291–300 of 333 posts
BSc in Physics, MSc in Math dropout PHD in high energy physics (needed the money) to work as data scientist on a major tv broadcaster in my country
I hear you, man. I hope that job is interesting, I would like to make that transition myself. Cheers.
My first post-doc was in laser-matter interactions. We had an experimental team that were focusing PWs of power on to ultra-thin films and separating the substance into its constituent parts (electrons and protons I mean). The plan was to increase the proton acceleration yields & make a consistent, tight bunch (in the energy spectra) so that we could use it for next generation cancer treatments. That's a long way off and no-one really has a good idea what else we can do with this system.
That annoyed me. There's not enough application or relevance there. So I've moved to Earth System science. I do a lot of global climate-economy coupled models & attempt to implement climate models with human decision making as a part of the system rather than some form of external forcing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bought Modern Classical Physics last summer as a birthday gift to myself and I am also slowly going through it.
Ex-PhD student in general relativity here, also slowly going thru that book. If anyone wants to start a reading (slack?) group together, I’d be interested. I have no one to talk to about this stuff IRL.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you have any interest in doing Haskell full-time? I know several well-funded companies looking for folks with similar backgrounds to yours, in SF, NYC, and London. Happy to connect you if you’re looking for something more interesting and possibly better pay.
Sorry to hijack the OP, but I am interested in companies in NYC doing Haskell. Would you mind sharing?
Physicist, working as a physicist (PhD 2015). Precision tests of gravity, primarily. We test the equivalence principle, Newton's inverse square law, hunt for exotic forms of dark matter, and build/invent cutting-edge sensors for LIGO. I have begun looking about at jobs outside of academia in order to decide whether to stay or go. Data science is one of the easiest transitions a physicist with data-analysis can make,…
> We test [...] Newton's inverse square law Imagine taking Newton down in the Replication Crisis Wars!
What we do is search for deviations from Newton's inverse square law. Depending upon the distance over which an experiment is performed, the ISL can be correct to a precision as high as ~10^-10 [1]. In particular, our group works to test whether the inverse-square law (or indeed gravity at all) happens as predicted at distances shorter than 100 microns [2]. It still amazes me that at distances shorter than half the diameter of a human hair, nobody has any idea whether gravity even happens.
Newton's early observations (and Kepler's) have been replicated many times -- there is no risk of a major replication-crisis upheaval there.
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0307284 (Figure 4)
Physicist, working as a physicist (PhD 2015). Precision tests of gravity, primarily. We test the equivalence principle, Newton's inverse square law, hunt for exotic forms of dark matter, and build/invent cutting-edge sensors for LIGO. I have begun looking about at jobs outside of academia in order to decide whether to stay or go. Data science is one of the easiest transitions a physicist with data-analysis can make,…
How about the going the other way? I'm an engineer (hydrodynamics and optimization, and econometrics way back before all that.. and.. aerospace before that) who just finished a PhD and who has been writing software professionally for a large-ish engineering-software-company for 5 years while working on said degree. I have a serious-for-an-amateur physics side habit and really want to bring my work and play closer tog…
That said, if one wanted to move toward LIGO from a software background, the chink in the armor is that the signal-processing is hard and computationally bound. Helping signal-analysis groups to find efficiencies there would have an impact.
I continue to keep an eye on quantum-computing infrastructure hires in the Seattle area -- so far, I've proven to be too physics-focused to want to work solely on provisioning the (awesome) cryostats that house the quantum-computing devices under test. That may prove to be a sub-optimal life-decision -- time will tell :).
BS in Applied Physics. I work at a national lab (9 years now, since I was 25) on astrophysics projects in a Physics division, but mostly I work on software for data management, workflow management, data access, databases (multi-petabyte distributed and otherwise), and sys admin stuff. Lots of python and java, lots of kubernetes as of late. I occasionally drop down to working on things related to data pipelines, mostl…
Where should people who are good at software development but don’t have physics degrees look for jobs where they can use their expertise to help science/academia rather than dating apps for dogs?
Edited: Re-reading batbomb's reply, I also remembered a friend who is currently a data scientist for a venture-incubator, but was previously at a national lab. Many of the projects he described were very cool, and challenging.
After grad school I got some very good advice from a mathematician: If you are good at math, don't go where they are good at math. He convinced me (and a few other phd physicists) to help him tackle the problem of industrial controls for heavy industry (think large refrigerated warehouses, steel refineries, food processing, etc.). We we're all graduating so we decided to give the startup route a try. Since then we've…
^This. LOL. IMHO a lot of opportunities arise at the borders between fields. This helped me put my finger on it; physics and its related math are a great basis for interdisciplinary work. Selling that idea to SW-company HR and hiring managers can be hard, in my experience, but startups more often benefit from versatile employees early on. Cool business idea BTW!
Realized during my first postdoc that I wasn't going to make faculty in my desired geography, so took a second postdoc to buy time to figure out how to pivot. Worked at a couple hardware startups that didn't work out (one failed and one had R&D eliminated by acquiring company). After the second layoff, with a 5 month old, I looked to transition to something in my city (NYC) that was far more stable and safe. Now I do…
> eyesight has changed dramatically Like how much are we talking here? Do you feel like you've found strategies to mitigate that?
Such lenses will "push out" the focal distance of your screen, so it is optically closer to infinity. If you already wear negative-diopter glasses, for nearsightedness, you can get a milder negative prescription for close work or check out the new "computer" lenses that are multi-focal and give you different zones for nearer, farther, and in-between.
Your eyes "work" to focus more closely-in, via contraction of the relevant muscles to thicken the lens. So prolonged close-work, such as with a computer, will cause fatigue and eye strain. There is also decent evidence, though it is debated, that prolonged exposure results in a trophic response and acquisition of myopia (nearsightedness). I've seen this empirically multiple times.
Wearing glasses for nearsightedness while you're doing close work is a double-whammy. They make things look even closer. At the minimum, don't wear these glasses if you don't need them at the computer.
Hope this helps!
BTW if you don't entirely trust ergonomic advice from a random dude on the internet, your local optometrist can help. There is a type called (in the US) a "behavioral optometrist"; these folks generally are more focused on optimizing for occupational needs like this, vision therapy etc.
PS. Hey, just realized this is a physics audience! You guys can figure this all out yourselves with the thin lens equation... :)
I received my Ph.D. in physics from Georgia Tech in 2010 doing computational studies of synchronization of coupled neurons. After a year in industry, I went off to build my own startup. It was in the social, music sharing space. I was not able to raise money, joined a startup and have been doing software engineering for the web ever since. Recently, I've been learning ML in my spare time, it seems to be a nice inters…
A friend (also a physicist, though harder-core) who is a now a data scientist opined to me that the current wave of cross-trained data scientists will be replaced by "kids with their new data science degrees from new data science programs". He didn't mean this ill, but simply thought there was a window of time to make a shift.
Your comment implies you are actually seeing relevant benefit from people with more diverse experience. Can you elaborate? Do you mean lots of hands-on data science per se, or simply a broader practical experience?
Edited: for formatting