Phiala Shanahan is an Assistant Professor at William & Mary. She is based in Boston. ^[1] Phiala was selected to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2018 for the Science category.

Phiala attended the University of Adelaide where she graduated with honors with a degree in High Performance Computational Physics in 2011 and a PhD in Theoretical Particle and Nuclear Physics in 2015. ^[1]

Shanahan was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researching the physics of atomic nuclei. She became an Assistant Professor at William & Mary in 2017. ^[1]