This is the first year in a few that I haven’t been applying for jobs (You might suspect that this makes me less grumpy. Well, judge for yourself!) Now I could be wrong, but is this the first explicit advertisement by a U.S. university physics department for a theory position in quantum information science?
Quantum Information Theory
The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California invites applications for tenure or tenure track positions at all faculty levels in the area of Quantum Information Theory.
Well even if it isn’t the first, can we take this as a good sign?
So I take it that it’s hard to get employed doing QI? It would be sunny there but no skiing for you!
Are their many explicit ads for experimentalists in QI? I’m a gainfully employed theorist so I haven’t paid much attention to the ads for a while. Is your excitement based on a QI position, or a theory QI position? I’ve had students who do QI get jobs, but they were straight physics positions, that were advertised as AMO/quantum optics positions.
There is plenty of ok skiing a mere hour away, and pretty good skiing two hours away. But seriously, the position in our Physics department is indeed (as far as I know) the first physics-theory-QI position in the US. Hopefully more will follow!
The situation for experimentaists is different as there have been positions which are aimed at quantum information/quantum computer experiments. Interestingly, however, I have heard the following word of advise for those who work in quantum computing type experiments: “_never_ mention that you want to build a quantum computer to a physics deparment.” 😉
Having been on some hiring committees, I’d amend the advice to “never mention that your main priority is to build a QC”. Its OK to do solid state, AMO, etc, thas is more interesting to do now in light of possible applications to QI/QC. The latter is a plus, like whipped cream on a sundae. But in many places QC/QI is viewed as whipped cream, and not ice cream!!!
It IS changing though.
It is promising that such positions are finally beginning to be advertised in the US, especially as the “first wave” of wholly quantum-information trained scientists are entering this level of the job market. This problem was anticipated at least as far back 1999-2000 in the NSF Report on Quantum Information Science, in which the last paragraph contains the sentence “Although QIS attracts the very best students, it is difficult for these students to continue to advance their careers after graduate school.” Sadly, after Jon Dowling’s post on your Feb. 28, 2005 blog entry entitled “Theory like Software,” it’s not clear that the USC advertisement is truly for faculty positions at all levels; it might have been better if the advertisement explicitly sought to fill tenure-track Assistant Professor positions.