Seth Lloyd likes to say that he is a quantum mechanic, in part because he is actually in the Mechanical Engineering department. Now unless you’re Seth, you probably don’t look towards MechE for jobs, so you might not be aware of the Faculty search here at UW in which the magical words “quantum systems engineering” appear:
…The Department seeks outstanding individuals working in emerging areas such as: advanced materials, structures, or manufacturing; biosensors and bioinstruments; environmentally-sensitive energy conversion including, but not limited to, energy-harvesting materials; or quantum systems engineering….
Are you a quantum systems engineer? Apply!
Thanks Dave! Although the advertisement states that applications are due at the end of January, some of the ads in the engineering journals have appeared only in the last two weeks, so in practice there will likely be some leeway in the receipt dates.
I think it is OK to say, that to date there have been relatively few applications received that focus on quantum system engineering, as compared to the other areas advertised. You can view this as either a good sign or a bad sign, but for sure, it means that there is substantially less competition in quantum system engineering than in many other academic specialties.
But hey, what is quantum system engineering? Needless to say, the strongest candidates will be those folks who set forth their own vision in this regard. Also needless to say, the strongest applications will specifically address the usual triad of teaching, research, and service, on which all success in academia rests. Meaning answers to tough questions like: What knowledge and skills will I teach my engineering students? What kind of jobs will they be prepared for? What contributions do I myself hope to make in engineering, math, and science? What are my prospects for finding outside sponsorship for my research?
And, good luck to all … the University of Washington is hoping to receive some very strong applicants.
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As a confection, here’s a link to an arxiv post on this subject:
Sundays in a Quantum Engineer’s Life
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0104140
That takes care of Sunday—on Monday through Saturday you can work on engineering!
Be of good cheer—remember that Julian Schwinger began by thinking of engineering in terms of physics ideas, and finished by thinking of physics in terms of engineering ideas. And he ended up doing pretty well at both! 🙂
Glad you “found your bliss,” Ian … may all the young(er) people reading this blog find theirs too.
Of course, like my wife says: “Attitude is everything.”
Not that it matters a whole heck of a lot or that anyone really cares, but I was a mechanical engineer for a number of years in industry before becoming a physicist and entering academia (I suppose to some that is a regression). I hated it, but then I worked on government contracts so I suppose it’s self-explanatory as to why. Nonetheless, I’ve come full circle since my department (Physics) serves as the host department for our 3-2 cooperative engineering programs and so we teach a few engineering classes here and there. I’ve found, after all these years, a renewed enjoyment of fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, heat transfer, circuits, etc. Who would have thought? Certainly not me.
Dave, your English professors are cringing right now: you seem to have confused “your” and “you’re” in this post!
I don’t know how Seth Lloyd ended up in a MechE department (I guess physics hiring must’ve been at a low when he was on the market!), but have been amused by his complaining about how his “mech eng colleagues don’t seem to think thermodynamics has anything to do with statistical mechanics”!
– joe
Literature major. Not English. As my sentence fragments and spelling errors and run on sentence and nonsensical sentence should make clear! 🙂
In 1997 I was a pretty good writer. But Science has done much to ruin me. (On this topic I just picked up David Mermin’s book on communication in science and it is fantastic.)