The APS April Meeting 2020 was originally planned to take place 4/18-4/21 in Washington, DC. However, because of safety restrictions as a result of the coronavirus, the meeting transformed into the APS Virtual April Meeting, which went very smoothly considering the short amount of time the APS staff had to plan it. FECS hosted one invited session there, which focused on career path options inside and outside of academia. Once you log in with your APS username and password, you can watch the session at https://aps-april.onlineeventpro.freeman.com/live-stream/15336077/B08-Invited-Session-A-Sampling-of-Career-Paths-Available-for-Early-Career-Scientists.

The title for the session was “A Sampling of Career Paths for Early Career Scientists”, and I chaired the session. Dr. Ajinkya Kamat, a postdoctoral associate at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT, talked about transitioning from pure science research to technology policy research. He also reported on the interesting interdisciplinary research he has been doing, which is well served by his physics background. Dr. Daniel Berdichevsky, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, spoke about changing from academia to a contracting employment. He told of his interesting and somewhat unpredictable experiences that led to the transitions and milestones in his varied career, and he shared the wisdom he gleaned from all these. Our third invited speaker had to cancel due to extenuating circumstances.

On average, we had 100 viewers in the virtual audience throughout the session, which is many more than our sessions normally have at in-person meetings! We also had many good questions the audience chatted to me, and we actually ran out of time to address them all. Some of the viewers connected with one of the speakers after the talk to ask further questions. Overall, judging from the viewers’ comments in the chat, they found it insightful and beneficial. I am glad that FECS and APS were able to host useful sessions in spite of the pandemic.

Dr. Ajinkya Kamat giving his virtual talk