I was inspired by someone’s username and found this video. A video much like this one was one of the things that got me into studying physics to begin with over a decade ago.
The characteristic blue glow is caused by Cherenkov radiation, which is analogous to a sonic boom, but instead of a jet breaking the sound barrier, it’s charged particles moving faster than the phase velocity of light in a medium (normally water).
Pretty cool, I think.
You have a pretty badass academic and professional history! I’m very intrigued.
I have a few questions for you:
Your career path is basically what I’ve had in mind since I finished by bachelor’s. The idea has been to move into R&D or similar outside of academia, preferably in a leadership or management type role. I have a family member who was recently telling me about opportunities at national labs in the US, and it piqued my interest. I myself expatriated when I was young, but I might find myself back in the states sometime in the future. So being able to talk to you, now, is particularly relevant for me haha. Anyway, what has your experience been like in working for a national lab? I know that’s a broad question, but I have precisely zero background on what to expect should I pursue a similar path.
Thank you so much for taking the time to engage with us [read: me]. I do really appreciate it. And sorry for the wall of text!
My PhD was quite niche, so I am reluctant to be too specific about it in a public forum, however, I used phase field modelling to study second phase precipitation and growth in metals. Things like the effect of stress on chemical potential and thus growth of particles, nucleation, etc. Phase field is a mesoscale technique that you likely aren’t familiar with if you work in the chemistry arena, but it is cool! Other areas of modeling that my group works with includes DFT, MDC, KMC flavors, cluster dynamics, phase field fracture, machine learning and engineering scale finite element modeling.
Working in academia, national labs and industry all have their own sets of pros and cons. You have to pick the set that personally works best for you (best pros and most manageable cons). I will say at a national lab, if you want a leadership or management role in R&D, you will need a PhD, and at absolutely bare minimum a master’s to get your foot in the door. Plenty of bachelors and masters work to do as well but much less likely to have an R&D lead role. Citizenship is also a question. If you are American interested in a US national lab, great! If you are actually not a citizen any more that is more challenging, and depending on the country of citizenship, possibly impossible.
I enjoy working at the labs. There are a ton of brilliant people and the labs are an intersection of many slices including academia and industry. I enjoy that nexus environment. Others do not and prefer to be in a pure research space. Some labs are more applied and some are more basic science, so there is variety. Of course I have to deal with changing political winds affecting our work path sometimes, and reporting such that Congress won’t get a bee in their bonnet. But I don’t have to write endless proposals and I don’t have to rush teaching. I have plenty of mentoring opportunities available if I so desire. I get a ton of opportunities and also a lot of risk, but as I said, I have great people around me who support me in my work. I fit in to our lab mission and I find great satisfaction in that.
I wrote out a long reply but it got deleted :( The gist of it was that I think your work is very fascinating, and I want to thank you for sharing your experience with me. I have one last question for you before I leave you alone: How important would you say the topic of your PhD is in getting into the positions that you’ve held? I have the opportunity to work on some very interesting projects that aren’t necessarily related to my career interests, and I soon have to make a decision.
Thank you again for taking the time to filed my questions!
Oh bummer :(
Well, don’t take my advice as gospel truth. But in my experience when we are hiring post-docs (and doing my own post doc), we are looking for people who can execute a technical project quickly. So they have to have the technical skills to do something but don’t have to have the knowledge of the particular material system, which can be filled in with lit research and working with an advisor/supervisor. In my group, I would take a person who knows MD and not radiation damage physics versus someone who does know radiation damage physics but works in experimental characterization, for example. I’m not sure how that translates for chemistry - you may want to ask a few people for the specifics in the field.