The SUPA Careers Event 2016 took place at Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh on 6th December. In keeping with the format used successfully in the past, we had a range of speakers from various industries who gave a brief introduction and then took part in round table sessions where delegates had the opportunity to chat with the speakers, ask questions, and get an insight into a variety of career options.
The SUPA careers event is designed to demonstrate the wide range of careers open to people with a physics PhD. The 80 student attendees heard from nine speakers who have careers in everything from satellites to software start-ups, including academia, finance, patent law and medical physics. Following brief introductions, the speakers spent 10 minutes with small groups of students to discuss their careers in detail before moving on to speak to other groups.
CV clinics were provided by Vishanti Fox of the Institute of Physics (IoP), and careers advisors Keith Kilgore (HW), Helen Stringer (UoE) and Katrina Garder (UoG).
An exhibition of Scottish Physics employers included representatives from M2 Lasers, Textesor, Leonardo, Coherent and the IoP.
Robin Head |
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C. Robin Head has received both his MPhys and PhD in Physics from the University of Southampton, in 2010 and 2013, respectively. His PhD research was focused on optical trapping and optical sources for nanophotonics. An EPSRC doctoral prize fellowship enabled him to continue his work on ultrafast semiconductor disk lasers at the University of Southampton. C.R.H developed an interest in the commercialization of laser technology during a knowledge transfer secondment at M squared lasers in 2014 and work as a named researcher in the quantum technology hub for sensor and metrology in 2015. Since May 2016 C.R.H. is working in the innovation unit at M squared lasers as a laser engineer. |
Kym Eden |
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Dr Kym Eden works as a software engineer at Textensor, an Edinburgh based software start-up. He leads a team of engineers developing a collaborative document annotation platform. Kym received a PhD in biophysics from the University of Edinburgh in 2014. In addition to his PhD research studying the aggregation of protein fibres he developed his own electronic lab book and worked to create a "build your own supercomputer" project. Following his PhD he applied his knowledge of computer modelling to power networks before moving to Texensor. |
Rosalind Allen |
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Rosalind Allen is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Reader in Biological Physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy, Edinburgh University. Her research focuses on how microbes survive and grow in complex and changing environments, using experiments, theory and computer simulations. Rosalind studied chemistry at Cambridge University (1995-9), and did a master degree in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania (199-2000) before returning to Cambridge for a PhD in theoretical chemistry, simulating water flow in ion channels (2000-3). She did her postdoc on simulations of biochemical networks with Pieter Rein ten Wolde at AMOLF in Amsterdam, supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship, before moving to Edinburgh in 2006 as a Royal Society of Edinburgh research fellow and proleptic lecturer. She was awarded her Royal Society fellowship in 2008 and was promoted to Reader in 2013. |
Kate Adamson |
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Dr Kate Adamson is a trainee patent attorney at Marks & Clerk, which is the largest intellectual property firm in the UK. She is involved in protecting inventions in physics, electronics and engineering for a range of clients including universities, SMEs and large multi-nationals. After a degree in theoretical physics from St Andrews and a PhD in particle physics from Durham, Kate worked for nearly a decade as a physicist and engineer in the defence and telecoms industries before making the career change to train as a patent attorney in 2012 |
Anna Demming |
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Dr Anna Demming is editor of IOP Publishing’s nanotechweb.org. Her role includes content planning, site management, liaising with freelancers, writing news and feature articles, generating multimedia content and planning for the website redevelopment. She also works closely with IOP Publishing’s journal Nanotechnology copy writing editorials, web and brochure text, commissioning articles, identifying subjects for focus collections and review/perspective articles and representing IOP Publishing at international conferences and laboratory visits. She is also a freelance science and technology writer and editor and Member of the Association of British Science Writers.
Before joining IOP Publishing, she had worked for Nature Publishing Group, as Copy Editor for Nature Photonics, Nature China and RIKEN Research from 2006 to 2008, after obtaining her PhD degree in 2006 from King’s College London with the thesis titled Theoretical investigations of apertureless scanning near-field optical microscopy systems. Publications include A. L. Demming, F. Festy, D. Richards Plasmon resonances on metal tips – understanding tip-enhanced Raman scattering(2005) Journal of Chemical Physics, 122 184716 (80 cites); etc.
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Réjean Dupuis |
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Réjean completed his PhD in Physics in 2004 at the University of Glasgow focusing on data analysis and computational astrophysics within the Institute for Gravitational Research. He continued his research on gravitational wave astrophysics as a postdoctoral research fellow at Caltech until 2007 when he decided to move to quantitative finance.
In 2008, Réjean completed a one-year Master’s in Financial Engineering at the University of California Berkeley to formalise his Finance education. He joined Merrill Lynch as an equity derivatives researcher in 2008 and has been working at Morgan Stanley as a quantitative derivatives strategist since 2010.
Réjean’s current work focuses on understanding the dynamics of global financial markets with a specialty on volatility trading strategies.
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Christina Stewart |
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Christina Stewart completed her PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from Queen’s University Belfast in 2012. She then moved to Wolverhampton to study for a Masters in Clinical Science (Medical Physics ) alongside completing her training as a clinical scientist. Since 2014 she has worked for NHS Lothian as a Senior Medical Physicist. |
Euan McBrearty |
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Euan is a Project Manager at Clyde Space, an SME with a key focus on the design and manufacture of hardware for CubeSats, small satellites and nanosatellites. After completing a Bsc in Applied Physics at the University of Strathclyde, Euan worked for Quinetic and completed a PhD in Advanced Materials at the University of Nottingham. He then moved to Helia Photonics and worked to develop optical thin films. In 2014, he moved to Clyde Space where he works as a project manager for the Cube Sats project. |