Avery Mickalide Talks About His Post-PhD Experiences on Thursday, Sept. 12

PhD Alumnus Avery Mickalide talks on Thursday, September 12 about his post-PhD experiences.  Details of Avery's talk follow:

Time: 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 12, 2019 (refreshments served at 10:30 a.m.)

Location: 204 Loomis Laboratory (Interaction Room)

Title: Where are the mystics in academia?

Speaker: Dr. Avery Mickalide

Abstract: What happens when, while working to complete a PhD in physics, you not only (1) begin to realize that the earth around you is collapsing, but also (2) start having jaw-dropping mystical experiences in the night? The caring part of you wants desperately to do something about the former, while the scientist in you wants to adventurously explore the latter. Complicating matters is that both issues are taboo to talk about in a rigorous academic setting, especially the second one. I spent my PhD juggling these various parts of myself, doing activist work and meditating when I was not in the lab. I am now pursuing a non-traditional post-doctorate path. I spent the summer volunteering at an interspiritual community on a mountain in New Mexico and am next traveling to Ireland to discover my ancestral Celtic mystical roots.

Bio: Avery Mickalide grew up in rural Litchfield, Maine. He partly enjoyed a pretty standard childhood of running around in the woods and playing video games. After receiving his B.Sc. in physics from Brown University in 2012, Avery spent a year teaching and researching at Harvard University. He enrolled in the physics PhD program at University of Illinois in 2013 and earned the degree six years later, having teased apart the interactions in a 3-species microbial ecosystem in the lab of Dr. Seppe Kuehn. After spending a summer volunteering at an intentional community in New Mexico, Dr. Mickalide is now in the midst of travel.