Sam Joyce

Lady of the lasers

The closest most 20-year-olds get to lasers is burning pirate CDs but Samantha Joyce is helping develop Australia's most advanced laser physics lab. The former MacGregor High student is completing an Honours degree in Photonics and Nanoscience in the new Australian Attosecond Science Facility at Griffith University.

Dubbed 'Australia's fastest camera', the new million dollar facility uses pulses of laser light to record movement at speeds of a few billion billionths of a second – fast enough to record the progress of an electron round the nucleus of an atom! It will unlock amazing potential for understanding the way the atoms, molecules and cells function, enabling scientists to witness mind-numblingly fast processes for the first time.

Samantha isn't phased by having revolutionary technology at her fingertips. "I started off in a straight Bachelor of Science because I wanted to keep my career options open, but I switched to Photonics and Nanoscience because it's very practical and experimental, and I plan to work in the technical, hands-on side of laser technology."