Meet Your Future Panel Discussion

For several years FIAP and the APS Careers team have organized a panel discussion at the March Meeting with physicists working in the private sector. This year more than 250 students came to hear from these panelists:

Mike Matthews, AOSense, Director of Inertial Navigation, LI
Alexa Staley, Rigetti Computing, Quantum Engineer, LI
Daniel Sank Google, Quantum Electronics Engineer, LI
Christy Tyberg, IBM Research Manager, Novel Computing Technologies, LI

You can learn more about their background from the LinkedIn link at the end of each line. Each panelist gave a short self-introduction including how they arrived in their present job. The floor was then open for questions which continued for more than 90 minutes. Students raised many topics including how to prepare for an interview, work-life balance, and making contacts with physicists working in industry.

Steven Lambert, APS Industrial Physics Program Manager, opened the session with an overview of career opportunities, salary expectations, and APS career resources for physics majors and PhD students. The most important message is that there’s about 1800 new physics PhD’s every year, and about 300 academic openings. The good news is that industry wants to hire physicists, and APS has resources to help with that. There’s also many pathways for startups and entrepreneurs. Crystal Bailey, APS Careers Program Manager, commented on some of the questions including referrals to the APS Careers Webpage at http://www.aps.org/careers/. Check out those resources and prepare for your future!

Opinions expressed represent the views of the individual authors and not the American Physical Society or author’s employers.