Graduate School and Careers Day

Graduate School & Careers Day

Saturday, October 4, 2025, 12-6 pm ET

The APS-DPP Graduate School & Careers Day is an opportunity to learn about US graduate programs in plasma physics and the fusion sciences as well as about careers in private industry and national labs.  Learn about the graduate school application process, internship opportunities, and graduate fellowships, and network with other graduate students and early career scientists.


Keynote Presentations

The day will begin with 2 keynote presentations focusing on the graduate admission process and careers in general respectively:

Dr. Julie Yun, Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Princeton University, will begin with a presentation on the graduate admissions process. 

Video Slides

Dr. Midhat Farooq, Senior Careers Program Manager and Career Development Expert at APS, will follow with a presentation on the prospects of careers after undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics and STEM in general.

Video Slides

Graduate School & Careers Fair

Graduate schools with plasma physics programs, as well as plasma/fusion companies and national labs, will staff virtual booths featuring the research being done at each institution.  Participants are invited to "stop by" the booths and interact with the scientists, engineers, professors, admissions staff, and/or graduate students at each booth. Check out this spreadsheet for a list of institutions that offer plasma and fusion education, training and research opportunities.


Graduate Opportunities Panel

Students applying to graduate school seldom know about all of the fellowship and internship opportunities available for them.  Fellowships help cover tuition, sometimes provide extra stipends, give you more research and academic freedom when entering grad school, give you proposal writing experience, and, in general, look good on a CV. Internships provide students with the opportunity to conduct research at an academic institution, national lab, or industry, thus gaining valuable experience and training.
The Graduate Opportunities Panel features program officers from multiple federal agencies that provide support for plasma science and fusion energy research.

NSF GRFP Slides DOE Fellowships Slides DOE SCGSR Slides


Networking Session

To close off the day, graduate students and early career researchers from different institutions will lead breakout rooms that participants are invited to attend. There will be separate breakout rooms for graduate school, industry/national lab pathways, and former fellowship recipients. This will be a chance to meet future colleagues and ask them about the application process, experience with graduate school and employment, different fields of plasma and fusion, different institutions, etc.

List of panelists for the student networking session:

Dr. Ken Hammond: Research Physicist, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory 

Dr. Mrittika Roy: Adjunct Instructor in Physics, Kaiser University, Fort Lauderdale 

Dr. Mustafizur Rahman: Process Development Engineer, Lam Research Corporation 

Dr. Ravi Kumar: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Idaho National Laboratory 

Dr. Stephen Williams: Advanced Physicist, Honeywell 

Interested in featuring your institution at the fair?

For more information on each event, please contact us at: DPPEO@aps.org

Agenda

The 2025 APS-DPP Graduate School and Careers Day will be held entirely on Zoom. Please register for the event to receive the Zoom information using this link or by scanning this QR code:

Below is a tentative agenda:

Saturday, October 4, 2025. All times are Eastern Time.

12:00pm-12:10pm

Opening remarks by the Vice-Chair of APS-DPP, Prof. Carolyn Kuranz, Director, Center for High Energy Density Laboratory Astrophysics Research, Associate Professor, Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and Applied Physics

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
12:10pm-12:40pm Dr. Julie Yun, Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Princeton University
12:40pm-1:10pm Dr. Midhat Farooq, Senior Careers Program Manager and Career Development Expert at APS
1:10pm-1:30pm Break
1:30pm-3:15pm Graduate School and Careers Fair
3:15pm-3:25pm Remarks by the Chair of APS-DPP, Cameron Geddes, Director of the Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
3:30pm-4:30pm Graduate Opportunities Panel
4:30pm-6:00pm Networking Session