There isn’t one single ‘early career experience’ in physics, and different subfields involve very different opportunities and challenges. Seven early career physicists who work on a range of research topics in different subfields discuss their views on the lessons we can learn from their professional lives.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$99.00 per year
only $8.25 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Moravec, E., Czekala, I. & Follette, K. The early career perspective on the coming decade, astrophysics career paths, and the decadal survey process. Astro2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics, APC white papers, no. 8; Bull. Am. Astron. Soc. 51, (2019).
Severin, A., Strinzel, M., Egger, M., Domingo, M. & Barros, T. Characteristics of scholars who review for predatory and legitimate journals: linkage study of Cabells Scholarly Analytics and Publons data. BMJ Open 11, e050270 (2021).
Acknowledgements
C.-H.F. acknowledges the financial support of JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists (20K15477), Leading Initiative for Excellent Young Researchers (LEADER) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) (2020L0277), FY 2021 President’s Discretionary Grants, funded by Kitami Institute of Technology, Special Postdoctoral Researcher Program at RIKEN, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (JSPS no. 16F16104), National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 31501550), Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Provincial Department of Education (no. 16ZA0033) and Exploratory “Collaboration Seed” fund at Riken. E.M. acknowledges all the early career researchers that attended the Early Career Focus Session at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in October 2018. Many of the points and themes in this viewpoint expressed by E.M. were inspired by the discussions that happened at this focus session and the consequential write-up. E.M. acknowledges the Heising-Simons Foundation for the funding for the Early Career Focus Session. E.M. also acknowledges the work of astronomers that have organized sessions at the American Astronomical Society and the European Astronomical Society meetings in the past two years to discuss topics concerning early career researchers in the field. T.N. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation through grant 185050. T.R. acknowledges support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI, MCI, Spain) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER, UE), under project PACSS (RTI2018-093732-B-C21/C22), the Maria de Maeztu Program for Units of Excellence in R&D (MDM-2017-0711) and support from the Polish National Science Centre under grant no. 2019/32/T/ST2/00133. O.R. acknowledges the support of the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. L.A.W. acknowledges support from NSFGRFP, CiQM.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Chao-Hui Feng
Chao-Hui Feng has expertise in estimating meat quality by using hyperspectral imaging and terahertz spectroscopy, modifying natural hog casing by using surfactant solution and lactic acid, and applying an innovative cooling method (immersion vacuum cooling) to meat products. She has been invited as Guest Associate Editor for Frontiers in Plant Science, the Editor for the upcoming publication The Book of Flavonoids, obtained 39 awards and 12 patents.
Emily Moravec
Emily Moravec is a postdoctoral researcher at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and a support scientist at the Czech node of the European ALMA Regional Centre. She received a B.A. from St. Olaf College in 2014 with a major in Physics and a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2019 in Astronomy. In 2020, she moved internationally to start her first postdoc in Prague, Czech Republic and will be starting her second postdoc at Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, USA in November 2021. Dr. Moravec is a radio astronomer who investigates the evolution of active galaxies. Her specific research interests are active galactic nuclei, radio galaxies, galaxy clusters and radio interferometry. Beyond research, Dr. Moravec is interested in science policy and providing early career scientists with resources to succeed in the field.
Tara Nanut
Tara Nanut completed her studies at the University of Ljubljana. Her graduate work was done in the scope of the Belle and Belle II Collaborations in Japan. Afterwards, she moved to the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, where she conducts research within the LHCb Collaboration at CERN.
Tomasz Raducha
Tomasz Raducha is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems in Spain investigating complex adaptive systems. He obtained a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Warsaw in Poland. Currently, he is a member of the CSS Council, steering committee of the WWCS and a former member of the advisory board of the yrCSS.
Orad Reshef
Orad Reshef is a research associate working with Professor Robert W. Boyd at the University of Ottawa and the co-founder of Brilliant Nanophotonics Inc. He has recently been selected as a member of the 2021 class of OSA Ambassadors.
Chandrasekar Sivakumar
Chandrasekar Sivakumar received his Masters in Physics from SRMV College of Arts and Science affiliated to Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physics at National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan. He is an elected member of the executive committee of the student chapter in the Physical Society of Taiwan and a student ambassador of the American Physical Society.
LaNell A. Williams
LaNell A. Williams is a Ph.D. student at Harvard University studying soft condensed matter physics. Born and raised in Memphis, TN, LaNell graduated with her B.A. in Physics at Wesleyan University and went on to receive her M.A. from Fisk University. She is a member of the Equity and Inclusion Committee in Harvard’s Department of Physics. As the founding member and chair of the Society of Underrepresented Students in STEM, she passionately advocates for creating meaningful resources to support under-represented researchers in pursuit of physics. She is also the co-founder of the Women+ of Color Project (WOCP), an initiative geared towards providing women of colour with resources on graduate school. In 2020, she was elected as Councillor of the Forum on Graduate Student Affairs (FGSA) and the Forum on Early Careers (FECS) and also joined the APS-IDEA steering committee.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Feng, CH., Moravec, E., Nanut, T. et al. The spectrum of early career physics. Nat Rev Phys 3, 772–776 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00379-2
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00379-2
