Tag Archives: physics

Lindau: Return to Nerd Heaven: Physics is like the Godfather and this is good

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Alaina G. Levine is live from the Lindau Conference

As I mentioned yesterday, even after I switched my major to mathematics from physics and astronomy, I couldn’t quite turn my back on this field. I’ve come to realise that there is a specific reason for this, and I think you’ll agree: Physics is like The Godfather – once you’re in, you can’t get out. Our knowledge of the universe, from the yotta to atto, is all tied to physics. Our entire existence is described by physics. You can’t get more powerful than that. So clearly, it’s is an entrancing field, and like the Godfather, there is literally no way to escape – you’ll die a member of La Famiglia de Fisica.

Lindau Island. Credit: CC-BY Edda Praefcke

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Return to Nerd Heaven: Lindau

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Alaina G. Levine is live from the Lindau conference

In 2012, I flew across the pond from the deserts of Arizona to the shores of Lake Constance on the German/Austrian/Swiss border. I wasn’t on holiday per se, but I might as well have been. When I arrived in the tiny hamlet of Lindau, Germany, I was met with two very sweet offerings: spaghetti ice cream and hundreds of nerds swarming the island town. I couldn’t have been happier.IMG_4306

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Women in physics: personal perspectives

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Sarah-Jane Lonsdale speaks to two senior female scientists in industry about their career paths

Guest contributor Sarah-Jane Lonsdale

The Institute of Physics ran an event in November 2015 targeted at PhD students and early career researchers on “Taking Control of your Career as a Female Physicist”. After the event, I spoke with Dr Valerie Berryman-Bousquet, R&D Manager at SHARP Laboratories, and Dr Jenny Wooldridge, Associate Programme Manager at the National Physical Laboratory, about their career paths in industry. After our first discussion, we continued our conversation.

Sarah-Jane Lonsdale

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Women in physics: personal perspectives

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Following the IOP’s “Taking Control of your Career as a Female Physicist” event, Dame Professor Athene Donald and Professor Val Gibson spoke with Helen Cammack about their careers within academia.

Guest contributor Helen Cammack

In my last blog post, I discussed career progression, publishing and gender equality with Professors Donald and Gibson. Here, we continue our conversation.

 

Did you relocate often as a postdoc?

AD: I moved around – I had a postdoc in the States, then returned to Cambridge. But at that stage I wasn’t really thinking about a career, so I wasn’t that bothered about what happened next. I didn’t intend to be an academic, so the pressure wasn’t on me. Nowadays everyone has to be calculating and publish in the right journals, and the pressure can detract from that freedom.

VG: When I was in my early career, I was just enjoying the moment, and I wasn’t thinking about my future career. The postdocs of today seem to more aware about career opportunities; they know that the majority of them won’t stay in academia; they’re looking around for what they would like to do and they’re picking up the skills they need for the future. It’s not just the academic side, it’s also the personal aspects – they’re concerned about getting on the housing ladder and potentially having families. At that stage those concerns never crossed my mind.

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Women in physics: personal perspectives

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Sarah-Jane Lonsdale speaks to two senior female scientists in industry about their career paths.

Guest contributor Sarah-Jane Lonsdale

The Institute of Physics ran an event in November 2015 targeted at PhD students and early career researchers on “Taking Control of your Career as a Female Physicist”. It was a rallying cry which attracted women in physics from all walks of life, working in both academia and industry.

As a first year PhD student, I attended the event hoping to explore possible career options in a supportive environment. My interest in engaging more women in science comes from several supportive female mentors that helped me through my formative years, both at school and as I honed my skills as an undergraduate. They facilitated my first steps into STEM and research, but not everyone has the same good fortune. I hoped to be able to share my experiences and support others, while hearing the inspirational stories of women who have “made it” in physics. After the event, I spoke with Dr Valerie Berryman-Bousquet, R&D manager at SHARP Laboratories, and Dr Jenny Wooldridge, associate programme manager at the National Physical Laboratory, about their career paths in industry.

Sarah-Jane Lonsdale

Sarah-Jane Lonsdale

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Women in physics: personal perspectives

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Following the IOP’s “Taking Control of your Career as a Female Physicist” event, Dame Professor Athene Donald and Professor Val Gibson spoke with Helen Cammack about their careers within academia.

Guest contributor Helen Cammack

Since I entered the third year of my PhD, my future career has been increasingly on my mind. I’ve been to a few careers events with stands full of free USB pens and glossy brochures, but always came away disappointed, unable to see myself in the roles they had advertised. The IOP’s careers event was different; there, people shared my aspirations and were sympathetic to my concerns. The opening talk by Prof Athene Donald was inspirational, and there was a variety of guest speakers who had used their physics training to build successful careers. I came away from the day with a new buzz, excited about my career possibilities.

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How to control your career as a female physicist

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Don’t let having a family restrict your future career goals, says Emma Chapman.

Guest contributor Emma Chapman

In November 2015, I gave a talk at the Institute of Physics’ “How to Control your Career as a Female Physicist” event for PhD students. After the talk, an attendee said she welled up hearing me recount my choice to have a child during my PhD. For this attendee, I was the first person to tell her she didn’t have to choose between a career she loved and the family she wanted to have soon. I remember that feeling.Illustration of a dome telescope in an observatory, and the planets in the sky. Space. Astronomy.

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Taking control of your career as a female physicist

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The Institute of Physics recently held an event on ‘Taking control of your career as a female physicist’. Naturejobs sent Jack Leeming to find out more.

Late, I sneak into the back of a room on the 4th floor of a conference centre in central London, where 70 young female physicists are listening to Professor Dame Athene Donald speak. I try not129692-compressor (2) to break their concentration as I find a chair. Professor Donald is relaxed and passionate, and manages to condense her advice – put into context through deeply personal, humorous anecdotes – into ten simple points to live by. Donald has had a hugely successful career (though, she admits, she is still embarrassed when people say it), making her way through the physics of metals and polymers, then the physics of food, then colloids, then starch, then proteins and
cellular biophysics, and finally ending up in her current area of the physics of biological and soft systems. She’s now the Master of Churchill College at Cambridge. It’s a quite the CV, and made all the more impressive by her achievements outside the world of academia.

Donald casually weaves her personal life into her career as she speaks. She has to leave early – her husband has been to the hospital recently for a bad leg, and still needs looking after. Her daughter did a placement when she was 17 and learnt a lot about office politics; apparently it was useful. Her message is one of pro-activity, self-confidence and overcoming failure. She’s been the gender equality champion for Cambridge University, has written for The Guardian, The Observer and The Conversation, and her blog ­– started in 2010 – has become enormously popular online. Somebody asks her what’s next. She says retirement. I don’t think anyone quite believes her. Continue reading →