In today’s episode, host Candace Gillhoolley sits down with Bruna Shinohara de Mendonça, staff scientist in Quantum at CMC Microsystems, to discuss her journey from a humanities-focused upbringing in São Paulo, Brazil to the cutting edge of quantum research.

Bruna shares how curiosity and resilience guided her from initial uncertainty in science to mastering quantum mechanics and overcoming setbacks—like failing her first programming course—on her way to a multifaceted career in quantum algorithms and science communication.

Tune in as we explore the importance of representation, building confidence in male-dominated fields, and the power of making quantum accessible to diverse communities worldwide.

Time Stamps

00:00 Intro to Women in Quantum

04:26 Pursuing a physics education

07:48 Facing doubts from others

11:59 Building self-confidence through experience

17:22 Exploring career opportunities in quantum tech

21:32 Gender differences in job applications

24:19 Quantum computing in physics research

28:52 Topological materials in quantum computing

32:51 Understanding different computing modalities

35:02 Starting science communication in 2019

38:51 Feeling uncertain about teaching skills

43:32 Discussing quantum policy challenges

46:55 Finding unexpected role models

50:17 Encouraging women to ask questions

52:20 Interview closing remarks

I think the overall

environment that I had was not really conductive

to pursue science. I'd say

my friends, my family were not really in science,

so that felt like a very exotic idea.

Welcome to Women in Quantum.

Welcome back to Women in Quantum, the podcast where we

spotlight the brilliant women shaping the future of quantum

technology. I'm Candace Gilhooly, and in each

episode, we go beyond the headlines to explore the real

stories behind the science. The career pivots,

the breakthrough moments, the challenges, and the quiet

persistence it takes to build in one of the most

complex fields of our time. This show exists

for a reason, because too often in deep tech,

women are still the only ones in the room

by themselves. And visibility matters,

representation matters, and the stories we talk about

really do matter. Today we have the

pleasure of speaking with Bruna Shinahara. She is

a staff scientist in Quantum at

CMC Microsystems. Hello,

Bruna. How are you doing today? Hi, Candice.

I'm great. Thanks for inviting me. Oh, I'm really excited. I

remembered our pre call and there you just have a really

fascinating story. And so I'd like to start at the very

beginning. Can you tell me where you grew up?

So I grew up in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Kind of. Kind of a suburb in Sao Paulo.

Okay. Now, when you were a little girl back in,

in grammar school, did you have a certain proclivity,

a certain interest for a particular topic?

I remember mostly being drawn to

writing. I remember writing a lot. My parent, my

father is a journalist, so I have quite this influence. And just

humanities in general, science was not really on my right there when

I was a little girl. Okay, so then when, when

did science all of a sudden start exciting you?

I guess it came in phases. When I went to

the university, I started actually with

biology after, like, discussing my parents a

little bit. But it was a program which started

with like a bachelor of sciences. And then you would start

picking the subjects. Right. I wasn't really sure. I was

somewhat interested in like, marine biology,

but I didn't really quite grasp what it

takes. So that was the first contact. I still felt like

maybe I should be in humanities. But once I started taking the

courses, I got really fascinated by

physics 1, physics 2. That was my first time that I.

I actually saw science subjects being

taught in a way that I found very interesting. Like,

I think during high school, everything was like, wow, this is the

formula, and you do

something with this. But I never understood where it came from. So the

first time that someone's like, oh, this is why energy

is conserving. The systems like, oh, that's fascinating. And you

can translate this to mathematics.

That's when it clicks and I feel like my mind expanding. So like I

was like, oh, I like humanities and I like science too. Turns out that

I really didn't like biology though. That's what I found out. I was like,

oh, I don't like this. And then I started driving towards

physics. Okay, so what, so then what

was your discipline when you were in university? What did you get your degree in?

I got a Bachelor of science, technology

and physics. Okay, okay.

There are two different bachelor's over there. You get this first general

one and then bachelor in physics. Okay, and so then what was your

next step? Then I went to masters

in physics and over there study

open quantum systems, a little bit of general

relativity when I asked. In undergrad I

study plasma physics, which was interesting.

But I remember when I was looking at subjects, I really found

I really like the counterintuitive parts of physics. Everything that you

think that should go away is a completely different thing

that actually happens like quantum mechanics and general relativity,

all those more abstract things. So I decided

to go more in a quantum mechanics

route. And then for my PhD, I was sure that I

want to do something in quantum mechanics, but not exactly what I was doing before.

So I went to work more with like on this matter, quantum

materials. Yeah. And so did you do all of

your educational training in, in Brazil?

Most, most of it. But there was a few

times that I went abroad. So when I

was in my undergrad, I spent one year in the US

thanks to a program between Brazil and the United States.

So Yeah, I took two semesters plus summer

internship, Pennsylvania

and Colorado. And then during my Ph.D. i

spent six months in Denmark doing research.

Yeah. Okay, that's exciting. Okay, that's exciting.

So let me ask you, was there a moment early on

in your journey when you were learning about

physics and what's exciting to you about quantum.

When someone underestimated you and how

did you process that at the time? Oh, for

sure. I think the, the

over.

Environment that I had was not really conductive to

pursue science. I'd say

my friends, my family were not really in science.

So that felt like a very exotic idea.

And I remember the first people

that I saw doing something in STEM related was

on the professional course that we would do together

in high school, optional course. So that's when I started

seeing a few people going for science, a few women

going to do like mechanical engineering.

It's like, okay, that's when first click, oh, that might

be a way to go, but still felt like something very different

from what I was used to see other

people choosing as a career path.

And then when I went to university and

start getting interested in physics, I remember hearing a lot of are you

sure? It was like, okay. And that

creates the doubt, right? That creates the doubt in your mind. Like when you

keep on asking the cubicle, keep on asking you if what you're trying to pursue

is what you really want. And you, some people will start to be

dissuaded, right? And it's very

hurtful because sometimes it comes from people that are close to you and you

expect them to support you. But I guess precisely

because felt like such a far away career path,

I guess it also comes from a place of trying to protect you,

right? Well, don't try to be an astronaut if this is

not a plausible career path. And I think

a lot of as I progress in

academia, even at university, seeing like

science outreach projects and like getting to know

professors with different careers and lives, just

getting to know a little bit more, getting more in contact with

people that would do this, then it kind of made me feel like,

well that's not that far away of an idea.

And I still think that's super important to be able

to try to picture yourself doing

this kind of things, right? And well, as I progress,

like I, when I was in undergrad, I heard

several comments from colleagues and friends like

generally subtle, but you could feel a

lot of not believing you, like, oh, so you, you had this,

this mark, you had this grade, same as me. I was like, well why

is that impressive? Like I'm taking the same course as you,

right? And for sure as

I progress as I got my undergrad degree,

some people start questioning me less. My master, some people question

me less. But still there's always as, as, as much

as got awards and like diplomas,

things got better. But still they, they still,

still lurk around. I will always have something, I don't know at least once a

month that will say, wow, this person was me. This person

was thinking less of me.

So every deep tech career hits bottlenecks.

What has been your most frustrating stuck

moment and how did you work your way through it?

I would say if I were to include my university

days, I think the

something that looking back is actually funny for me now, but

I did fail a course in programming

and I remember being very frustrated because it was one of the

earliest course. I was really not used to the university

rhythm like coming right after high school

and I failed and Then I decided, well, I don't think I

can program. This is not for me. And now I program every day,

basically so. And I remember it took me a lot of not,

not simply studying, but just convincing myself that I could

do it. My first contact was in Java,

which people now discuss even till now that that was not the

best choice for an introductory course for programming

because it's a very weird language. It's interesting, but

it's not intuitive. Python would be a much more

suitable choice. So it took me years to

get back to it and be like, well okay, let's give it a second

shot. And then I found out that I'm not bad at it. I

think there were a lot of factors both from

my side, my own immaturity, like some structure of

factors of how the course was laid out

that really made it difficult but not impossible. And I'm very glad that I tried

to give it a second shot of programming because now it's such an integral part

of my life. For women

coming into Quantum who may be facing the

quiet doubt from others,

what inner muscle do you think they most need to

build?

I think something that got me.

I got better at it as time passes on is to

have ways to remember that I know what I'm doing,

have this in my arsenal. Exactly this

kind of just relate to your last question when you got a

problem, how did I solve this?

Sometimes wow, what the resources did I look on

this website or did I mostly it generally boils down to I just

calmed down a little bit and said get out of my own

head. But if you have just a

repertoire that you can go back to, those were my victories,

those are the ways that I struggled. But I got back

and managed to work the situation out. Then you can build

a confidence in yourself that you can do it. Even though like this challenge a

bit different. But I had other challenges before

and then is easier when something else comes up.

So when you first started learning about quantum, do you

remember a specific moment where it went from

being interesting to being just irresistible?

I think it was really in the. In the first course that I took

like mother physics was not even a proper

quantum mechanics, just that there was so many

things that were so different and counterintuitive. And I

remember that was first year of

undergrad. One of the

recommended literatures

besides the pedagogical stuff

books that we should read. They also recommended I think Alice in

Quantumland. No, Alice in Quantum Land, I believe.

I don't quite remember because I'm not sure if that's the name in English

because I read in Portuguese, but it's a book that kind

of follows like a Alice in Wonderland type character and

she faces a bunch of quantum related phenomena.

And it was so fun to read and so interesting. And

it really makes the

interesting and curiosity aspects with

like actually clarifying me to me, oh, this is what

the uncertainty principle is

in a very, of course, high level way. But then, oh, why this

is interesting then I, I think really opened my

mind to how fun it could be and I'm very

glad that is like more than a decade later, I still find

it very fun and I still get surprised by new results. I

think very insane

and interesting topic. So when

you were back in, in the University of Sao Paulo and you were

getting your PhD in physics,

what shaped your research

focus at the time?

I guess I was mostly finding

out what things I liked and I didn't like.

So at that point I found out, okay, I don't really like

topics that are more classical physics, just we

know quantum elements. So I was sure that I want to work

with something quantum. I so when I

talked to the university professors, there were

some people working with

stuff related to quantum technologies, quantum

computers that I heard about. I was not super

into it. I was not, it's not a topic that I, I was thinking, wow,

I should pivot to that. But I had an idea. I noticed that it

was like growing in interest and this

particular professor was working with topological quantum

computing, which for me also is another thing that I think I just

went being very driven by curiosity because like, oh,

topology is an interesting part of mathematics that I would like to know more.

So I'll just see stuff that are not really

familiar necessarily, but I'm very interested

and gave it a shot. So I think that's

how I enter my PhD and during my PhD,

I think halfway, at a halfway point, that's

when I realized that I didn't want to pursue

an academic path. There was a few

aspects of it. For instance, I never ever

actually like teaching, which is kind of funny.

And I still like, at least especially in

Brazil, it's kind of hard to have a fully research

focused career about research plus teaching on

the university setting. Okay, we, we don't have

like solely research careers. So that was in point for me

as I wasn't sure if I was going to go abroad. Among

other things that made me realize that academia was not really what I want.

So that's when I started to look, wow, what could a job outside

academia that also involves quantum tech would

look like. And then I started looking

around and they really

were interested in someone with a background in physics, which I had,

and people that would program in Python, which I was programming in Python

thanks to the second chance I gave to programming. So

I look at all the specifications, seem a lot

like stuff that I could provide. But also

there are things like communication skills, which

sounds like generic, just

generic qualifications and

requirements for a job. But for me it was interesting because I was also at

the time already exploring science communication by myself.

I was doing science communication on quantum, quantum

physics and quantum computing.

And it always felt like science communication

and research for me were at odds at all times.

That was another struggle that I had when I was on my PhD

pursuing science communication, having

my own science outreach adventures. And I was part of

a group that also did by myself, especially in social media and

pursuing a PhD. That was something that was. Some people

had a resistance to it. Some people are like, well, maybe should focus on your

research. And I did try to focus only my research. I was like,

wow, I really like science communication, really like the aspect

of talking to people. So I noticed that this

kind of job opportunities, they would actually

converge those things that I think

I could provide so they will finally not be at odds.

And that's how it is right now. Because

my current job, I do have the technical aspects.

I'll conceptualize quantum algorithms,

help run the codes with people.

But also I have another component of the job which is preparing training

material delivery, like workshops and training.

So it brings both of these aspects

and it's nice to be able to work with those things that I liked and

spent quite some time thinking that would be incompatible forever.

Okay, so communication, I mean communication is so vitally important

in every aspect of our world, especially

in deep tech back. What other soft skills do you

think women could, could develop

in order to get themselves into the quantum

ecosystem?

This is something that I gave a few talks on

careers in quantum. And I always highlight this, but I think it's

especially important for women. But I

highlight this especially for people that come from academia.

We have a big issue of downplaying ourselves. We don't.

We never think we're enough because I think it's just the language of how

people speak to each other within the university setting. You don't

want to say, oh, I really know this language. There's

a lot of imposter syndrome. And that like

trickles down in how people communicate. So they're like, oh, I know this topic,

but I don't really know about it. But the person actually knows. Like, if you

think of like a, a pool of candidates, this person that

thinks they know just a little bit of this topic, they actually know a lot.

It's just that they are in a very highly qualified and highly

specialized environment. Right. So when they're going to

do a cover letter for themselves or present

themselves on an interview, they don't play

themselves in a way that the other candidates will not.

And this is a particular issue for women.

Right. There's this

famous report that says that women

only apply if they have 100% of the qualifications,

while men apply even if they don't have all the qualifications. That

makes a big difference. I think that starts with

language, which

is more difficult for women because

we are socialized not to be that

assertive about ourselves, but also for academics

in general. So if you're a woman coming from academia, be

doubly careful about it because chances are that you're

just shrinking yourself and then there's going to be

just someone that's more confident, not necessarily more

qualified. They are going to be able to present themselves much better

and maybe get your job.

That's totally fair. How do you explain

what you do to a non technical person?

Yeah, that's always difficult. Right.

There are several like layers that you can go.

Generally I start with just scientist.

Sometimes it's enough, it scares

people enough. But if I have to go deeper, I

tend to go more in a direction

that makes it sound like I work with

computers because I think it's easier than going to. The

details of quantum unfortunately still is a rabbit

hole whenever I try to explain quantum phenomena. But then

the shortest way to explain is that I have

people having access to quantum computers. And if someone

really don't know what quantum computers are, maybe I can just

pose it as a computer that's been developed

more recently. It has different capabilities and can be better in a

few specific tasks. So I think there's a

easy enough explanation. So I provide disasters.

I help making running

tasks and checking for if it's working or

not. And I also provide training for this new technology.

I think that's the way not to get too technical about it.

Okay, so does your work focus heavily on

quantum algorithms? Yep. Okay,

so what problem areas excite you the most

right now in that space?

I think for. I think in general we're

gonna have a lot of progress we with quantum

chemistry. I think just because of the theory of

quantum computers is I think it's going to be very well suited for this sort

of problems. But for my own Personal

taste. I like when quantum computer

problem is tackling a quantum physics problem just because it goes back to my

roots. And so it's nice to see people working

on simulating Hamiltonian trying to figure out

physics but using maybe a variational

algorithm, trying to really explore

physics through the lens of quantum computing

or and just finding out more about

physics. Either the theory which is more on my part or just

finding out something interesting about

how this algorithm behaves in a more mathematical sense. So

this is actually be better and we can prove that it's going to be better.

I guess it's just my theoretical sites

I like seeing getting better limits on things

and be able to say with confidence oh, these algorithms could

work well or we learn a little bit more about this phase

of matter because of this thing that we try to.

Okay, so where do you see the biggest near term impact

of algorithmic advances?

There are interesting things going

on in quantum machine learning

and yeah, once again like I, I think chemistry

and simulation materials there's interesting

develops also developments.

I generally try not to put too much faith on

year term because I think we need some more

error corrected quantum computers to actually

make things happen. A way that we can be sure that this is cool. But

also. And then this is not really my area, but I see a lot of

very exciting developments for the hardware parts. They are always coming

up. Oh, we now have this system with less

errors or new ways to make it fault tolerant.

And it's always nice to look at it and see well, what can we

do with this new apparatus?

What is one misconception? I'm sorry? Oh,

I didn't say. Okay, are you

hearing a noise? I can hear you.

Okay, okay. What is one misconception

people have about quantum algorithms that you wish you could make disappear?

I think the biggest one is when people explain quantum

algorithms as everything running all at once,

trying all the possibilities at once because it makes so

difficult to explain. First of all it's just not correct, but

it's. Second of all, it just makes it

difficult to explain that well, maybe this task will

not be automatically better because of a

quantum computer. Right. There's so many. You need to be able to

pose it in a way that is amenable for a quantum computer. Both

like just theoretically be able to map this into

something that a quantum computer can work with. And then

after that you need to see if there is a physical quantum computer

that's big enough or that has sufficiently control

of errors, connectivity and all that this can also happen.

Right. So that simplification that

makes it sound like it's going to be better at anything

all at once. Even though part of the beauty for

me is that different problems will have different speed ups.

And understanding this and exploring this

and noticing the impacts of that, that's the interesting part for me.

So you'd mentioned topological quantum computing.

So explain to me why topological quantum computing, why

that fascinates you, why that approach

is interesting, what types of problems will that

solve? So

I kind of migrate from this area,

but when I was doing my Ph.D. i found it interesting

mostly because the theory is very interesting.

The fact that you can have a system

that you can use language from

this field of mathematics that is generally so abstract

topology to understand better the physics

of something. In practice, what will happen is

that the topological

materials and if you do it, if you build

correctly a quantum computer, you could have more protection against

errors, which is a big, big problem in

quantum computers. Right. And there are like some

caveats, how you're gonna do certain operations,

how you still may need error correction despite

everything, and how the topological protection

is not for all aspects. It's not

universal for you to have a universal computer

that's topological. It's not going to be fully, fully

protected, but still it's very interesting. The main

difficulty is to actually prove that you have something that is a

topological computer. And that has been an uphill battle

for the experimentalists for such a long time.

But the theory is very nice and I still like secretly root for

a topological computer I think will be

such a big advancement because fighting

errors will be, will change completely the landscape

of going for a path towards fault

tolerance. So how do you view the

current race among the hardware modalities?

I like to, I like to be informed

of all different modalities. There's always interesting,

interesting aspect from the different

ones. So in practice I work a lot with super

qubits because of IBM. The assets that we have through

to the cloud, pricing wise generally is

easier to run algorithms through

TribM. And the people that contact

us, they generally interested also in testing their

algorithms with the IBM machines. But you

have neutral atom computers for

instance, they have this interesting analog mode that you can

explore for instance

simulating Hamiltonians in a different way that you can explore

optimization problems in a different way. That I think

then again it has a very interesting physics behind that

I think is fascinating. So if I could have worked

more with that. There's then again topological that are also

fascinated because of all this previous history

that I have. So for me I, I

hope they continue to explore several different modalities

all at once because I feel that they learn with each other.

You see this a lot of times, this cross pollination like

a quantum computer hardware. Explore a different way to do

error mitigation and then you see another one trying to

go in a similar direction. So there's, there's value on

this diversity and I hope it continues for a while.

What signals should the ecosystem watch out for

to know which modalities

can truly scale?

I'll say it's hard to.

So each modality will have their different challenges. So first of

all, to understand that the metrics that you're

gonna watch out when reading a paper for one

modality is different than the others. For instance,

some computers, they have very slow gates,

so you're gonna take longer to run an algorithm. So if you're not

looking at the gate timing, for instance,

for traped ions, then you

like, this is something that maybe you wouldn't care too much and like superconductors. So

maybe you need to ask the right questions for the right providers. Right.

The other thing that I guess I, I think people should

be more mindful of is that sometimes there,

there's a new announcement for companies generally big

tech, so they do like a press release, they, they

give a very nice presentation, video or article that's

very accessible. But then the person only read this. So

it's not, it's not useful if you're only reading from the person

that's claiming that they're doing whatever they're doing. So I feel

like if you're an outsider, either

if you're completely outside quantum, or even if you

like are in quantum technologies but not familiar with that

particular hardware. Never rely only on the press release of

whoever is publishing this. You need to read different opinions.

You need to really try to take a bigger picture and not take it for

granted. Whatever comes first in the, in

whatever announcement that they have, you see this very often, like there

will be very shiny new

headlines about some new breakthrough

that's based only on a press release. And I think there's a big

answer. So you co founded

Q Brazil to popularize

quantum technologies in Portuguese. What

gap were you trying to close?

So when I first

started doing science communication, it was around

2019, there was

basically no one talking about quantum technologies, quantum

computing, like really it was not a thing

in Brazil. And

so once I start

getting more busy with PhD, once I move, move here to Canada,

I would like to keep on going with that sort of communication

because there's still a gap now, like there are more developments.

There are startups there, companies and universities. They're more

interested in trying to produce content. But when I first started, it

was not really a thing. There was also an over

reliance on English content. Sometimes you get

English content that was not this super best quality.

There was a lot of sensationalist

headlines, once again that would get translated and be a bit

misleading. So I didn't like the idea of relying

on English content and also the idea

that people would be okay with reading

English. That's not true. That's not really the reality.

We don't have that many people that speak English in Brazil. Right.

The proficiency of English is around 5%.

So we're probably excluding a bunch of people. Right. Unless we're

translating. Unless we're translating well. So

that was something that was always in my mind. And I was

doing, in principle, I was doing by

sheer force of my own will. I would just

decide to write about quantum superposition. But

that was very hard. So once I started talking to people

about how I found important to maintain try to

keep on producing comp that was reliable in Portuguese. I found other

people with similar ideas

and in particular another

friend of mine, Haisa. We met through this shared interest. She was

also abroad. She was like, oh, I was looking for people

talking about quantum technologies in Portuguese and I found you.

And then she shared this interest with me and we're like, okay, we should

do something. And then I

went because of other.

Because kind of a coincidence, but I end up going to Netherlands for an event

alone, etco. I

think was about. Yeah, about

science communication in a sense, and

societal aspects in quantum technologies. And then I met a lot of people

from Q Word and I explained that I want to do something

Portuguese. They were like, you should do Q Brazil. And then I just

took their advice. It's like, okay, we're gonna do Q Brazil, but it's

gonna be in Portuguese mostly. And they're like, okay, you do you.

And then. Yeah, so we did. And I think it worked very

well. QWERT is very supportive. We

like the idea of having something that's really not for profit.

They're very well organized. So it's nice to be under

their wings in this project. And it's been

working very nicely. We have more than one year now.

That's fantastic. So let me ask you, if you could redesign

quantum education from scratch, what would you change first?

Yeah, I don't feel super confident

about my skills on education itself. I like

doing outreach,

but I feel like sometimes I lack the Actual

theoretical background how to teach people, especially

high school. My.

I guess I would like to be able

to make it more democratic

in terms of assessing high quality

simulations. For instance, at some point when I

I mentioned I was in Colorado for a while and that was kind of

my first contact with science communication before I really went to that

route. And I work at phet, which is one

the Physical Simulations

Project. I guess that they have a University of Colorado Boulder. So they

do little like simulations that you

can play around and they have a lot of.

You can translate them so you have. I work one

on the Hooke's law, for instance. But they have photoelectric effects. They

have stuff in quantum that you can play and see what

happens in a very visual way. And I feel like

this is very lacking.

And when you go to. Depending on where you are you have less access

to laboratories. Right. So having

an animation or like a game or something that

would be very useful if you don't have access to a

practical thing that you can look at. And of course if you do

have access to labs, this is very great too.

But yeah, I think there are so many good content that would bring

people's attention to quantum in a way that. That is not

damaging. That's not like fantastic.

And we should make an effort to. To bring this to the front

I guess. What do you think is the biggest

mistake technical experts make when

explaining quantum to non technical audience?

I still think the. The

idea that everything runs at once is one like the

root of most evil. But I guess

for if I were to expand beyond quantum algorithms

I think one thing that should be emphasized more

is the fact that quantum technologies have.

Consequences that we should watch out for. For instance, it

can weaken security systems

because of Shor's algorithm, for instance. Right. We

need to rethink cryptography and

that might involve even like public

participation and like investments

to change the infrastructure or to get a

high qualified personnel to actually put in

place the security concerns. Right.

I think there's sometimes the. The

idea of

quantum as a technology that that is

neutral will only bring good because you can

simulate things and you can create drug discovery

of things. And we don't discuss enough

about the. The challenges and there are challenges and we should

look, look out for this. For instance, you can,

you can discover drugs and you can create new

new drugs that will help people but you can also create a chemical weapon. There's

always some like aspect that you should

watch out for. And I feel like the. Sometimes

the conversation steers on a very too

optimistic of A outlook for what quantum

computers and other quantum technologies can do.

How should the industry think about global inequities

in access to quantum.

I think this is hard because it's.

It's very difficult to make the, the

industry stakeholders care about this in particular because there are

no incentives for that.

There will need to be more policies in places.

But it's kind of hard because I feel like the discussion on

quantum policy in general is also something that

is still maturing.

I feel like it's much easier to engage other.

Other sectors of people involved like university professors, like

professor generally people interested

science communicators. There are all

these other stakeholders that could look at the

inequalities and

be more compelled to do something about it. So I guess

maybe one pathway is to have the discussion bring to the

forefront. Explain that you have all these problems that

can come from contact that can

bridge the gap between Global north and Global South. And if you get

these other stakeholders care, maybe the industry will follow

later. But starting from industry, to be honest, I'm a bit

skeptical. What

structural changes would most improve retention of

women in deep tech fields?

There. I think that there's,

there's. We. We could go for a route of trying to.

To bring more people through diversity hires. That there

was a pathway that you.

That is exploring technology. But I believe

a bit for personal experience that seeing someone

in the place that you aspire to

or even you don't aspire to,

you see a scientist and then that's the first time that

you gonna consider actual person scientists. So if you can

put those people in the forefront like for instance with our

podcast on women's science, maybe we can try to bring

attention to the fact that these people exist and

that this is a viable pathway for

someone's career.

I remember that for me one of the important

aspects, one of the. It's

minor something that happened like very a long time ago. But I

remember just like reading through some

magazine and then I saw

some article about a

scientist that was. She was working on CERN. And

I don't know, I think I was 15 at a time and never occurred to

me that women were doing science. I was like, okay, the

last woman in science that I remember is Mahike. That

was not then you think that it's really far away, right?

If you're like in Brazil in 2000, something like that,

that felt so different. And that's when it hits me, well, like I

don't really have role models. They exist, but people

are not talking about that. So I have to go through a very random

like news magazine to find about

her. And I got very inspired and then later I bought a book.

So like just the fact that she existed in an area

that I'm not following as she's in like high energy physics,

but the fact that she exists kind of just changed my whole

perspective of how this could be a career. Right.

And I think it's important because if you

don't believe first that this is a pathway that you

can pursue, doesn't matter if there are initiatives

within the university or anything within the industry to make you stay

or make you come to like

get and try to actually apply for these

roles. If you don't think from within yourself that this is

a thing that can happen. Right. So I think it kind of is a

grassroots effort. It will be a more effective one.

And that's one of the, one of the reasons behind having the podcast

is that, you know, I, I am

in marketing and technology. I find quantum to be

incredibly exc. And you know, I don't have

to be a physicist to be interested. I just have to be curious

and be open to, you know, no matter when

I think I've understand something finally and then someone else says something and

I'm starting again, you know, I'm like constantly like the Alice in

Wonderland. I'm just falling and falling and falling and learning and learning the

whole time, which I love. It's just

incredibly exciting. So what advice would you give

to a young woman in Brazil or anywhere, you know, who's

quantum curious but unsure where to start.

There? Now at this point, I think there are more resources

and more places to look.

There are in Brazil and hopefully in other

places. If you really search

up university programs, you find a

lot of like, opportunities to

engage in the high school level. That comes

generally from the students or a few professors

that might be for free or very,

or not not that expensive. And there's a

very nice and cool way to engage

before actually choosing a career path, especially for high school

kids. Right? Because you get access to labs, you

get access to people that you can later on

send an email and understand how they like how, how,

how it's like to work with quantum technologies.

I also believe if you don't have for any

reason, you cannot get access to universities.

Right now we're so connected, especially through

LinkedIn and social media, that it's easier to reach out to people.

And one thing that I noticed actually, especially when I

in social, I'm saying on LinkedIn as

well, many people reach out to me but for

a large margin, most of them are men.

They ask me about career advice and I'm glad

to help if I can, but I noticed that there's way

fewer women asking and I don't think

that's because they are not interested. Because I feel like

there's relatively proportional

amount of people that follow me or that ask me to connect on

LinkedIn. There are women and men, but I feel like they're at least a

little more shy to ask for something. So

encourage them to go there and use us. Like, send this first

message and just say, wow, I like to

maybe have a mentor or I have this question or this

other question. And like, more often than not, you're gonna get some help. And

remember, the men are asking, the men are asking, so you should too.

I think that's perfect advice. So if people want to know more about what

you do and more about, you know, what you're talking

about, where can they find, what are the resources that you

can provide that are free about what you're doing?

So I guess the easiest way to find me

is on LinkedIn as

I do have some compilation

resources that I saved on a notion web

page. It might be a bit more difficult to

find, but is easy.

Maybe I can provide social link. Social media

later. Yeah, because the link is gigantic. I would

say LinkedIn is easier to find me, but I do have a

YouTube channel. There's also Brunish

Nohara. I am on Instagram.

Yeah, reach out. Oh, that's great. I'll put in all the

links. And I want to thank you so much for your time today.

I really enjoy speaking to women such as you, to see the

different faces of Quantum and, you know, and to

show young women out there that there is a space for you

and it's exciting and you should go for it and ask questions.

So thank you again for your time. I'm going to let the

music take us out. Thank you.