Physics Career Day 2021

Nicole Larsen was a 2018-2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the US Department of Defense. For two years she served as an energy data analyst in the Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (ODASD) for Energy, working first on fuel logistics and later spearheading a study of the financial risk associated with third-party contracts for implementing energy improvements on defense installations. Prior to that, Dr. Larsen was a KICP Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP). There, she worked with the BICEP/Keck Array collaboration in an effort to detect early universe gravitational wave-induced polarization patterns in the cosmic microwave background, and she played a key role on a study to characterize fluctuations in the atmospheric water line to characterize sites for the deployment of future CMB telescope receivers. Her dissertation work (PhD Yale ’16) was a search for a novel theoretical class of dark matter interactions using data from the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment. Most recently, Dr. Larsen accepted a Quantitative Data Analyst position at LinQuest Corporation, doing campaign modeling and providing analytical decision support to the Joint Staff J8 Directorate and other government clients.

Satomi Shiraishi is an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology’s Division of Medical Physics at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She received her B.S. in physics in 2007 and Ph.D. in 2013, both from University of Chicago, working on high-energy physics analysis and accelerator physics projects. As a Medical Physics faculty member, Satomi divides her time between clinical, research and education activities. In clinic, she specializes on proton therapy treatments, from treatment planning to delivery.  Her current research focuses on analysis of treatment outcomes, toxicities and radiation dose using machine learning algorithms. She also mentors medical physics residents and a postdoctoral scholar who wishes to enter the field of medical physics.

Elizabeth Price is a current fourth year in the college, graduating with a Bachelors degree in Physics and a minor in Classics. After her second year, she interned at Morgan Stanley in the Investment Banking Division, spending half her time in the Consumer Retail Group and half in the Global Power and Utilities Group. After her Third year, she returned to intern in the Global Power and Utilities Group, where she expects to start full time in July. As a investment analyst, Elizabeth will aid her group in preparing information, models, and materials to advise various energy and power companies on financial maneuvers.

Nathan (Nate) Earnest-Noble graduated with a PhD in Physics from UChicago in 2018, where he worked on superconducting circuits for quantum computing with David Schuster. While at UChicago, he was a member of the STAGE lab, where he starred in the "Curiosity" webseries that explored the connection between science and personal life. After graduation, he joined IBM as a quantum computing application researcher. There, he develops algorithms for near-term applications and contributes to the development of IBM's quantum ecosystem

Jean-Rene Gauthier received his PhD in astrophysics under the supervision of Hsiao-Wen Chen at the University of Chicago. After being a Millikan postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, Jean-Rene transitioned to industry working as a machine learning engineer. He initially focused on online marketing analytics and data engineering, often involving high-speed processing of massive data sets. Jean-Rene moved on to become a lead data scientist at a new startup DataScience.com where he managed a team of data experts in developing algorithms and analytics models to solve customers' unique business problems. Jean-Rene also helped design the data science platform of DataScience.com which would later be acquired by Oracle Corporation. He is now the lead product architect behind the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI Platform.