Maïté Dupuis: Exploring physics, inspiring minds

When Maïté Dupuis was an undergraduate in Lyon, a professor suggested she look into a summer internship being offered at Perimeter Institute. The idea terrified her.

Growing up in the French city of Besançon, Dupuis had developed an affinity for science and math, but she thought her professor was over-estimating her potential.

"I didn’t know what it meant to be a physicist at the time," recalls Dupuis.

But she was fascinated by the idea of a place custom-built for cutting-edge science, so despite her trepidation she boarded a flight for Canada in the spring of 2016.

"When I came to Perimeter, I saw blackboards full of equations, people collaborating, and asking questions,” she says. “It was fascinating. I thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’"

She has fulfilled that wish. Dupuis is now Perimeter’s Director of Training, Educational Outreach, and Scientific Programs. It’s a role that allows her to welcome new trainees to the Institute – many of whom arrive with the same nerves and imposter syndrome she felt – and to help guide their paths from students to scientists.

Perimeter Institute was founded on three pillars – research, training, and educational outreach – and Dupuis is deeply involved in all three.

As a researcher, Dupuis is zeroed in on one of the most fundamental and vexing problems in all of science: a unified theory that harmonizes Einstein’s general relativity with the rules of quantum mechanics.

"Quantum gravity is about finding the atoms of spacetime," Dupuis explains. "The same way matter is made of atoms, we’re trying to understand the quantum geometry that underlies space and time itself. Perimeter is a hub for quantum gravity. Most people in the field have some connection to this place, whether as a student, postdoc, or visitor. It makes a dynamic environment.”

Dupuis specializes in a subfield called loop quantum gravity, which treats spacetime as a dynamic entity rather than a fixed background. Her work aims to identify the fundamental degrees of freedom of spacetime and quantize them, to see how quantum geometry may manifest as “atoms” of spacetime.

She balances her research with the demands of overseeing Perimeter’s educational outreach and training programs, which welcome hundreds of participants from around the world every year.

"Educational outreach is about really bringing science and the excitement of science to the classroom. We focus on training teachers who can bring modern physics into their classrooms."

The EinsteinPlus program, for example, provides high school teachers with immersive, hands-on physics teaching tools that the participants take back to share with their students and colleagues. Hundreds of teachers and innumerable students have explored advanced physics topics in novel ways through this and other Perimeter outreach programs, says Dupuis.

"Educational outreach is important because it helps people understand what science is, what it brings to society, and why it matters. If people understand science, they can trust it better and engage with the world more thoughtfully."

The part of her job that gives Dupuis the deepest satisfaction is mentoring and supporting students in Perimeter’s master’s and PhD programs. Dupuis taught graduate courses for years, getting to know each class of brilliant young physicists who come to Perimeter from all over the world.

"I love working with students and helping them transition from structured learning to research, where they have to figure out their own questions and trust their abilities,” she says.

"When you’re a PhD student, there’s no step-by-step guide like homework. You have to explore directions, find resources, and decide if you’re on the right path. It’s not always easy."

Nothing in Dupuis’ journey so far has been easy; she is drawn to theoretical physics partly because it is so challenging. Her scientific journey so far – from student to researcher to teacher to leader – has shown her that the biggest challenges often produce the greatest rewards.

“Science is about being curious, asking big questions, and discovering something no one has seen before,” she says. “It’s a process of learning and growing, even when the challenges are difficult.”