• Question: What is the average span of a career in physics? in years eg 10years, 4 years @Uni & 6years working at CERN

    Asked by Jacob Bennett to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 13 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      I have done almost 8 years at uni:

      3 years doing my undergraduate degree
      1 year doing my masters degree
      4 years to complete my PhD (6 months left – woooooooooooh!)

      Then you would do a post-doc which could be 1 year, 2 years, 5 years or 10 years! It’s very hard to get post-doc positions because you are competing against the best of the best. Then you could either get a job in industry or stay in academia which would take a few more years to climb up to lecturer, reader, professor, etc.

      So yeah… a career in physics can last however long you want it to really – but you need to be prepared to travel around the world if you want to pursue a career in particle physics – theres not enough jobs in the UK for us all to stay here! Plus its a great opportunity to see the world 😀

    • Photo: Oliver Brown

      Oliver Brown answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      As Jackie says, 3 years as an undergraduate, 1 year doing a Master’s (which in my case was also as an undergraduate!), and now I’m 1.5 years in to my 4 year PhD!

      After that we’ll see what happens, I’d like to stay in academia if I can 🙂

    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Well, you can have a lifelong career in physics.
      In the Royal Holloway group I currently work there are 4 academics which have spent their adult life working in physics.

      So, just to give you a typical example, here is a possible career progression:
      4 years Undergraduate
      4 years PhD
      2 years First post-doc
      3 years Fellowship (more prestigious post-doc)
      5 years Advance Fellowship (considered as staff in most of the cases)
      2 years Lecturer
      5 years Reader
      until you retire Professor

      The one I just described is a really good career, one I would be happy to have. What actually changes during the years are the experiment you work on. So far (I am at the fellowship stage) I already worked in 4 major experiments. I know professors that participated in up to 10 experiments in their life.

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