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Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

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Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#51

Post by whatshisface »

fearhugs wrote: post #44

(HEP Phd, finishing) I'll also be joining the data science world. There's some debate about whether it's the best or worse time ever to be in particle physics. Either way I see a field that is overstaffed. Add to that the fact that CERN accelerators are shut down for two years and we're in the middle of the european strategy review. Seems like a good moment to take some time out

My prediction is that the stagnation of physics will continue until the money and prestige has dropped to 1800s levels. Then, the only people who do it will be "true" in that they are motivated purely by curiosity. At that point the next set of breakthroughs will come around because all of the emotional and funding-treadmill induced blindspots that we have presently will be gone. Of course this is assuming that somehow the experiments can be kept up even through the funding decline.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#52

Post by vijayshankarv »

megnaro wrote: post #16
musgravepeter wrote: post #12

(PhD, 1996 in general relativity) Embedded graphics drivers for real-time systems. I keep the physics part of my brain alive by developing physics based Unity assets (nbodyphysics.com) and supporting a package for GR on github (grtensor). I still buy WAY too many physics books. Current aspiration is to work through "Modern Classical Physics" Thorne/Blandford.

I bought Modern Classical Physics last summer as a birthday gift to myself and I am also slowly going through it.

Oh wow! This looks like the physics book that I always wanted to read. Phd 2016 in condensed matter physics - now working in a mid-size (~600 people) software company as a data scientist.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#53

Post by fearhugs »

mjburgess wrote: post #13
PaulHoule wrote: post #10

When I got my PhD (1999) the American Physical Society said that you had a 2% chance of getting a permanent job in the field with a PhD. At that point you are not being judged on your merits but on your connections, ability to navigate politics, etc. (The job is way too valuable compared to the value you can give to it.) I saw a postdoc who is now rather well known struggling with anxiety over his career even though…

> I'd come to the conclusion that many papers involving "power law" distributions were bogus > after he had tenure, that he published something about it in a statistics journal If I'm reading you right, you're saying he struggled for awhile doing bogus things only to question those things outside the relevant field? (Also, can you say more about power law papers..?)

I read the comment as saying that the postdoc kept his reservations about power law distributions to himself until after he had tenure, so as to not upset the applecart I suppose... ?

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#54

Post by pacman128 »

PhD in physics, then visiting prof for EE/CS dept at major univ for a year, then CS prof for 10 years at 2nd tier univ, then software developer for last 19 years.

I don't regret getting the PhD. Always was very interested in physics and learned a lot. Did a lot of computational work which helped with the transition to software. I still use the problem solving and some of the math I learned for physics.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#55

Post by stargazer-3 »

Finished an astrophysics PhD (observational studies of massive star formation in the Galaxy) and switched to a Data Engineering job half a year ago. Post-PhDs becoming data scientists is still a big thing, as career options are very limited.

The field was really interesting, but building a carrier in it is a pure lottery - hard work and talent alone won't cut it, you need connections, politics, and salesmanship skills to get a permanent job.

On top of that, there were probably only three job openings a year (in the whole world!) that I was a good fit for. Money factor did not come into play at all - junior dev salary is often lower than the postdoc one.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#58

Post by vijayshankarv »

Condensed matter physics PhD (2016) now working in the software industry as a data scientist.

Focused on modelling/simulating materials during my thesis and realized that I loved the software aspect of things and did not love working on the same problem for many months at a time.

As others mentioned, transitioning to data science is not that hard if you have a physics background and there are many interesting problems to solve in the area.Most of my graduate student peers are also in data science/ML and related areas (software/finance).

Although money was a contributing factor, the main reasons to leave academia were being able to live in a city that I liked and where my partner could also find a position.

Did not look back on physics at all for the first couple of years post-PhD, but missing it quite a bit nowadays. End up buying a lot of Physics books every year, although don't get through many of them. Latest purchase was Exercises for the Feynman lectures.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#60

Post by vanderZwan »

physics137 wrote: post #43

I'll leave this here, since many comments are about the transition from physics to data science. "For now, however, in hard-core physical science at least, there is little evidence of any major BD-driven breakthroughs, at least not in fields where insight and understanding rather than zerosales resistance is the prime target: physics and chemistry do not succumb readily to the seduction of BD/ML/AI. It is extremely r…

> For now, however, in hard-core physical science at least, there is little evidence of any major BD-driven breakthrough

> Yet, this is precisely what is advocated in the less theoretically grounded disciplines of biology and medicine, let alone social sciences and economics. The oft-repeated mantra of the life sciences, as the pursuit of ‘hypothesis driven research’, has been cast aside in favour of large data collection activities

The thing is, I've just spent two years working for molecular neurobiologists in the field of Single Cell RNA Sequencing, and large data collection has definitely lead through tons of breakthroughs there.

We can now classify cell types based on gene activation, on top of the previously existing morphology and location the cells are found. That can then be used to discover new subtypes, the origins of cells during embryonic development, and even predict which cells will evolve into others[0][1][2][3]. All of this requires vast amounts of data to ensure there is enough statistical power. In fact, the insistence on using unbiased samples before applying clustering algorithms is a big part of overcoming biases based on pre-existing expectations.

(Also, may I request that you edit your comment and break up that block of text into sub-paragraphs, for the sake of readability?)

[0] http://mousebrain.org/

[1] https://linnarssonlab.org/osmFISH/

[2] http://gioelelamanno.com/post/velocitynature/

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05882-8

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