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Career Mentoring Fellows Program

The Career Mentoring (CM) Fellows program seeks physicists working in industry or academia, who are interested in mentoring undergraduate students, learning and teaching about diverse career paths of physics degree holders, and establishing a stronger connection with the physics community. The CM Fellows program is a one year commitment with program activities taking place over a full calendar year.

Applications for 2022 Career Mentoring Fellows are now open.

Please note: In addition to the application, a statement of support must be submitted by a student or early career physicist who you have worked with as a mentor, teacher, or volunteer. These must be emailed directly to Midhat Farooq, APS Careers Program Manager, at farooq@aps.org.

Program Components

All Career Mentoring Fellows will:

  • Gain expertise as a career mentor by learning about various APS Career resources, such as our online professional development guidebook, the APS Careers Guide, and the APS Job Board,
  • Receive implicit bias and mentoring training, and
  • Receive partial travel funding and compensated registration for the March or April meeting.

Each CM Fellow will also be expected to:

  • Provide feedback on presentations in the undergraduate research sessions (oral and poster) at a March or April meeting, and
  • Give a talk at an institution near them to raise awareness about diverse physics careers using APS resources.

Who should apply

Physicists working in industry as well as those in academia, including postdocs or faculty, are encouraged to apply.

Ideal applicants will have:

  • An interest in learning about diverse physics careers and mentoring students,
  • Previous volunteer or mentoring experience with students/early career scientists,
  • Leadership skills, preferably related to activities benefiting students, and
  • An interest in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Application

To qualify, you will need to submit an application answering questions about

  • Your interest in physics careers,
  • Past volunteer work with APS or other organizations,
  • Past experience with mentoring,
  • A short statement listing your interest in, and any past experience with diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

You will also need to provide a half page statement of support from a student or early career scientist detailing your investment in mentoring or supporting students and early career physicists.

2021 Career Mentoring Fellows

  • Leslie Baksmaty – Geophysicist, Shell International Exploration and Production
  • Jie Ren – Associate Principal Scientist, Merck & Co., Inc.
  • Md Shafayat Hossain – Postdoctoral research associate, Princeton University
  • Chinedu Ekuma – Professor, Lehigh University
  • Kebra Ward – Associate Professor & Department Chair, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
  • Chih Kuan Tung – Assistant Professor, North Carolina A&T State University
  • Rajeswari Kolagani – Professor, Towson University
  • Chris Hamner – Applied Physicist, Micro Encoder Inc
  • Kristen Norton – Technical Product Manager , Synrad, A Novanta Company
  • Martin Rodriguez-Vega – Associate Editor, American Physical Society
  • Olga Shishkov – Postdoctoral researcher, CU Boulder
  • Srikanth Srinivasan – Research staff member, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
  • Adam Scott – Senior Data Scientist, Bayer
  • Chris Luetjen – Senior Product Engineer, nLIGHT
  • Allison Mueller – Protection & Controls Engineer, Avangrid
  • Wennie Wang – Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Chicago
  • Sesha Srinivasan – Dept Chair (Natural Sciences), Assistant Professor, Florida Polytechnic University
  • Shelly Lesher – Professor of Physics, University of Wisconsin - La Crosse
  • Estanislao Aguayo – Scientist, Intel
  • Boyan Tabakov – Program Officer, AFOSR
  • Clarice Aiello – Assistant Professor, UCLA
  • Ye Tao – Rowland Fellow, Rowland Institute at Harvard
  • Maria Conneran – Program Analyst, Dept of Defense
  • Heidi Doss – Adjunct Professor, Point Loma Nazarene University
  • Joe Haley – Associate Professor, Oklahoma State University
  • Brian Beckford – Physicist (Program Manager), Dept of Energy