Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop is a professor of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

at the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

and an Officer of the

Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...

. She has led pioneering research in atom optics, laser micro-manipulation using

optical tweezers Optical tweezers (originally called single-beam gradient force trap) are scientific instruments that use a highly focused laser beam to hold and move microscopic and sub-microscopic objects like atoms, nanoparticles and droplets, in a manner simila ...

, laser enhanced ionisation

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter wa ...

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...

and

quantum physics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qua ...

Early life

Halina Rubinsztein (later Rubinsztein-Dunlop) was born in Poland. She emigrated to Sweden where she obtained her BSc and PhD degree from the

University of Gothenburg The University of Gothenburg ( sv, Göteborgs universitet) is a university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current Swedish universities and with 37,000 students and 6000 st ...

. Rubinsztein-Dunlop was encouraged to be curious about the world by her mother, also a physicist. In an interview for

SPIE SPIE (formerly the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers, later the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers) is an international not-for-profit professional society for optics and photonics technology, founded in 1955. It ...

, she credits her mother's guidance and enthusiasm for science: "she taught me to persist and to be inquisitive and to want to understand, and also - and I think this is what was important - she showed me that women can do it. It was infectious," She moved to Australia in 1989, shortly after her marriage to engineer Gordon Dunlop.

Career

Rubinsztein-Dunlop completed her PhD titled ''Atomic-beam magnetic resonance investigations of refractory elements and metastable states of lead'' at the University of Gothenburg in 1978. After moving to Australia in 1989, Rubinsztein-Dunlop joined the Department of Physics at the

where she formed a research group studying laser physics. In 1995, she helped establish a Science in Action program that was used for outreach in educational programs for schools. Rubinsztein-Dunlop was appointed Professor of Physics in 2000. She held the role of Head of the Department of Physics as well as the Head of the School of Mathematics and Physics at the

from 2006–2013. She is the Director of the Quantum Science Laboratory and leads one of the scientific programs of the

Australian Research Council The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the primary non-medical research funding agency of the Australian Government, distributing more than in grants each year. The Council was established by the ''Australian Research Council Act 2001'', ...

Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems. In 2011 she was a guest editor for the Journal of Optics on a special issue about

, published by the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide membership of over 20,000. The IOP is the Physica ...

. In 2016 Rubinsztein-Dunlop was made Fellow of the

Australian Academy of Science The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal Soci ...

. She was appointed an Officer of the

(AO) in the Queen's

2018 Birthday Honours The 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded as p ...

List for "distinguished service to laser physics and nano-optics as a researcher, mentor and academic, to the promotion of educational programs, and to women in science". During the 2018 international scientific conference

, the Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation XV programme held a special session honouring Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop. An Australian Museum Eureka Prize was awarded to the University of Queensland Optical Physics in Neuroscience team, consisting of Rubinsztein-Dunlop alongside Ethan Scott and Itia Favre-Bulle for their study of the brain and how it detects gravity and motion. The full title of the award is the 2018 UNSW Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research.

Research

Rubinsztein-Dunlop conducts research that harnesses the power of optics and lasers to explore quantum and biological phenomena. She has published over 200 works in journals and books and has also been featured on radio and television. Rubinsztein-Dunlop is considered an originator of laser enhanced ionisation spectroscopy.

Quantum Optics

Although her PhD involved looking at the

hyperfine structure In atomic physics, hyperfine structure is defined by small shifts in otherwise degenerate energy levels and the resulting splittings in those energy levels of atoms, molecules, and ions, due to electromagnetic multipole interaction between the nucl ...

of atoms, she notes that her research was "not

sing Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

the tiniest of the tiniest...I never worked with quarks or gluons...". She was however, fascinated by being able to interrogate nature at small level using light. Her team successfully demonstrated dynamical tunnelling in a

Bose Einstein Condensate Bose may refer to: * Bose (crater), a lunar crater * ''Bose'' (film), a 2004 Indian Tamil film starring Srikanth and Sneha * Bose (surname), a surname (and list of people with the name) * Bose, Italy, a ''frazioni'' in Magnano, Province of Biella ...

(BEC) using a modulated standing wave. Rubinzstein-Dunlop's team has also observed dynamical tunnelling in quantum chaotic systems. In 2016, Rubinsztein-Dunlop, along with Tyler Neely and Guillaume Gauthier, imprinted images of

Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

and Indian physicist

Satyendra Nath Bose Satyendra Nath Bose (; 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was a Bengali mathematician and physicist specializing in theoretical physics. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, in developing the foundation for ...

on a super-cold microscopic fluid, demonstrating a physics state predicted by Einstein and Bose in 1925 but first achieved in 1995. The image is approximately 0.1mm by 0.1mm in size but with a surface 100 million times colder than interstellar space.

Optical Micro-manipulation

Rubinsztein-Dunlop's research in laser micro-manipulation involves the use of

to trap objects in three dimensions and exert optical forces onto them. As she explains in her own words, "Optical tweezers act like our normal tweezers, but instead of using mechanical tweezers you are just using laser light that's highly focused: you grab something, and apply force to it to move it. What is beautiful about it is that it's a quantitative method: you can evaluate how far you move an entity and what sort of force you're applying, so you can start interrogating complex biological or solid state systems in a very precise way." Her group exploits the ability to rotate very small objects using exotic laser modes such as Laguerre Gauss beams, as for example was published in 2014 for a micron size donut shaped rotor. In a seminal paper published in 1995 and titled "Direct Observation of Transfer of Angular Momentum to Absorptive Particles from a Laser Beam with a Phase Singularity", Rubinsztein-Dunlop's group experimentally showed the spinning of absorptive particles trapped in a singularity beam where the spin direction was controlled based on the sign of the singularity.

Biophysics

Rubinsztein-Dunlop also conducts work in the field of

, notably a study on

vertigo Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties w ...

and understanding the body's balance system. At the heart of this research is

otolith An otolith ( grc-gre, ὠτο-, ' ear + , ', a stone), also called statoconium or otoconium or statolith, is a calcium carbonate structure in the saccule or utricle of the inner ear, specifically in the vestibular system of vertebrates. The sa ...

s which are little stones in the ears. By manipulating the otoliths in

zebrafish The zebrafish (''Danio rerio'') is a freshwater fish belonging to the minnow family ( Cyprinidae) of the order Cypriniformes. Native to South Asia, it is a popular aquarium fish, frequently sold under the trade name zebra danio (and thus often ...

and moving them around, reactions were observed such as how the "fish moves its tail to try to compensate for the interaction with its balance system". The 2018 UNSW

Eureka Prize The Eureka Prizes are awarded annually by the Australian Museum, Sydney, to recognise individuals and organizations who have contributed to science and the understanding of science in Australia. They were founded in 1990 following a suggestion ...

for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research was awarded to Rubinsztein-Dunlop and the University of Queensland Optical Physics in Neuroscience team based on research using optical trapping and novel microscopes that image how brain circuits function to process motion together with other senses. She has also conducted research using laser micro-manipulation to examine

red blood cell Red blood cells (RBCs), also referred to as red cells, red blood corpuscles (in humans or other animals not having nucleus in red blood cells), haematids, erythroid cells or erythrocytes (from Greek ''erythros'' for "red" and ''kytos'' for "holl ...

s to see how long blood can be stored before being used safely; the older the cell, the more likely the

elasticity Elasticity often refers to: *Elasticity (physics), continuum mechanics of bodies that deform reversibly under stress Elasticity may also refer to: Information technology * Elasticity (data store), the flexibility of the data model and the cl ...

changes. Rubinsztein-Dunlop uses optical tweezers to grab the blood cell at both ends and then stretches the cell from one end whilst the other is fixed to measure how much it can stretch.

Awards

* 2003 AIP Women in Physics lecturer * 2011 Fellow of

, the international society for optics and photonics * 2012 Fellow of

The Optical Society Optica (formerly known as The Optical Society (OSA) and before that as the Optical Society of America) is a professional society of individuals and companies with an interest in optics and photonics. It publishes journals and organizes conference ...

* 2016 Fellow of the

*2018

Officer of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...

*2018 UNSW

for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research *2019 Lise Meitner Lectures "Sculpted light in nano- and microsystems" *2021

C.E.K. Mees Medal ''"For pioneering innovations in the transfer of optical angular momentum to particles, using sculpted light for laser manipulation on atomic, nano- and microscales to generate fundamental insight and provide powerful probes to biomedicine."''

Memberships

* Rubinsztein-Dunlop is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Japan. * She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biophotonics. * She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Beckmann Laser Institute. *In 2012, Rubinsztein-Dunlop became a Fellow of The Optical Society for pioneering contributions in nano and micro laser manipulation in the fields of optical tweezers and atom optics with applications to biophotonics. *

roles: Board of Directors, Diversity and Inclusion Ad Hoc Committee, Fellows Committee, Publications Committee, Strategic Planning Committee, Symposia Committee, Symposium Chair, Conference Program Committee, Conference Chair, Symposium Committee

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Halina Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Polish emigrants to Australia Australian women physicists University of Gothenburg alumni Academic staff of the University of Queensland Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science Officers of the Order of Australia 20th-century Australian physicists 20th-century Australian women scientists 21st-century Australian physicists 21st-century Australian women scientists Fellows of Optica (society) Women in optics