I love teaching (but then, I learned from the best), and love my research - it's trying to do both all the time that I am finding taxing.

I'm Laura (Xin) Zhang, class of 2016. I'm still a graduate student at Princeton Plasma Physics, grinding away towards my PhD.

After 3 years in grad school I decided I needed a pallet cleanser, so now I'm doing a summer internship at Siemens Corporate Technology. I'm working on the intersection of artificial intelligence and physics, mainly on using AI to help us predict the future of physical systems, while making sure that the prediction still obeys the laws of physics that we know and love. It's been pretty interesting. But most importantly, I'm being reminded of the reasons that I ended up in physics, that physics is still the only thing that I love too much to live without. (For those who remember my days at Mudd, it took quit a few twists and turns for me to end up there :p)  I'm looking forward to getting back to my PhD program after this summer, with some renewed energy!

On the other hand, as a woman in physics, it was quite a shock to go from Mudd (where my class of physics graduate was majority women) to a graduate program where I was the only one in my cohort, and second in the entire program. Sometime early last year, me and Sierra Jubin, a Williams grad, officially started a Women in Plasma Physics chapter at Princeton. Over the past year we have managed to get the student group off the ground. We have organized and participated in a lot of science education (K-12) and undergraduate outreach and mentoring programs. 

And this week we finally made an official webpage! Check this out - 

        https://plasma.princeton.edu/education/women-plasma-physics

I'm really proud of our organization. We're starting to get attention throughout the PPPL national lab. We got a shout out from the director on the international women's day, and recently we've been getting requests from the other women scientists (postdocs, staff, engineers) to join our crew. We're in the process of "going public", aiming to serve a broader population than the graduate students alone! I attached a photo of me at one of our outreach events at a local elementary school - we were not prepare for the baby tables! But we made it work and it was super cute!

Anyways, this is my very verbose answer to your request for update. Feel free to share/edit the story in any way you like, and share my contact with current students. I'm always down to talk to fellow Mudders!

I credit the solid general physics education I got at HMC for my ability to do good work in such a wide variety of disciplines. That general education has also allowed me to change career paths several times, and to land a good permanent job during a time when the field of my Ph.D. work (astronomy and planetary science) has few positions to offer.

It turns out that Physics was a great intro for my particular job. I started as a digital electronics design engineer and the electronics part could be handled with the few courses HMC offered. The tough part was understanding the complex interrelationships of the functional blocks of the system. My physics background helped in this area although I did spend some intensive time reading electronics books. As time progressed, my job became more of an architectural endeavour and that was where physics really started to help: architecture involves understanding the big picture, not just the details of electronics but mechanical, thermal, software etc. At one time or another I have used almost every branch of technology. Only physics gives you enough understanding of theory to let you jump in and start swinging no matter where you land.