On the 6th of March, I attended the first Postgraduate Women in Physics workshop, held in Nottingham and brilliantly organised by Lizzie Elmer, Amy Whitney, Emily Tyler, and Hannah Coleman, with support from Dr Clare Burrage. Huge thanks to them and to everyone who made it happen, and I look forwards to future conferences.
Oh and I brought a poster with me on the topic of Hydrogenic entanglement, which is the theme of our recent paper. Check it out below. I was delighted to receive a prize for this poster, huge thanks to the organisers for this honour!
The best thing about the day was the number of diverse and interesting talks. The speakers had all completed PhDs in physics, but then went on to do vastly different things.
Dr Emma Bradshaw spoke about her career with the BBC, where her knowledge of statistics turned out to be useful for optimising the iPlayer recommendation algorithm. It’s really cool to see that a science PhD can lead to this.
Next up, Dr Susha Parameswaran spoke of her journey from a PhD to a lecturer position at the University of Leeds. Her path spanned multiple countries and both highlights and challenges.
After that, Dr Camilla Schelpe gave an overview of her career in finance and of skills and knowledge required for a job in quantitative finance. It was comforting to hear that even time spent as a postdoc in academia provides you with skills that are valued in this branch.
Professor Helen Gleeson then gave a hugely inspiring talk about how how she went from one of the first women faculty to head of department. Her most valuable advice was to ensure that any changes that you are able to institute have to be deeply embedded in the structure of the organisation, otherwise they risk being undone by a less keen successor. She also noted that real change requires society to change, especially regarding gender stereotypes, for both girls and boys.
It was also very interesting to hear from Dr Devasuda Anblagan who started off with medical physics and now works in the NHS. Her talk was packed with useful advice for how to identify the properties of an occupation that you value, and how to ensure that your life is balanced with this in mind.
And finally, Dr Jess Wade gave an overview of her research and outreach work, including her brilliant work on writing biographies for women on Wikipedia. The advice that stuck with me is the following: When doing outreach, make sure you do something that is big and scalable, something that reaches many people. Work smarter, not harder.
The day was concluded by a Q&A with most of the speakers. It was a truly inspiring day, and I even connected with a PhD student in York that I had met five years ago. Her name is Vilasini Venkatesh, check out her work and her awesome music.