deputy Head Prefect (Academic) in her final year at Dio. Emily contributed significantly to the arts throughout her school years, playing the violin in various orchestras, composing, and excelling at creative writing (her poetry was published nationally). She represented New Zealand with the Future Problem Solving Team in the international finals three years running, and was held in exceptional regard by staff and students. Emily’s peer year chose her to be the after-dinner speaker at their Leaver’s Dinner. At her final prizegiving in 2008, Emily was Dux of the Senior School, and received the Eliza Edwards Memorial Award and an NCEA Scholar Award.

She spoke by video link to the assembly about how much Dio meant to her and how special this honour was. Soon after leaving Dio, Emily won a Styring Scholarship to Oxford University and moved to England in 2009 to do a four-year master’s degree in physics and philosophy. Her favourite part of the degree was the philosophy of physics, and Oxford has one of the world’s best philosophy of physics departments where she learnt directly from some of the greatest philosophers in the field.

“Philosophy of physics is basically about trying to understand the conceptual underpinnings of our best physical theories and make sense of the picture of the world they convey to us,” Emily explained.

She is particularly interested in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. “Although quantum mechanics is a very successful empirical theory, many things about it don’t seem to make sense and currently there is no consensus about what sort of underlying reality the theory might reflect,” she says. “Instead, we have a number of different proposed interpretations, and philosophers and physicists are still arguing about which is closest to the truth. One of these interpretations is known as the ‘Everett Interpretation’ or more popularly as the ‘many worlds’ interpretation.”

Emily wrote her thesis about this in her fourth year at Oxford, arguing that the Everett Interpretation can’t possibly be right because it would be hard to tell a consistent story about the nature of empirical confirmation within that context.

“This meant I had the complete opposite opinion to my supervisor on basically every point. So it was actually really fantastic... Dr Wallace brought up pretty much every objection that you could possibly imagine to my arguments and that made the thesis much stronger. It ultimately won the prize for the best final-year Philosophy thesis at Oxford.”

Emily then did a short master’s course at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics near Toronto. There she got to work with one of the founders of quantum foundations, the area of physics she subsequently specialised in.

Emily then did a PhD in quantum information at Cambridge University where she studied quantum cryptography – how quantum mechanics can be used to improve our existing computer protocols for information security.

Emily’s grandparents Mrs Christine Wilton and Dr Murray Wilton with their special guests Mrs Suzanne Buswell and Mrs Deirdre McOnie, and Principal Ms Heather McRae.

“This is quite important because once quantum computers become available they will be able to break most of our existing security protocols, so there is a need to develop new protocols to secure us in our future quantum world.”

Her essay ‘What is Fundamental?’ won a prize and widespread attention. She hopes it might help change how physicists and philosophers think about the law of nature and potentially lead to the development of new physical theories.

Emily has won numerous prestigious awards, published widely and presented at many conferences. She plays the violin in several orchestras and enjoys acro yoga, a form of partner yoga that incorporates acrobatics. A keen creative writer, Emily recently completed a sixmonth writing course at Faber Publishers.

She looks back fondly on her time at Dio and will always be grateful for the many teachers who went above and beyond the call of duty to encourage her in her academic interests. She had the best possible start in the Junior School and is grateful for the national and international opportunities she experienced during her school days.

Congratulations to Sheryl and Emily. What an exceptional and inspirational pair of Old Girls!