{"id":3793,"date":"2016-10-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpdev.hmc.edu\/physics\/2016\/10\/25\/life-after-physics-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-systems-engineering\/"},"modified":"2016-10-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-25T00:00:00","slug":"life-after-physics-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-systems-engineering","status":"publish","type":"physics_colloquium","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/research\/colloquium\/life-after-physics-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-systems-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Life After Physics, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Systems Engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"page-featured-image\" class=\"wp-block-image is-style-alignleft\" data-pic=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2023\/01\/\" alt=\"Promotional image for talk: Elements of a successful scientific talk\" data-pic=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Speaker(s):<\/strong> Paul SanGiorgio &#8217;01<\/p>\n<p>Traditional job opportunities for physicists in research and academia are becoming harder and harder to find and facing this new reality, physics graduates often find themselves making difficult choices about what to do with their lives.\u00a0 One little-talked-about and oft-overlooked opportunity for physics graduates is the field of systems engineering.\u00a0 But, what is systems engineering?\u00a0 Why are physicists uniquely suited to it?\u00a0 And what exactly does a systems engineer do?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0After graduating from Harvey Mudd College, I was certain that I would someday become a professor of physics.\u00a0 After many years toiling in a basement at grad school, a couple of post-docs, and plenty of life events later, I have found happiness and fulfillment in a highly unusual place: as a systems engineer for Illumina, Inc.\u00a0 Illumina is the world leader in genetic sequencing and is the principal driving force bringing the cost of sequencing a human genome down from $100 million in 2003 to less than $1000 today.\u00a0 I will discuss the Sequencing by Synthesis&#8221; (SBS) technology that drives Illumina&#8217;s continued success and I how I contribute in my role as a systems engineer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-3793","physics_colloquium","type-physics_colloquium","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/physics_colloquium\/3793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/physics_colloquium"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/physics_colloquium"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}