One Day, One Job » physics

SpaceX

Willy Franzen — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:35:37 +0000

You may have heard that NASA just had what was probably the final night launch of the space shuttle. I was lucky enough to see one a few years ago from a beach in Connecticut, although it didn’t look like much more than a bright light screaming through the night sky. Our space program is going through a lot of changes, and it seems that current funding for some future programs isn’t what the people at NASA were hoping for. Many fans of the space program are disappointed and pessimistic about the future of space exploration. Luckily, the past decade has led to the rise of private space companies that are taking up a lot of the slack when it comes to space flight. One of these companies is Hawthorne, CA based SpaceX, which was started by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk in 2002. Their focus is on building launch vehicles (mostly for satellites) that are not only more reliable, but also more affordable.

JobX

SpaceX has been growing like crazy—in late 2005 they had 160 employees, and now they employ more than 800 people. Not only has SpaceX grown at an impressive rate up to this point, but they seem to be continuing their growth. Their Jobs page shows more than 70 open positions. As long as the government keeps cutting its funding for space program, the private aerospace industry is going to keep booming. SpaceX is well positioned as they already have a track record of success—they were the first private company to develop a launch vehicle and reach earth orbit from the ground.

If that sounds like something that you want to be part of, then you should check out jobs at SpaceX—they even have opportunities for people who don’t have a background in aerospace. They identify 7 of the jobs that they have posted as being for new graduates: Dynamics Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Engineer, Mechanical Engineer- Fluids & Thermal, Mechanical Engineer- Structures, Software Engineer, and Systems Engineer. There are plenty of other positions posted, so you may want to check them out even if they’re not explicitly identified as being for new grads—these include jobs in Marketing, HR, Technical Writing, and more. You can apply online for positions at SpaceX, and you should also take note of the following:

Since the people we seek tend to be highly sought after, SpaceX offers up to a $5000 referral award to anyone who refers a candidate we hire.

If you end up applying for a job at SpaceX, please let them know that you found about them from One Day, One Job.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What do you think about the private aerospace industry?

Intellectual Ventures

Willy Franzen — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:30:53 +0000

One of the books that I’ve been reading lately is SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. It’s a great follow-up to the original Freakonomics, and it once again shows how changing your mindset can lead you to all kinds of new ideas (this is a really important lesson for job seekers). One of the companies that is mentioned in the book is Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, WA based invention company. They’re all about ideas. Things like product design, product development, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and service all come later, and Intellectual Ventures doesn’t want anything thing to do with those processes. They just invent, invent, invent. The company isn’t tied to one specific area—they’re working on problems like stopping Malaria, preventing hurricanes, and counteracting negative effects from climate change should they ever happen.

An Intellectual Venture for Your Career

For Intellectual Ventures it’s all about owning the intellectual property. They want to come up with the ideas, make them work, and then let other companies do the rest. The business side will be about licensing the technology to the right people on a non-exclusive basis possibly including spin-off companies, but for now it’s all about building a technology portfolio. Intellectual Ventures has been actively inventing since 2003, and since then they’ve filed thousands of patents. These patent applications “span a broad range of areas including computer software and hardware, user interface design, semiconductors, biomedical devices, advanced medical procedures, digital imaging, nanotechnology, nuclear energy and advanced particle physics.” As you can probably tell from that list of topic area (and the company’s name), Intellectual Ventures is filled with extremely smart people. It was founded by two former C level Microsoft executives.

If you’ve always been fascinated by invention and you think that you have the intellect, then you should check out Intellectual Ventures’ Jobs page. They have 50 positions posted right now, and most require a high level of education and experience, but a few seem suitable for new grads. Whether or not a position is right for you will rely heavily on how relevant your background is, so it makes more sense to browse the listings yourself to see what fits. You should also note that Intellectual Ventures has satellite offices in Silicon Valley, Austin, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Seoul, and Bangalore.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you read SuperFreakonomics yet?

STATS

Willy Franzen — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:41:20 +0000

I love statistics—especially when applied to sports—so it should be no big surprise that some of my favorite blogs include The Wage of Wins Journal, Sabernomics, and FanGraphs. Surprisingly, the statistical knowledge found on the best blogs these days is often far ahead of what you will find in the front offices of many major sports teams. The reason for the recent advancement in statistical sports knowledge of laypeople has a lot to do with how easy the Internet and computers have made it to collect and analyze in-depth data. A big reason that sports data is available is because of Northbrook, IL based STATS. Their story is pretty cool. They were founded in 1981 and “began as a grass roots operation tracking baseball in a unique, esoteric fashion.” Now, they’re “the world’s leading sports information, content and statistical analysis company.” I guess that numbers worked out for them.

Do Your STATS Match Up?

If you’re a sports stats geek like me, you’re probably already dying for a job with STATS. As you look more closely at the company, I think that your excitement will grow. They couldn’t be a bigger deal when it comes to sports statistics—they cover an insane number of sports, and their clients include the NFL, the NBA, CBS Sports, Google, Yahoo!, and quite a few other impressive names. So what about jobs at STATS? There are quite a few opportunities, and plenty of them appear to be suitable for new college grads. Current entry level positions include Part-Time Paralegal, Soccer Optical Tracking Position – Major League Soccer, Database Administrator, Computer Programmer, Data Collectors (Golf, Football, Baseball, or Soccer), and STATS Reporter. All of these jobs look awesome, so apply by sending a cover letter and résumé to jobs@stats.com (a few positions require you to apply in a different way, so be sure to check out all of the Job Listings first).

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

And if you ever wondered about proper sports grammar, you need to check out STATS’ Style Sheet.

Decagon Devices

Willy Franzen — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:49:52 +0000

I love the Wall Street Journal’s list of Top Small Workplaces 2008, but I wish it was longer. It always alerts me to companies that I never would have found no matter how hard I look every day. For instance, Decagon Devices is a “is a small manufacturer of biophysical instrumentation for food and consumer goods manufacturers, agronomic scientists and soils scientists.” I can’t imagine how I would have found them without the WSJ’s list. Decagon Devices does appear to hire new college graduates, but the jobs that they are hiring for have very specific academic requirements. Maybe in the future they’ll have some jobs that don’t require a scientific background, but until then, those of you who aren’t scientifically inclined should spend time that you would have spent researching today’s employer telling your friends about us. That’s all that you need to do to win the iPod Touch that we’re giving away in 4 days. So far the number of entries is pathetic, so take advantage of everyone else’s laziness and go with that iPod.

10 Sided Jobs

Now that we’ve weeded out all the people who think that biophysical instrumentation is a fancy word for the phenomenon of hearing music inside your head when you use an iPod, let’s take a look at what Decagon Devices actually does. They make devices for markets that include Food Science, Pharmaceuticals, Thermal Properties, Geotechnical Civil Engineering, Environmental Research, and Commercial Irrigation. When it comes down to it, Decagon Devices is all about measurement. Most of what they do is way over my head, so I’m going to hope that you can figure out if their jobs are a good fit for you. Right now they’re looking for a Food Physicist/Engineer and an Environmental Instrumentation Application Specialist. Both are geared towards new college grads, but they’d prefer someone who graduated with a Ph.D. in a relevant field for the Food Physicist position; whereas, the Environmental Instrumentation Application Specialist should be a good fit for someone with a B.S. in soil or plant sciences. The company is located in Pullman, WA, and if the WSJ thinks that they’re a good place to work, then they are. You should definitely check out the section about them in the article for more details. To apply for the Food Physicist job, send a cover letter and resume to laura@decagon.com. To apply for the Environmental Instrumentation Application Specialist position, send your cover letter and resume to gtvanek@decagon.com by November 14th.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Exponent

Willy Franzen — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:00:28 +0000

Imagine getting a job as a MythBuster, except instead of debunking urban legend, you’re investigating real life problems that plague businesses and sometimes hurt people. That’s what you could be doing at Exponent. Founded in 1967 by five Ph.D.-level researchers, Exponent was originally known as Failure Analysis Associates. They started out in the energy industry studying stress and fracture mechanics, but very quickly they were “investigating and analyzing accidents and failures of all kinds.” They eventually became The Failure Group, and were listed on the NASDAQ with the ticker FAIL. In 1998 they realized that they had outgrown their name, and changed again to Exponent, because it means “one who expounds or interprets.” We don’t usually get so deep into how a company chooses it’s name, but with the popularity of the FAIL meme (see also: FAIL Blog), we thought that you might be amused.

Failures Need Not Apply

Despite their fascination with failure, Exponent has a staff of nearly 800 people with backgrounds in over 90 scientific and engineering disciplines. In other words, people who work at Exponent deal with failure often, but they try to keep it at an arm’s length. Are you still not sure what we mean by failure? Here are some examples of projects that Exponent has worked on: investigating defects in automatic revolving doors; determining the path and altitude of Delta flight 191 which crashed and killed 134 people; recreation of the accident that killed James Dean for an NBC series, and testing the Suzuki Samurai for rollover vulnerabilities. There are many more projects that Exponent has worked on, and you can view multimedia presentations on many of them in the Exponent Multimedia Archive. We could keep writing about Exponent’s work for hours – it’s that interesting – but they have a plethora of entry-level job opportunities that we need to talk about.

Entry-Level Jobs to the Xth Power

Exponent’s web site is about as entry-level friendly as we’ve seen, although they could do a better job of making sure that new college grads can navigate to the right jobs. When you visit Exponent’s Careers Page, you’ll notice that they’ve prominently linked to their University Recruiting page. Their approach to University Recruiting on the web is really cool, but it’s not intuitive. There’s a text box that allows you to enter in your school name to search for current alumni from your school and to learn about upcoming recruiting events on your campus. There’s also a list of the 20 schools from which they employ the most alums. For instance, take a look at Cornell’s page (I’m not biased or anything – GO BIG RED!). It’s a really cool way to engage students, but it only works if the students go to a school that Exponent has a page for. A lot of students probably end up on the University Recruiting page and don’t know what to do next.

This is where a little searching helps. If you visit Exponent’s How to Apply page, you’ll see information for entry-level candidates. Here they direct you to contact their College Recruiter, Jenny Irwin, at jirwin@exponent.com or to take a look at their entry-level job listings (these are opportunities specifically for new grads). Here you’ll find a ton of fascinating jobs in a variety of locations. We will warn you, however, that seemingly all of the entry-level jobs currently listed with Exponent require some sort of advanced degree (MS or PhD). Since so many Engineers seem to stick around and get a Masters, we thought it would still be appropriate to feature Exponent’s jobs today.

Some of the most recent listings on Exponent’s site include Engineers, Vehicle Engineering (Menlo Park, CA and Natick, MA); Scientists, Public Health & Industrial (Menlo Park, CA; Bellevue, WA; Wood Dale, IL; Los Angeles, CA; New York, NY; Oakland, CA; Irvine, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Alexandria, VA; and Washington, DC); and Engineers, Technology Development (Menlo Park, CA; San Diego, CA; and Washington, DC). There are many more opportunities listed on their site, and you can apply online through their applicant tracking system. If you want to work for Exponent but are just finishing up undergrad, then you better start thinking about graduate school.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Do you feel like your entry-level job search is a failure of such grand proportion that Exponent may have to investigate what happened? Subscribe to One Day, One Job (it’s free), and make sure that doesn’t happen.

New York Structural Biology Center

Willy Franzen — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:53:45 +0000

When I was in college, the only studying of proteins that I did was in a class called Intro to Meat Science. Don’t believe me? Here’s the course listing. Learning how meat proteins react to salt or heat is extremely useful (and delicious) but not at all relevant to the non-profit organization that we’re featuring today (or if it is, I’ll be shocked). Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about biomedical research or cell biophysics, so all I can do is tell you a little bit about the New York Structural Biology Center and the entry-level jobs that they’re offering for new grads.

I Love Membrane Proteins Structure

If you own a t-shirt with the above saying, then the New York Structural Biology Center should be a great fit for you. The Center’s research goals are based around “understanding of the role that proteins play in disease pathways” and “[carrying] out advanced biomedical research in a number of areas including the new fields of structural genomics.” The NYSBC is the core facility of the New York Consortium on Membrane Proteins Structure, which consists of laboratories in and around New York City that are working together to “determine the structures of integral membrane proteins using high throughput methodologies.” The NYSBC is governed by a Board of representatives from the ten institutional members: Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, City University of New York, Columbia University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York University, The Rockefeller University, Wadsworth Center of the Department of Health, the Joan and Sanford Weill Medical College of Cornell University (Go Big Red!), and the State University of New York. It appears that the NYSBC is making significant progress, and the successes seem to be enabling them to expand by hiring new people and beginning new projects.

Entry-Level Is a Broad Term

We have a love-hate relationship with the term “entry-level.” It’s the only way to consistently identify job opportunities for new college grads, but the definition is way too broad to actually be useful. The jobs that the New York Structural Biology Center are listed as entry-level, and they are definitely directed at new college grads, but there is no way that most college kids would qualify. The job title is Technician, and there are 2 openings. Applicants are expected to have majored in Biology, Chemistry or Physics. Previous experience in a laboratory research setting will also be a major advantage, although it’s not required. Tasks that NYSBC Technicians are expected to work on include: preparation of buffers and bacteriological media, growth and harvesting of bacteria cultures, basic molecular biology, and routine laboratory maintenance. You can apply by sending your cover letter and resume to Brian Kloss, Ph.D. at bkloss@nysbc.org.

Sorry for all the quotes today, but I’m going to stick with my steak cooking skills. This stuff is way over my head, but if it’s in your realm, please share any insight that you have in the comments. Hopefully we gave you enough to get you started on your own research of jobs at the New York Structural Biology Center.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

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