In  this episode of ML4Q&A, Federico Grasselli (Postdoc, Bruss group) speaks to Kathrin Dorn, PhD student in the group of Reinhold Egger, head of the Institute for Theoretical Physcs IV in Düsseldorf. They talk about Kathrin's PhD project and how she started off to combine maths, physics and arts in her studies and ended up in analyzing theoretical aspects in topological insulators. 00:00 intro 00:56 searching for a study topic 02:50 from medical physics to condensed matter theory 05:50 joining the ML4Q cluster 08:42 plans for the future after the PhD 10:30 so what are topological insulators? 13:42 why are topological insulators an interesting field of study 22:25 where can we find topological insulators? 23:25 how about topological quantum computing? 25:00 how do you perceive the future of the field? 28:16 1 or 2? Visit https://ml4q.de/ml4qa/ for more podcast episodes Visit https://ml4q.de/stories/ for more stories from our researchers at ML4Q Follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/ML4Q_cluster Visit the homepage of Reinhold Egger's institute: https://www.tp4.hhu.de/en/ Contact Kathrin via E-mail: kathrin.dorn(at)uni-duesseldorf.de Host: Federico Grasselli Music: Technology by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music  promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0  International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Discovery by Scott Buckley | https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley  Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0  International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Title: Lunar Levitation Artist: Aakash Gandhi