Eoin Ó Colgáin

What were the main “career decision” milestones in your life so far?

Despite studying science and mathematics in secondary school, a career in law was beckoning until on a Maths/Physics open day at Trinity I was enchanted by some dry mathematical wit, a calculation of the solar mass from simple principles and a tour around a magnetism lab.

Something clicked and despite having to climb over a few hurdles, PhD being one of many, I am still living a small adventure every day.

Who are the people who most influenced your career direction?

Without doubt my PhD supervisor. I thank him for introducing me to the dark arts of intricate calculation, sharing his Latex template and the collaboration that led to my first paper.

Finding my own questions took more time, but his perspective is invaluable from time to time. But we all have to leave the nest at various stages in our lives, so I try not to bother him too much these days.

Does your job allow you to have a lifestyle you are happy with?

Yes! One can find paper and pen, blackboard and chalk in a host of wonderful locations worldwide. In the last year alone, I have been to Seoul, Mumbai, Barcelona, New York, Dublin and Oviedo, Spain where I now based. I am currently looking for a summer conference with a nice beach.

Describe a typical day

There is rarely a typical day. Outside of nitty-gritty calculations, seminars are attended and occasionally presented, discussions happen with coffee and cake often being good catalysts, conceptual difficulties get resolved and my Latex file expands. I also get out for a run when I get too burned out and algebra starts to disown me. Today editing this piece is less than typical.

What are the main tasks and responsibilities?

Writing papers, giving talks, hosting journal clubs where we dissect recent papers and generally trying to get as much exposure for my current employer as possible.

What are the main challenges?

Writing a paper boils down to finding a new question. As with Goldilocks, it can’t be too easy or  too difficult, it has to be just right, right in the sense that I can bring it to some conclusion in finite time. It is an easy task to think up questions that are very, very difficult, if not impossible, to answer.

 What’s cool?

Despite appearances and common stereotypes about physicists, I get to be creative. I can work on whatever I like provided I entertain the journal referee. I also get to collaborate with different people from a host of backgrounds.

What’s not so cool?

While I get to travel, the constant moving and the job insecurity can be a nightmare. Finding a permanent lecturing position is the Holy Grail of postdoctoral existence.

What particular skills do you bring to your workplace?

Under the String theory umbrella, there are many facets of study. Given that my expertise is a little different from my colleagues, it allows us to see the same issue from various different angles leading to a more rounded picture.

What subjects did you take in school and how have these influenced your career path?

I took mathematics, physics and chemistry at secondary school and should’ve probably also taken applied maths but missed out on that one. At university I studied for a BA in theoretical physics at Trinity which allowed one to study mathematics and physics in both the maths and physics departments. I am now somewhere in between the worlds of the mathematician and the physicist.

What is your education to date?

I have a research masters in Lattice QCD from Trinity studying some exotic state of matter affectionately called glueballs. I then decided I didn’t like machines (or debugging) and opted for pen and paper and a PhD in supergravity at Imperial College London.

Have you undertaken, or do you plan to undertake any further training as part of your job?

In the not too distant future I would like to tackle teaching and the supervision of graduate students. Beyond that it would be exciting to do some science outreach and explain particle physics to the general public. A course in science writing may be a useful skill to have.

What have been the most rewarding events in your career so far?

Publishing my first paper was a rewarding moment. Getting shortlisted for a faculty position last year at a reputable Korean university was also enjoyable as it indicates that I may be on the right track.

What is your dream job?

A lecturing position allowing time to continue research, supervise PhD students and pursue other activities.

What advice would you give to someone considering this job?

While not essential a good grounding in mathematics is very helpful.

What are the three most important personal characteristics required for the job?

Hard work, determination and self-motivation.

What kinds of work experience would provide a good background for this position?

One needs to develop a taste for research. Only after putting a research paper together does one appreciate the hours of effort that go into the final product. While the physics may come quickly, illustrating one’s result could take weeks or months either in the lab, writing and debugging software or crunching up pieces of paper and tossing them into the bin. These activities are all part of the process and an undergrad computational project, a research masters or a PhD should all be good opportunities for getting some experience.

Mike Dunne, researching plasma physics

What were the main ‘career decision’ milestones in your life so far?

I was very fortunate to have a place on two summer CTYI (Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland) courses, doing economics and maths. These have both been huge influences on me – maths for showing me that I like maths, but am more interested in its application, and economics for the problem solving mindset it taught me.

This, more than anything else, made me decide to pursue a career in research. Combining this with my love of maths and physics, experimental physics seemed to be a perfect fit.

The next big choice I had to make was for my final years in college, choosing between physics and astrophysics. I thought that astrophysics offered a slightly better option, as it opened a door into studying the cosmos, which I was always interested in.

Does your job allow you to have a lifestyle you are happy with?

Yes, definitely. As a PhD student, my day is quite flexible. I typically start at nine in the morning, but I find it hard to work straight through until the evening, so I take a while off during the day and stay on later then. It works a lot better for me that way.

Describe your typical day

It starts off by reading through any new papers that have been published. An electronic pinboard on the intranet allows me to view any publications related to our experiment, as well as search for relevant papers.

I try to set some specific goals for each day that I want to get done before I go home: editing some of my programs, working through theory and equations etc. It’s all too easy to drift through the day aimlessly, but when you have a goal, it’s a lot easier to make progress.

When it comes time to make a presentation or write a paper, that’s when it can become a little more stressful. You need to check over all your results, one at a time, building up a complete picture. It’s quite exciting when it all comes together, though. The occasional “eureka moment” when you jump up a level of understanding is an amazing feeling.

What are the main tasks and responsibilities?

The main goal of a PhD student is to do research. Typically a PhD student would publish at least one paper on their research before finishing and attend one or two conferences. Personally, I am a local liaison in Munich for a major code maintained in UCC. If there’s a problem with the code, or something specific is required, I’m normally the first port of call for help.

What are the main challenges?

Plasma physics is the overall discipline that I’m engaged in, but this encompasses a large amount of different disciplines: electromagnetism, spectroscopy, some nuclear physics, and a whole host of tokamak* specific physics. Putting all this together and blending the different subjects can be a bit challenging at times, but lends to a great understanding of a complex system.

(* A tokamak is a device using a magnetic field to confine a plasma in the shape of a torus, or doughnut)

What’s cool?

I work at an institute which has its own experimental tokamak. While it can’t produce net power, it’s still a fusion reactor. It’s the power of the future!

What’s not so cool?

Fixing bugs in code. It’s time consuming and tedious to search for that array index that’s not quite fitting in right.

What particular skills do you bring to your workplace?

My research involves data analysis of large data sets, so good computer skills are a must. I was lucky to have learned a programming language in college so I had a good base when starting off.

One of my particular additions is that I need to understand things at a very basic level before I can rebuild theory from there – this makes it easy for me to explain things to non-specialists. Since there are around 1,000 people working in the research institute in Germany, this can be very useful when planning joint experiments.

What subjects did you take in school and how have these influenced your career path?

For the Leaving Cert I took English, Irish, maths, French, physics, technical drawing and business.

When I started the Leaving Cert cycle, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so I chose as broad a base as possible. I knew I wanted to keep on physics and technical drawing, as I was good at them. This choice allowed me to take more or less any course in college, apart from medicine.

By the time I got to college at Trinity College Dublin, I knew I wanted to do physics. My only choice was between chemistry and geology as a second subject (I needed to take maths for physics). Both are useful in different ways for physics. I chose chemistry, which has worked out quite well for me, as it’s very useful to have a good grounding in spectroscopy.

Taking my moderatorship in astrophysics was a very good choice for my current area of research. The approaches to data analysis are quite similar, even the same computer languages are widely used. Also, the basic physics involved in solar physics and controlled fusion is based on plasma physics, so there’s a lot of overlap.

Since starting my PhD, I’ve had the opportunity to attend several courses in Munich. The subjects range from plasma physics to tokamak engineering and high performance computing. The length of these can vary from a few hours to several weeks in some cases.

What aspects of your education have proven most important for your job?

Being able to think critically. I did a specific module in third year based on this idea. Not taking something at face value, reading what can be left out of a report and evaluating the experimental methods are very valuable abilities.

Anything that enables creative thinking has proven very important. In my final year of university, a problem-solving course quickly became my favourite area of study as it allowed one to really think outside the normal box of the prescribed courses. Needless to say, in cutting edge research this is very useful.

Have you undertaken any further training as part of your job?

You typically need to keep up to date with the latest developments of your tools in science. For me, that mostly involves computer programming. I have taken a course on high performance computing, which was specifically linked to my area of research, as well as attending any seminars on new techniques and local computing capabilities.

Of course, writing and communicating is one of the most important things one needs to do in science – if you can’t communicate your results, they’re somewhat wasted. I have also undertaken a scientific writing course which counts towards my PhD (in a small way). I would like to receive training in public relations, as that’s one of the things that interest me a lot in science.

What have been the most rewarding events in your career so far?

I’m quite proud of the work I did for my degree. It was something that I really put as much effort as I could into, and it paid off in the end.

What personal qualities do you have that helps you in your career?

I’ve always been told I’m quite a patient person, which definitely helps. The pace can be a little slow while you’re waiting for experiments to run.

What is your dream job?

I would love to be an astronaut. Being one of the few people in space, and possibly one of the first on Mars, would be amazing.

What advice would you give to someone considering this job?

You need to be passionate about your subject area. When committing to a PhD, it’s a minimum of three years studying in one specific area. Being a little outspoken is also an advantage for getting a point across, and for making presentations.

Being able to think critically is very important. Science isn’t always unanimous in its findings, especially at the cutting edge of research so it’s important to be able to draw objective conclusions, insofar as that’s possible.

What kind of work experience would provide a good background for this position?

There are a lot of opportunities for lab experience in the summer during undergraduate studies. These give you a feel for working as part of a group and how the day-to-day life of a researcher works. The best experience you are likely to find for this is your final-year project in college, it’s basically a shorter version of a Masters or PhD.

Paudie Scanlon - studying for a PhD in Applied Physics

What were the main ‘career decision’ milestones in your life so far?

I’ve always been interested in figuring out how things work, so I took physics and engineering in the Leaving Cert, and tech graphics as I had thought that I wanted to do some kind of engineering.

This helped me a great deal when I eventually decided to do applied physics in college. As I progressed through college, I realised the best way to keep learning was to go on to do postgrad study.

Who are the people who most influenced your career direction?

The first person to point me in the direction of physics was my secondary school teacher. A lot of the syllabus is very fundamental stuff and can be quite boring, but he showed that once we had a good grounding in that we could progress on to the fun stuff.

The fact that we did the new syllabus helped as well, as it gives good practical examples of how the theory you just learned can be applied.

My dad went back to college and got his degree and started doing research while I was in college, so he was a big influence as well.

Describe a typical day

There is a good bit of variety in the way I work. An average day would entail some reading on the area that I’m working on and then I’ll spend some time programming.

I also get to do some outreach activities, which is where we go to a school to give a talk, or judge a science fair. There is at least one talk every week in Tyndall, so I get to go to those as well.

My great passion is surf photography and this is very dependent on day-to-day changes in the weather and tides, so the flexibility in my work allows me to pursue my hobby.

What are the main challenges?

Grasping the new ideas and theories in the area I’m working in is quite challenging, but it’s why I’m doing research – to learn new things.

Because I’m working in the quantum area, this can prove pretty difficult as a lot of the theories are very different from the world that we are used to.

What’s “cool” about your work?

The rush you get when you get the result you were looking for, when your program finally works and the joy of learning new things. I’ll often come home to my girlfriend and just jabber away about what I found out that day.

Luckily she is doing a PhD in Chemistry and is able to understand most of what I’m saying even if sometimes I don’t myself. But it usually makes sense inside my head.

What particular skills do you bring to your workplace?

Being motivated is a bonus in any job you do. There isn’t always going to be someone looking over your shoulder (which is a good and bad thing) telling you what to do, so you need to be driven enough to keep working. Obviously to be a good scientist you need to be open to new ideas and willing to disregard what you thought you knew.]

What is your education to date?

St Caimin’s Secondary School, Shannon. I didn’t do Transition Year, but I probably should have because going into your Leaving a year older is almost definitely a bonus.

I did applied physics for four years in the University of Limerick and the most relevant subject was the optics module in the final semester. The further you progress in an area, the more interesting it becomes.

I realised I was more suited to theoretical work in college, as I always found the math modules very appealing – particularly the Fluid Mechanics module I took in final year. My final year project was on Quantum Tunnelling and is actually pretty relevant to do work I’m doing now.

After my degree, I did a one-year Graduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship. While this reinforced my belief that science is both more challenging and enjoyable than business, I did benefit from the course, particularly in relation to my presentation skills.

I also realised the importance of networking, which sounds corny but is actually very important.

What personal qualities do you have that helps you in your career?

A willingness to learn more – I think this is really important so that you don’t get lazy in what you do.

I’m pretty extroverted – I like knowing a lot of people and as a result I have no problem going up and talking to new people. This really helps with networking and getting to know new people in your own workplace and meeting possible collaborators.

What advice would you give to someone considering this job?

Make sure you look into the area that you will be researching. You don’t want to spend three to four years working in an area you’re only vaguely interested in. Don’t be afraid to be yourself.

What are the most important personal characteristics required for the job?

Persistence and curiosity

What kind of work experience would provide a good background for this position?

Summer placements in big research centres are ideal for finding out about these types of research jobs.

Dr Robert Osburn - Lecturer in maths

How did you go about getting your current job?

I saw the ad and decided to apply. The first time I visited Ireland [Robert is originally from Louisiana in the US] was for the interview. I enjoyed Dublin and found the people at UCD to be very helpful.

What have been the main “career decision” milestones in your life so far?

The first was taking an undergraduate course in differential equations. It was a tough, rigorous course, given by an enthusiastic professor who wanted the students to understand the material at a deeper level. A bit of success encouraged me to take other math courses.

The second was passing my written PhD examinations in graduate school. They consisted of two four-hour exams covering all of the content from our first year.

They were not fun. After passing, I felt more confident in my abilities and decided to continue.

I was also fortunate to visit Germany on a one-year research visit. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet new people and work intensely on research projects.

Lastly, I would say deciding to move to a new country to live and work. I was very interested in helping to create the first Number Theory research group in Ireland.

Does your job allow you to have a lifestyle you are happy with?

Yes, definitely. The combination of flexible hours, working with international colleagues (and thus travelling), and the ability to enjoy life outside work is fantastic.

What are the main tasks and responsibilities?

Lecturing to a wide range of students, from first years to graduates. I try to encourage questions not only during the lecture, but afterwards too. Also, making progress on existing research projects and coming up with ideas for new ones.

I also apply for research grants, co-organise a research seminar, and meet with my graduate student and postdoc on a regular basis. I am also responsible for some administrative duties.

What are the main challenges?

Concerning lecturing, it is a challenge to convey mathematical ideas in a clear, precise, and enthusiastic manner. The students are quite good and definitely ask questions that make me think.

Concerning research, it is a challenge for me to digest recent mathematical developments and work on new projects. This is part of the excitement.

What subjects did you take in school and how have these influenced your career path?

Originally, I majored in chemical engineering until I realised that I didn’t like (and wasn’t good at) either chemistry or engineering, I found that I was much more interested in why the formulas were true. Where did they come from?

Courses in differential equations and abstract algebra as an undergraduate and number theory (from my PhD advisor) as a graduate student helped me to think in terms of examples in an effort to see the bigger, more abstract picture.

What is your education to date?

PhD in Mathematics in 2001 from Louisiana State University
Postdoctoral positions in Canada (three years) and Germany (one year)
I started at UCD in September 2005
I was fortunate to visit the Institut des Hautes

Dr Cormac O'Raifeartaigh - Physics lecturer

What were the main ‘career decision’ milestones in your life so far?

Languages and science (physics and chemistry) in school, science in university, postgraduate life in Trinity College, early lecturing experience.

Who are the people who most influenced your career direction?

No-one really, though my dad was a scientist. I was best at languages and music, but science seemed a better choice career-wise. Also I liked the broad choice within a science degree.

Does your job allow you to have a lifestyle you are happy with?

Definitely. Academic life offers huge flexibility both time-wise and content-wise, as much of the non-teaching work is self-directed.

Some academics like to concentrate on research, some on teaching, some on both… and the holidays are the envy of every other profession. It’s particularly suitable for a skier or a surfer, as there’s plenty of time for travel!

Describe a typical day

During term-time I tend to have lectures on/off until about 3 pm. Then I get back to the office to do completely different work, either research or writing science pieces for the media.

I rarely leave before 7pm, but it’s fine because I enjoy the contrast between the two aspects of my job.

What are the main tasks and responsibilities?

The main activities are teaching and research, although I’m also involved in the communication of science to the general public.

Things can get a bit hectic during term-time as the teaching load in an institute of technology is generally larger than in a university – but it’s great to have a job that involves work in several different spheres

What are the main challenges?

The balance between teaching, research and writing about science for the public can be difficult at times. Most of the time teaching is very enjoyable, but every now and then you get landed with a senior module on a topic you never mastered yourself as a student! Then you have to get on top of it and prepare a thorough course – that can stymie any non-teaching activity for a while, very frustrating!

What’s cool?

I get to teach general introductory courses in really cool subjects like cosmology and particle physics. I have always had a general interest in these subjects myself, so it’s great fun teaching the basic concepts. I think the students really enjoy these modules too.

What’s not so cool?

Teaching is great most of the time, but new modules at third or fourth-year level can be a lot of work.

The other big bugbear is administration: there seems to be much more admin than there used to be, it can take over all the non-teaching time if you let it.

What particular skills do you bring to your workplace?

I’m told I’m very good at explaining things! I suspect this is because although I was always interested in science, it didn’t come to me naturally (like some people).

I find the ideas fascinating, but have to work hard to understand them. As a result, I tend to concentrate on getting the basic ideas across more than most lecturers.

This is probably also a useful skill in the communication of science to the public, something I’ve been working at lately.

What subjects did you take in school and how have these influenced your career path?

I was top of the class at languages and music in school, but I also chose physics and chemistry for Leaving Cert because I had a general interest in science. I’m glad I did, because it opens a lot of doors career-wise.

What is your education to date?

I spent the first year of secondary school in France. The school was huge, mixed and a very high standard. I certainly learnt French but probably not much else.

I then went to Colaiste Eoin, an all-Irish school. It was a super school for languages and music, but probably not so good for science.

The science degree at UCD was a great all-round education. I then went on to do a PhD in Trinity College – much more specialised, but an important grounding for research.

What have been the most rewarding events in your career so far?

I write the occasional Irishman’s Diary on a scientific topic for The Irish Times – I really enjoy the challenge of trying to communicate scientific ideas to the general public in a well-known literary column.

Recently, I got the job of chairing public science debates in the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin. That’s great fun too, though it involves quite a lot of prep.

A few months ago, I started my own science blog at http://coraifeartaigh.wordpress.com/. It’s a very useful forum for communicating scientific concepts to my students in a non-formal way

What personal qualities do you have that helps you in your career?

I like performing in public, a leftover from a previous career as a violinist. This is a great help for lecturing, and also for public talks on science etc.

What is your dream job?

One day, I’ll get to be a “Professor for the Public Understanding of Science” somewhere in the world. Then I can concentrate on writing about the importance of science in our lives, and the role of science in society.

Also I’ll have time to write the book I’ve wanted to write for years – a short book on the sub-atomic world for the layman.

What are the three most important personal characteristics required for the job?

Confidence, patience, interest in your own subject.

What kinds of work experience would provide a good background for this position?

Any form of teaching, plus a general interest in science.