Sabrina Gonzalez-Pasterski is a theoretical physicist leading the Celestial Holography Initiative at Canada's Perimeter Institute. Born in Chicago to Cuban-American lawyer parents, she took her first flight lesson at age 9 and spent ages 12-14 building a single-engine Zenith aircraft that helped her get off MIT's waitlist after being initially rejected.

After earning her physics degree from MIT and PhD from Harvard in 2019, she became the first woman to chair the annual Strings Conference and graduate number one in MIT physics. Her groundbreaking work on gravitational memory effects caught Stephen Hawking's attention, leading to citations in his 2016 papers.

The conversation explores her journey from aerospace engineering to theoretical physics, her research on encoding the universe as a hologram, and her views on AI's role in accelerating scientific discovery. She discusses the challenges of balancing public recognition with academic credibility and her decision to join the Perimeter Institute over traditional university positions.

From Flight Lessons to Airplane Building at Age 12

Sabrina's physics journey began with flight lessons at age 9 after asking for a 'flying broomstick' like Harry Potter, leading her parents to substitute flight training for the impossible request.

Between ages 12-14, she built a single-engine Zenith CH-601XL in her garage, learning systematic engineering approaches that would later influence her theoretical physics methodology.

The airplane project emerged from networking at air shows where mentors suggested building a kit plane as a way to stand out for selective high school admissions at Illinois Math and Science Academy.

Her father, a public defender with an electrical engineering background, provided hands-on guidance while her EPA lawyer mother supported the unconventional project for their only child.

MIT Admission Through Strategic Networking

Initially rejected by Harvard and waitlisted at MIT, Sabrina used childhood networking skills to lobby for admission, carrying photo books of her airplane build to faculty meetings.

"I had little business cards back in the day... you had little photo books of the plane, little business cards and thinking of who you want to meet" - Sabrina describing her systematic approach to networking as a teenager.

Her parents would drop her off at MIT hallways where she would patiently wait to meet faculty members, using the airplane project as her calling card for introductions.

The strategy worked when faculty members vouched for her to admissions, demonstrating how the airplane build served as tangible proof of her engineering capabilities.

Discovering Gravitational Memory Effects

Gravitational memory effect describes how colliding massive objects create permanent indentations in spacetime fabric that remain until disturbed by other events.

"There's a relationship between this distance changing and the kind of net kinematics of the amount of energy in the things that were scattering" - Sabrina explaining how detector movements reveal collision properties.

Her variant focuses on angular momentum loss rather than energy loss, connecting spinning particles to gravitational wave signatures through mathematical symmetry frameworks.

The discovery emerged from applying classical radiation theory - when charges accelerate they emit radiation - to gravitational systems using gauge theory principles.

Stephen Hawking cited her solo and joint papers in 2016, with her dissertation becoming only the second Harvard physics PhD published in Physical Review.

Celestial Holography: Encoding Reality as 2D Projections

Celestial holography attempts to describe all 4D spacetime physics through equivalent 2D boundary theories, similar to how holograms encode 3D information on flat surfaces.

"Can I convert everything to variables on that celestial sphere? And does that help me organize some scattering computations?" - Sabrina describing the mathematical framework's practical applications.

The approach builds on successful holographic dualities from string theory and black hole physics, extending them to flat spacetimes relevant for particle collider experiments.

If successful, the framework could unite quantum mechanics and general relativity by showing both emerge from the same underlying 2D boundary description.

The work aims to find mathematical consistency principles that constrain possible theories of quantum gravity, rather than solving specific equations.

AI Revolution in Physics Research

Sabrina initially feared AI hype would lead to overselling physics capabilities, but now embraces tools like Claude Code for democratizing research capabilities.

"Within a few weeks, I could basically redev the same thing with Claude Code, which is amazing" - describing how AI eliminated her need to hire development teams for physics software projects.

She envisions using large language models to parse the entire physics literature database (Inspire) to better understand conceptual connections across papers.

AI tools enable individual physicists to pursue systematic computational approaches previously requiring large teams, potentially accelerating discovery timelines.

The technology allows researchers to escape traditional resource limitations that confined them to narrow specializations within their fields.

Perimeter Institute: Research Without Teaching

The Perimeter Institute, founded by BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis, operates as a private-public partnership dedicated solely to theoretical physics research.

Sabrina chose Perimeter over a traditional university position, valuing the research-focused environment over the prestige of Ivy League teaching roles.

"It's neat because you can imagine if you cared about the product, you care about research, having something where the whole institution is dedicated to that" - explaining Perimeter's singular focus advantage.

The institute allows faculty to guide institutional direction rather than serving on committees unrelated to their research interests.

Faculty mentor master's students and collaborate on positioning the institute for partnerships with tech companies developing AI for physics applications.

Resources Mentioned

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson (1962) was discussed as an example of early environmental warning, where her predictions about pesticides were initially dismissed but later vindicated, illustrating how scientific warnings can be overlooked before being proven correct.