In an interview for SPIE, 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.
[1] 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.
[3] She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Queen's 2018 Birthday Honours 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".
[13] 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.
[6] Her team successfully demonstrated dynamical tunnelling in a Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC) using a modulated standing wave.
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.
"[6] 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.
[21] Rubinsztein-Dunlop also conducts work in the field of biophysics, notably a study on vertigo and understanding the body's balance system.