{"podcast":{"title":"People doing Physics","slug":"people-doing-physics-4852314","podcast_index_feed_id":4852314,"rss_url":"https://feeds.captivate.fm/people-doing-physics/","website_url":"https://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/","image_url":"https://artwork.captivate.fm/e5480daf-2a6f-4ebf-9b5d-9a02d5faa32e/roqmM8Bs4Lyt1GpYR51AA0Ru.png","author":"Cavendish Laboratory","episode_count":46,"summary":"As fascinating as physics can be, it can also seem very abstract, but behind each experiment and discovery stands a real person trying to understand the universe. Join us at the Cavendish Laboratory on the first Thursday of every month as we get up close and personal with the researchers, technicians, students, teachers, and people that are the beating heart of Cambridge University’s Physics department. If you want to know what goes on behind the doors of a Physics department, are curious to know how people get into physics, or simply wonder what physicists think and dream about, listen in! Join us on Twitter @DeptofPhysics using the hashtag #PeopleDoingPhysics. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy","last_synced_at":"2026-06-04T14:21:08.688439+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/people-doing-physics-4852314"},"episode":{"title":"Verity Allan: From ancient words to distant worlds","slug":"verity-allan-from-ancient-words-to-distant-worlds","published_at":"2025-12-04T04:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/people-doing-physics-4852314/verity-allan-from-ancient-words-to-distant-worlds","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/people-doing-physics-4852314","url":"https://people-doing-physics.captivate.fm/episode/verity-allan","audio_url":"https://op3.dev/e/episodes.captivate.fm/episode/fa39936f-12ab-492a-9b40-49ee1ac25d24.mp3","summary":"Today we’re joined by Verity Allan, who works as a project manager, developer, and programmer of architecture and software for the Square Kilometre Array, which will be the world's largest radio telescope. A graduate of Cambridge, Oxford, and The Open University, Verity came to Cambridge from a town in the Midlands to study Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.   How did she go from studying ancient languages, to coding, designing security for telescope software systems, and pursuing a PhD in high performance computing for astrophysics? These are just some of the twists and turns we hope to explore in our chat with Verity.  Stay with us. Useful Links: Explore | SKAO - Learn more about the two largest telescope arrays in the world Ross Anderson's book on Security Engineering, mentioned by Verity, is available at https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/archive/rja14/book.html (all three editions plus some videos) Verity wrote two papers on the history of scientific computing: The Cavendish Computors: The women working in scientific computing for Radio Astronomy and Scientific Computing in the Cavendish Laboratory and the pioneering women Computors Learn more about Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics - The University of Manchester and about our Astrophysics work in Cambridge . Share and join the conversation Help us get better by taking  our quick survey . Your feedback will help us understand how we can improve in the future. Thank you! If you like this episode don’t forget to rate it and leave a review on your favourite podcast app. It really helps others to find us. Any comment about the podcast or question you would like to ask our physicists, email us at  podcast@phy.cam.ac.uk  or join the conversation&n…","meta_description":"Today we’re joined by Verity Allan, who works as a project manager, developer, and programmer of architecture and software for the Squ…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2050,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/people-doing-physics-4852314/episodes/verity-allan-from-ancient-words-to-distant-worlds/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/people-doing-physics-4852314/verity-allan-from-ancient-words-to-distant-worlds.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}