FWS Meeting Archives

Workshop: I Graduated - What Now?

A One-Day Workshop

Sponsored by the Far West Section of the American Physical Society (APS). Financial support for the workshop is provided by Insight Data Technologies and Agilent Technologies.

Insight Data Science Fellows Program – transition to a career in data science, data engineering or machine learning engineering.

Agilent is a leader in life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets. The company provides laboratories worldwide with instruments, services, consumables, applications and expertise, enabling customers to gain the insights they seek.

Date: July 7, 2018
Location: Kavli Auditorium in building 51, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
For: Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Cost: Free

Resources:

Students Working

Man pouring water as an experiment in front of the class

Students doing an experiment with a cup

About the Workshop

Employment opportunities for physics graduates (bachelor, master, or Ph.D.) are plentiful. The particular skill set that is necessary to graduate from a physics program is attractive to a diverse set of institutions and organizations. After college, you may find yourself working for a university, national laboratory, or the government. You might find yourself returning to high school as a teacher or, like the majority of physics graduates, enter life in private industry.

Many of you may have a fairly good picture of how life as a physicist would look in academia, since you are attending a college right now. However, only about 10% of graduates follow this career, another 10% go back to high school, but a whopping 80% follow different careers.

So what does it mean “to work in industry” or to “work at a lab”? To answer this question and to introduce you to more alternatives than what you may have thought of so far, the Far West Section of the American Physical Society is organizing a one-day event on July 7, 2018, held at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. This event will bring students of all levels together with professionals from academia, national laboratories, and industry.

The program will consist of presentations as well as informal networking opportunities. We will also offer a tour of the lab and show you the world’s first x-ray laser (LCLS). We will visit the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) as well.

We hope that this will be an informative day for everyone involved and it should be plenty of fun. The event is free, but we would like to ask you to fill out the registration information so that we know how many people will attend.

By the way, in case you found this page without being a member of APS, now is the time to join. Membership is free for students in the first year. Don’t forget to also join the Far West Section — which is free as well — when you sign up.

APS represents over 55.000 physicists world-wide and provides excellent networking opportunities to its members. Please visit the Join APS page to join.

Program Schedule

Program for career workshop at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, July 7 2018

9:30 - 10:00 a.m. Welcome and introduction.
Hendrik Ohldag 
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Career Workshop, "Put Your Science to WORK!"
Peter Fiske
PAX Water Technologies

12:00 - 1:00 p.m. Lunch (provided)

1:00 - 2:15 p.m. Panel Discussion 1
Moderator: Manuel Gnida, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Panelists: Patricia Sparks (Harvey Mudd College), Patricia Burchat (Stanford University), Roopali Kukreja (UC Davis), Auna Moser (General Atomics), Michael Matthews (AOS Sense), George Burkhard (Sinovia Technologies)

2:15 - 2:30 p.m. Break

2:30 - 3:45 p.m. Panel Discussion 2 
Moderator: Patricia Burchat (Stanford University); Panelists: Jason Hamm (Department of Defense), Sonja Grondalski (Physical Review Letters), Jess Roeder (Insight Data Science), Melissa Summers (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), Manuel Gnida (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory), David Bernstein (Morgan Lewis)

3:45 - 4:00 p.m. Break

4:00 - 7:00 p.m. SLAC Tour

Far West Section Logo

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Logo

Insight Logo

Agilent Technologies Logo