Spring 2025 Physics Careers Seminar Series Concludes May 2 with Alumna Dr. Caitlin Kengle, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Los Alamos National Laboratory

The Spring 2025 Physics Careers Seminar series concludes on Friday, May 2 with a talk on "The Start of a Career at a National Lab" by alumna Dr. Caitlin Kengle from Los Alamos National Laboratory at 12:30 p.m. CT in 204 Loomis (Interaction Room). Refreshments will be provided! Details of Caitlin's talk are given below.

Time: 12:30 p.m. CT on Friday, May 2, 2025

Location: 204 Loomis (Interaction Room). A Zoom link will also be forwarded to the Illinois Physics Grad Student email list. For a copy of the link, please contact Lance Cooper (slcooper@illinois.edu).

Titles: The Start of a Career at a National Lab

Speaker: Dr. Caitlin Kengle, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Abstract:  I spent 6 years in Urbana-Champaign, many of which were during the COVID-19 pandemic. I grew to love experimental condensed matter physics research, but when it came time to find a job post-graduation, university life no longer seemed like a good fit. Motivated by the collaborations with the lab that I experienced during my PhD, time spent in northern New Mexico, plus a two-body problem, I turned my attention to LANL as the direction for my next steps. Here I’ll talk about the path I took throughout my PhD to get to LANL and what I now work on as a postdoc as well as some of how the lab is structured and additional pathways to getting hired here. LA-UR-25-24014

Bio:  Caitlin received her PhD in 2024 under Professor Peter Abbamonte where she used M-EELS and X-ray diffraction to study collective modes in novel quantum materials. She began working at LANL as a graduate summer research assistant in 2022, returning as a GT Seaborg Institute graduate research fellow in 2023. She was hired as a postdoc in the Materials Physics & Applications: Quantum group in 2024. In 2025 she was named a GT Seaborg Institute postdoctoral fellow to support her work on sample synthesis, x-ray diffraction, and neutron scattering on 5-f electron systems.  LA-UR-25-24014

You can see the rest of the Spring 2025 Physics Careers Seminar series here: https://physics.illinois.edu/calendar/careers-seminar