This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features two conversations. The first is with career consultant Alaina G Levine who gives advice on how to build a “unicorn career” in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Our second guest is the optics and artificial-intelligence researcher Janelle Shane who writes extensively about the absurd, and often hilarious, side of AI.

Levine’s latest book is called Create Your Unicorn Career and Shane writes about artificial intelligence on her blog  AI Weirdness.

The post Finding careers in STEM and the weirdness of AI appeared first on Physics World.

Whether it’s cosmology, quantum mechanics or particle theory, most of us go into physics because we’re fascinated by the universe and its mysteries – and not because of the career options it might lead to. In fact, by the time you’re at university, you’re so snowed under with lectures, labs, coursework and tutorials – not to mention having fun – that there’s almost no time to think about what to do after graduating.

It doesn’t help either that most university staff are only familiar with careers in research, and so aren’t the best career mentors for physics students exploring the many options outside academia. That’s why Physics World has published countless careers articles over the years looking at what physicists do after they graduate – not just in research but also in industry, finance, teaching, IT and engineering. Each year we also gather many of these into our annual Physics World Careers guide – which includes a directory of employers seeking physics graduates.

But when the time comes to look for a job or plan your next steps, you won’t want to plough through every guide we’ve published. So to help you through the maze of options, this article brings together all our tips, information and help in one place. In today’s tough job market, a physics degree is an absolutely fantastic thing to have, giving you a deep technical knowledge and an ability to think rigorously. But before even starting to apply for jobs or courses, you first need to sit down and think hard about what it is that makes you happy and fulfilled in life.

Stop and think

As Crystal Bailey from the American Physical Society advised in a 2025 Physics World Live discussion “Not sure what to do with your physics degree? Our expert panel give their careers advice”, first ask yourself what it is you want for your career and your life. Do you prefer theoretical questions or practical problems? Do you like working alone or with people? Do you want a good work–life balance, a flexible schedule or just to make pots of money? “You need to understand what will be a good match for you,” she advises.

We suggest you do this kind of self-reflection long before you expect to graduate – don’t leave it to the last minute when you’re short of time. It also helps to make an audit of all the “soft skills” you have as a physicist, of which there are 16 different kinds. From being able to manage your time, knowing how to communicate or sort out conflict, these attributes are just as important to employers as your technical prowess.

The “hard” skills you gained while studying – such as knowing how to solve a differential equation or line up mirrors on an optics bench – are easy to provide evidence for, from the modules you took, or the lab work you did. But the other more nuanced and practical skills – such as presenting in front of your peers, writing reports or keeping to deadlines – are just as crucial.

While you’re still at university, it also helps to take advantage of the huge amount of talented people you’re surrounded by – or as Katie Perry, a physicist who works at the Daphne Jackson Trust, once put it, “network like crazy”. Scientific meetings, talks and conferences are a great place to do this, where our tip is to devise an “elevator pitch” – a short and pithy statement of who you are. If someone asks you about yourself, you can then confidently reel off a few well-considered words.

Networking doesn’t necessarily come easy so if you find it awkward, you just need to get out there and practise. As science communicator Claire Malone believes, networking doesn’t have to be scary and something that only super confident people excel at. Learn to ask questions, be a good listener, take an interest in other people – and remember to ask for their business card so you can contact them later.

And our final piece of advice before even brushing up your CV or creating a LinkedIn page is to get a sense of the current job market for physics. It always goes through ups and downs, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) causing huge uncertainty right now. But overall there are some constant characteristics to the physics jobs market, as you can find out in a 2023 Institute of Physics report, which is packed with information about the UK physics jobs market by size, location and salary.

From reflection to action

So now you’ve done all that self-reflection, analysed the job market, audited your soft skills, and had a go at networking, it’s time to start applying for things to do after you graduate.

A number of you might be considering a PhD and, if so, we have some specific advice just for you (see “The PhD pathway” box below). But more than half of today’s graduates move into the private sector and pursue industry careers instead. If that’s your target, plan ahead by spending a summer interning at a company and try to find the right mentor for you. It’s also a good idea to do some extracurricular activities beyond your core academic aims, which will help you develop a range of transferable skills that can help you switch into a different area beyond physics.

The PhD pathway

For graduates who choose to remain in academia, and have found a PhD position, resilience and critical thinking are key skills to have. While it can be exciting and fulfilling to do your own research for the first time, completing a PhD is challenging. Most people have tough moments during a PhD, but people don’t often share their difficulties and it’s easy to think you’re the only one struggling.

Creativity is the backbone of scientific success so, if you’re doing a PhD, take the time to have a break and let new ideas come to light. Things can go wrong – from funding cuts to global pandemics – and it’s important to make sure that you value your mental health and don’t burn out. If you are one of the many neurodivergent people in science, it’s a good idea to ensure you have the accommodations necessary for success, and to embrace your diversity and the unique perspective you bring to your work.

Once you have completed all your research and gathered your data, the final step is to write your thesis – which can be a particularly stressful task, so its important to find different ways to motivate yourself and complete that final hurdle. Even if you don’t stay in academia, a PhD will teach you a lot about how to get ahead under your own steam and complete a major piece of work on your own.

A degree in physics opens doors into many different fields, from nuclear energy to quantum and beyond (see “Across the physics careers spectrum” box below). You might also be keen to use your physics skills in a more lateral way, whether in scientific patent law or science communication. You may choose to be an entrepreneur and set up your own business or decide to teach future generations of physicists. Remember, if your original plan doesn’t pan out as you imagined, it’s never too late to take a risk and make a change even at a later stage of your career.

Across the physics careers spectrum

Green energy and sustainability: Physics graduates are ideally placed to tackle the world’s environmental challenges, with their technical knowledge and problem-solving skills. You can find out more about the physicists who are doing their bit to build a greener, more sustainable future in the field of decarbonizing energy sources.

Quantitative finance: With strong mathematical and analytic skills, physicists are a great fit for the financial world, and are often in high demand in quantitative finance in particular. Meet five physicists who pivoted to a career in finance, and explore what physics skills they use day to day.

Intelligence and cyber security: If a challenging but rewarding career is what you are looking for, you may want to consider a role in security. Here you can find out more about the careers of two leaders from GCHQ – the UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency – with a background in physics.

Medical physics: Medical physicists have a wide variety of roles across academia and industry. From clinical research and medical imaging to computational simulations and testing new scanners, many job options for medical physicists around the world are included here.

Quantum: The quantum sector is thriving and there are numerous roles across the four main pillars of quantum computing; quantum simulation; quantum communication; and quantum sensing and metrology. From industry to academia, government and policy, and education;  there are many ways to join the revolution.

Nuclear energy: With the push away from fossil fuels, there is a shortage of skills in the nuclear power sector. Here we speak to six physicists working across the nuclear energy industry – from design and construction, to safety and waste and beyond – highlighting how a background in physics can open many doors in this expanding sector.

The overall picture for all of you graduating with a degree in physics is positive. Physicists all over the world are keen to help solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges and help further our understanding of the universe at large. We hope that all of the resources above – alongside the annual Physics World Careers guide, the Physics World Jobs Hub and the Physics World LinkedIn page – will give you the headstart you need in planning your path and building a fulfilling career.

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The post From student to scientist – how to build a career with physics appeared first on Physics World.

When I went to university, I didn’t know what kind of career I wanted to pursue. I’d originally applied to study geophysics, but after a few weeks realized mineral exploitation wasn’t my thing and quickly switched to maths. Then, at the end of my first year, I had a range of degree options open to me and, whilst I preferred (and was better at) maths, I just didn’t feel it was my best choice for a career.

So I decided to switch again, this time to physics. During my degree, a few friends and I joined the Student Industrial Society (now known as the Bright Future Society). It gave us the chance to visit a range of companies – from micro-breweries and wine importers to TV studios, nuclear-power stations and semiconductor manufacturers. We also went to Llanwern steelworks in South Wales, where a closing session with a British Steel careers advisor really shook me up.

A feisty Yorkshireman, he started off by directly asking each of us what we planned to do after university. We were all put on the spot and our answers, which were embarrassingly unsure, failed to impress him. The advisor firmly suggested that if we didn’t know what our plans were by now, we had better find out before it was too late. For me, it was a wake-up call and when I got back to campus, I went straight to the careers office and started applying for summer student placements.

To my amazement, and despite my lack of experience, I was offered several positions and decided to take a summer job in Malvern at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, which is now part of the private defence-technology firm QinetiQ. Somehow, I managed to find something useful to work on and after 12 weeks had done enough to be as included as co-author on a peer-reviewed publication.

Summerlove sensation

After the placement, I continued with my physics degree, but began to feel something about physics wasn’t quite right for me. Whilst I loved the classical side of the subject and the real-world applications, I struggled with the less visible aspects, such as quantum and nuclear. So after a final-year project investigating the aerodynamics of cars – and finding myself more interested in my housemate’s mechanical engineering course – I wondered if I might be better suited to a career in engineering.

On the back of this growing interest, I applied to do a PhD in high-speed aerodynamics at the University of Southampton. My final-year project – coupled with my grounding in physics and the fact that I had a journal publication to my name – must have impressed my future supervisor, who picked me for the project. I had a great time on my PhD, which proved I loved engineering – particularly aerospace.

After four years in research, I realized an academic career wasn’t for me. But my PhD proved handy as it led to me getting a job with a small business called Stewart Hughes Ltd, which built vibration-monitoring equipment for use on mechanical machines. The company was looking for people with an academic background whose presence could help secure US government research funding. It turned out to be a sound strategy, as the firm built up a significant track record in winning high-value government grants.

My advice to you

These days I work a lot with interns and science or engineering students, who often ask me about my career path. As you can see, it wasn’t straightforward – and I believe a lot of people struggle making choices early in their careers. It’s easy to think you need to have everything mapped out in advance, which is rarely how things pan out. With that in mind, here are a few tips if you are starting out on your own career journey.

Doing the rounds

One interesting bit of advice was once given to me on a career session led by a senior human-resources executive who works for a global corporation. The exec told us how he’d been having a golf lesson and was about to hit the ball down the fairway when the coach stopped him and asked where he was aiming. After explaining he was hoping to land the ball on the green, the coach shot back: “Yes…but where exactly on the green?”

Set your goal, do your best to reach it, and don’t worry too much about potential pitfalls.

Obviously the exec said he wanted to get a hole in one, but he was also trying to avoid the bunker and the long grass. The coach went on to explain that golfers should aim at the target and not be distracted by obstacles. Stay focused and the ball will land at or near the target. The exec saw this as the perfect analogy for one’s career: set your goal, do your best to reach it, and don’t worry too much about potential pitfalls.

Now that’s easier said than done – in fact, my career journey has not been the epitome of this advice. There have been bumps and detours along the way, which haven’t necessarily been through lack of focus, but because it took me time to discover what I really wanted to do. To stretch the golf analogy to breaking point, my first green might have not been great, but I’ve certainly had fun making it round the course.

The post Honor Powrie: 10 things I wish I’d known (or done better) when I started my career appeared first on Physics World.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is globally recognized for its iconic space missions that push the boundaries of science and technology, whether it’s a rendezvous with a comet, landing a probe on Saturn’s giant moon Titan or mapping the stars of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail. But ESA does so much more than these headline-grabbing scientific and exploratory endeavours.

“Space is no longer solely a playground for curious minds,” says Eric Wille, ESA Head of the Opto-Electronics Section. “It’s really important for our everyday life too.” In fact, modern society relies on space technologies.

Satellite-based environmental monitoring, weather forecasting and global navigation are obvious examples, but there are many other important applications. For instance, the global financial system could not function without atomic clocks aboard satellites time-stamping millions of stock trades and digital payments every second. Similarly, when natural disasters strike, satellite networks become essential lifelines: mapping floods, tracking wildfires and helping with the co-ordination of emergency response efforts on the ground.

Fulfilling all of these roles and ESA’s bold space ambitions – from seeking answers to big questions about the universe to watching over our precious planet – requires a highly dedicated, technically proficient and multi-skilled workforce made up of scientists, engineers and various other professionals.

Diverse and challenging work

When Wille joined ESA as an optical systems engineer in 2009 after completing his PhD in experimental quantum optics, it was the sheer diversity of challenging work that attracted him. “Working in an international space agency, you’re partly a researcher, partly a project manager, partly also someone with ambassadorial skills,” he says. “That mixture is really something which I found at that time very attractive and I still like today, very much.”

Charlotte Pachot also craved a technically challenging role after her master in optics. She found it at Thales Alenia Space in France as a space engineer working on optical instruments. But after a few years, her interactions with ESA staff through joint projects convinced her to join the Agency as an optical engineer. She is now Lead Payload Engineer for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, intended for launch in 2035, which will be the first gravitational wave detector in space.

Both Wille and Pachot have found that the technically challenging work at ESA is particularly satisfying because it has real-world impact. The first 10 years of Wille’s ESA career were largely spent on Athena (Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics; now renamed NewAthena), a powerful X-ray observatory set to launch in the late 2030s that will provide fresh eyes on a wide range of hot and energetic processes in the universe.

In this role, Wille and the ESA team collaborated with an industrial consortium led by Dutch measuring instrument supplier cosine to develop a completely new type of optics, called silicon pore optics. Using techniques perfected by the semiconductor industry, cosine bonded and stacked many silicon plates on top of each other. By shaping the plates, a lightweight mirror to focus X-rays was created; in fact, 10 times lighter than the ones flying on current X-ray missions XMM-Newton and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Like Athena, LISA will also provide fresh eyes on cosmic events, but through the unique prism of gravitational waves. This will be achieved through a completely new approach involving a triangle of three satellites spaced 2.5 million kilometres apart.

Understandably, LISA calls for a unique optical bench, which Pachot is managing from design to manufacturing and testing. She sees her role as being like that of a conductor of an orchestra: a lot of her time is spent co-ordinating team members and partners, while also helping to solve technical, budget and schedule problems. For Pachot, tackling these daily friction points is part and parcel of working on real-world big science. “The instruments are very complex technically, very challenging, but they are also real pieces of hardware as part of a real project,” she says.

International community

As Wille and Pachot’s stories show, ESA selects talent from different career stages.  The Agency offers several programmes that support students, graduates and experienced professionals in finding the right role for their profile and interests.

For example, university students can benefit from ESA Academy sponsorship, such as participating in hands-on projects or training sessions. They can also join ESA as interns. Graduates can apply to ESA’s Graduate Trainee Programmes where they can gain experience on actual ESA projects and develop technical and professional skills. And for those currently in industry with less than three years’ experience, the Junior Professional Programme allows them to join ESA as staff members for four years and benefit from tailored learning and development opportunities to prepare them for a long-term position.

Whichever pathway they take, once new recruits get started in their first role, an excellent employment package – including competitive salary and pension scheme, hybrid working and flexible hours, and professional development training opportunities – comes as standard.

What sets ESA apart is the multicultural work environment. Team members might come from any of ESA’s 23 Member States and nine further Cooperating States and Associate Members.  And recruits can be based in more than nine locations in seven countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Spain and the UK). This makes for a melting pot of cultures.

“There’s a very lively expat community,” says Wille. “At the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) and other big sites, it’s like a small Europe.”  This cultural diversity is of course intentional. “The problems we have to solve require teamwork,” says Pachot. “And this is made easier at ESA because we all see problems in a different way depending on our culture.”

The post Careers at the frontier of space technology appeared first on Physics World.