Miriam Cather Simpson is a New Zealand-American physics/chemistry academic and entrepreneur. She is currently a professor at the University of Auckland, a joint appointment between the physics and chemistry departments. She is the founder of the Photon Factory laser lab at the University of Auckland and the chief science officer for two spin-off companies, Engender Technologies and Orbis Diagnostics. She is an Associate Investigator for the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies and an Emeritus Investigator for the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. She was awarded the Royal Society Te Apārangi Pickering Medal in 2019. She has a strong focus on teaching, mentoring and public outreach and is an outspoken advocate for issues of gender equality and ethics in science.
Childhood and early life
The daughter of a United States military officer stationed in Frankfurt, Simpson was born in Germany. Her family moved to the US and back 16 more times before she finished high school. She attributes her adaptability as an adult to this experience. Simpson's mother had majored in art history at university and her father in English. There were no scientists in her family. As a smart student she was encouraged to study Latin and literature and pursue medicine or law.
Research career
University studies and postgraduate research
In 1983 Simpson gained a prestigious Echols scholarship at the University of Virginia, a unique undergraduate programme that encourages freedom of inquiry and critical thought. Her initial intention was to study medicine but the academic flexibility of the Echols programme allowed her to take a variety of subjects including history, civilisation and literature. As a first-year student she took an advanced biology course and was invited by her instructor Professor Richard Rodewald, to work in his cell biology lab over the summer. Professor Rodewald became her first science mentor and her experience in his lab convinced her to become a scientist. She investigated how new-born rats pull immuno-globulins out of their mother's milk and into their bloodstream, learning to design and test experiments and use equipment like electron microscopes. She graduated with a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies in 1986.
Simpson did her PhD in Medical Sciences at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine as a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow. She began her PhD research in cell biology on allergy-related receptors. She was in a MD/ Ph.D. programme investigating how molecules like histamine and serotonin get released from immune cells when they encounter ragweed and how the cytoskeleton of cells change shape during allergic reactions. Part way through her PhD studies Simpson moved from the medical school to a spectroscopy lab in the chemistry department at the University of New Mexico, shifting research focus and group. She gives two reasons for this shift. Firstly she says she needed to learn more about the mathematical aspects of physical chemistry to understand the problems in cell biology. Secondly she says she initially organised a three-month hiatus in the physical chemistry department to avoid the fallout of a controversy. During this time she got involved in laser spectroscopy to investigate the interactions between light and molecules. She planned to return to the medical school and join a new group after the three months but was so captivated by this topic that she never returned.
The focus of the remainder of her PhD research was the ultrafast vibrational dynamics of heme proteins, the oxygen-carrying molecules in blood. She developed a method to study the way molecules respond to light during the first picosecond after they are hit by a laser. She likens the method to stop-motion photography. First, you hit a molecule with a short, sharp laser pulse of light. Then, you take a series of spectroscopic “snapshots” to see what the molecule is doing with the energy it absorbs from the laser. Using this method she discovered that the heme molecules in blood absorb light and convert it into vibrations, essentially molecular-scale heat. She received her Ph.D. in Medical Sciences with a focus on the ultrafast vibrational dynamics of heme proteins in 1994. Understanding how molecules convert light into different forms has been the focus of Simpson's research ever since.