Rate My Professor Suzie Sheehy

Associate Professor Suzie Sheehy is a physicist, academic, and science communicator based at the University of Melbourne's School of Physics, holding the position of Associate Professor in Medical Accelerator Physics. She completed a Bachelor of Science with first-class honours in physics at the University of Melbourne in 2006 and a DPhil in particle physics at the University of Oxford in 2010, where her doctoral work involved the PAMELA project. Following her DPhil, she pursued postdoctoral research at Oxford and was awarded a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2017. She maintains affiliations with both the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford, leading research groups at both institutions focused on accelerator physics.

Sheehy's research specializes in accelerator physics and beam dynamics, with applications to medical technologies, particularly next-generation charged particle therapy for cancer treatment. Her group develops innovative systems such as TURBO—a novel beam delivery system for ultra-rapid operation—and utilizes equipment like the MelBOX from CERN to advance compact accelerator designs. Notable publications include "Future Developments in Charged Particle Therapy: Improving Beam Delivery for Efficiency and Efficacy" (2021), "Progress Toward TURBO: A Novel Beam Delivery System for Charged Particle Therapy" (2023), "Applications of Particle Accelerators" (2024), and contributions to journals like Nature and Frontiers in Oncology. Her work has garnered over 1,100 citations on Google Scholar. As a science communicator, she authored the bestselling book "The Matter of Everything: Twelve Experiments that Changed Our World" (2022), translated into 12 languages, and delivered a TEDx talk "The Case for Curiosity Driven Research" viewed nearly two million times. She serves as a media commentator, keynote speaker, and host of public events, including the Let's Talk SciComm podcast. Sheehy was a finalist for the 2024 Celestino Eureka Prize for Promoting an Understanding of Science and received the British Science Association award in 2010.