LinkedIn Posts | Aggie Branczyk

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What skills do I need to work at a quantum tech start-up?

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Careers

Hello LinkedIn friends. I wonder if you can help with a question: how would a new physics PhD graduate interested in a career in science policy get relevant (practical, hands-on) experience? …see more
If you’re changing careers, you will likely need new skills. But before adding any new skills to your repertoire, figure out how to CLEARLY COMMUNICATE what value your EXISTING skills bring to the new industry/profession. …see more
Sometimes it’s hard for PhD grads to figure out what skills differentiate them from everyone else in the non-academic job market. …see more
A good way to break into a new industry is to start writing helpful LinkedIn posts about what you learn in the process. …see more
Are you trying to figure out whether or not to do a PhD? …see more
Career pro tip: get yourself onto a hiring (or grant, or conference, etc) committee as early as you can in your career. …see more
I see a lot of STEM PhD graduates contemplating leaving academia and pursuing a career in data science or AI/ML. …see more
If you’re a grad student pondering your future, you’ve probably heard (from me?!! 😀) that you need to talk to more people in different industries. But contacting people can be scary. How do you deal with rejection? …see more
For PhD students looking for non-academic positions, it’s important to understand how hiring REALLY works. If you haven’t looked into it yet, I bet that it doesn’t work how you think it works. …see more
My best career tip to PhD students is to do PLENTY of informational interviews before graduating. Here’s how: …see more
When you first start thinking about what to do after your PhD, it seems like there isn’t much info about non-academic careers for PhD grads. Fortunately, that’s not the case, it just takes a little bit of exposure to the non-academic world to find it. …see more
I know the #OpenToWork photo frame on LinkedIn is well-intentioned, and I see why people might be inclined to use it, but I’ve been having this nagging feeling that it might do more harm than good for people looking for a new role. …see more
If you’re a PhD student/grad trying to get a job & you’re not using LinkedIn, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Especially during the pandemic. …see more
Here are 6 people to follow on LinkedIn if you’re a PhD student/grad looking for a job: …see more
I often get asked by students & postdocs who are looking to transition into quantum tech, “what skills do I need?” …see more
“You have a tremendous skill set and an excellent mind that will be valuable once you learn how to use it and apply it to the marketplace…” – Chris Cornthwaite …see more
I finally read “Achieving a quantum smart workforce,” and wanted to highlight some parts about skills. …see more
What can you do if you want to join industry after graduating, but you’re doing your PhD in a field that doesn’t involve programming? …see more
Are you attending IEEE Quantum Week? If so, drop by Araceli Venegas-Gomez’s tutorial on preparing the future quantum workforce on Wednesday. …see more
We all have our unique career trajectories. Mine took me from helping launch a rocket in the Australian desert to helping a new generation of scientists discover their own career trajectories in Canada. …see more
Are you super excited about a career in quantum computing but don’t know where to start? …see more

Academia

Did you know that you’re supposed to punctuate your equations? …see more
I wish we wrote research papers the way we write open-source code. …see more
Here are three things I love about industry that I wish were adopted in academia: …see more
Are you a student putting off contacting potential advisors? It can seem overwhelming, but it helps to have a strategy. …see more
How do you get a professor to reply to your email? …see more
Do you struggle reading scientific papers? It helps to have the right strategy. …see more
How do you find a new research project in Quantum Information? …see more
[Rage comic] Science IRL …see more

Networking

One of my new favourite books is “Your Music and People” by Derek Sivers. It’s about his experiences in the music industry, but his observations are universally applicable. …see more
Do you wonder what to write in your LinkedIn profile? I have a game that might help. …see more
Online conferences are starting to provide spaces for networking, but when you’re on video with a group of strangers, it’s not so easy to bond. So how do you bond online? …see more
I wanted to highlight a very special event happening next week: the second Women in Quantum Summit. …see more
A really nice article by Natalie Lundsteen, about the importance of talking to people. …see more

Productivity & workflow

Do you have a rubber duck to help you solve problems? …see more
My ideal conference: everyone pre-records their talks…then we all fly to the same location and we watch the talks together like in a movie theatre. …see more
How do you teach people how to think? …see more
Are you in a career where you give lots of presentations, and they have to be good? …see more
Do you ever find yourself with some time on your hands and think “now I can tick off some items from my To Do list”, but then you look at your list, and for some reason, you’re not able to do anything on there? …see more
Burnout sucks. It’s one of those things that everyone talks about, but you don’t take it seriously until it happens to you for the first time. …see more
It really bugs me that I still haven’t figured out what folders I should have on my computer & what they should contain. …see more
I’m lucky because most of my work is quite enjoyable…once I get going. But for some reason, my brain likes to put up a fight just when I’m about to start a new task. …see more
“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” – Seneca …see more
One of my favourite things to talk about is the importance of energy-management vs. time-management. I don’t usually run out of time to do the important things in work & life, but I can easily run out of energy if I don’t manage it well. …see more
I’ll never forget the time a colleague started his conference talk by making a pitch on behalf of his postdoc…“You should hire my postdoc. He’s amazing because he makes mistakes quickly.”…see more
Do you struggle with procrastination, productivity, time-management, etc? Maybe you tried some methods that sounded promising, but didn’t work, so you gave up? …see more
“Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time…” – Kevin Kelly …see more
Motivational quotes: you either love them or hate them. I personally love collecting quotes that motivate me. I have a ton of them! …see more
A few posts ago, I brought up the idea of energy management. A nice book on this topic is “How to fail at almost everything and still win big” by Scott Adams. …see more
I’m a compulsive googler. It’s not that I don’t like figuring things out for myself. In fact, I love doing that! …see more
“Doing things you don’t enjoy reduces your effectiveness… “ – From “Personal Kanban: Mapping Work Navigating Life” …see more
Time-management is important, but I think energy-management is even more so. How do you do it? …see more

Motivation & inspiration

So, I’m sure that most of you are familiar with imposter syndrome. But did you know that it was originally coined as imposter phenomenon? …see more
I find that getting good rest is important if I want to be my best self. Sleep is key, but so is taking time out to reflect, going for walks and so on. You can break this down even further… …see more
Sometimes people get stuck when trying to come up with good ideas from scratch, but they’ll absolutely crush it when it comes to turning mediocre ideas into good ones. …see more
When do you think you’re “qualified enough” to publicly share what you’ve learnt from life? I think you’re qualified right now. Here’s why. …see more
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish somebody told me… “ …see more
Groan…why did I agree to present at this journal club? …see more
“You’re going to hear a lot of advice. Listen to it all, but pay close attention to what it does to your energy and focus…” – Derek Sivers …see more
The people you admire are still figuring it out. – Justin Welsh …see more
Unplug. Turn off your phone and Wi-Fi. Focus… – Derek Sivers …see more
The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia. – Kevin Kelly …see more

Quantum tech

Time for some fun quantum trivia! Why does IBM’s new Eagle QPU have 127 qubits and not 128 (which you might recognize as 2^7)? …see more
Quantum computing is cool, especially for young students…so you can use that to get them to learn some pretty advanced math, to learn how to code, to learn physics and engineering physics… …see more
Are you studying for the IBM Quantum Developer Certification? If so, you might like to check out this nice series of videos by Manny Gomez that go through the sample exam in detail. …see more
In 1981, MIT held the Physics of Computation conferece—a three-day discussion about the possibility of designing more powerful and efficient ways of computing by taking cues from the natural world. …see more
IBM Quantum released our development roadmap today. Here’s what it looks like by year: …see more
Should ex-academics at quantum tech companies embrace Agile frameworks like Scrum & Kanban? …see more
I tend to catch up on most of my quantum computing news on Sunday mornings. …see more
Last week, CQC and IBM announced quantum random number generation as a service. Why is this cool? …see more
So when are we going to have a useful quantum computer anyway? QC is still a young field, and data characterizing performance has only recently started to become available. …see more
The amount of quantum tech news is growing so rapidly, it’s hard to keep up. But reading everything is unsustainable and stressful…so what should you do instead? …see more
[Business in Quantum FAQ] Why would a tenured professor leave their cushy university position to start a quantum computing company? …see more

Tech

Does anyone still use Fortran? Turns out that physicists do. …see more
As a scientist, I love Jupyter notebooks. They’re great for poking around and exploring ideas. It turns out that they’re not so great for reproducibility though…in fact, they’re surprisingly bad! How bad? …see more
Have you ever wondered what people mean when they say that it’s important to create a “tech ecosystem”? …see more
If you want to get technology from the lab to the market, what are some hurdles you need to overcome? …see more
Things seem to be heating up for the Canadian tech scene. …see more

My research

I wanted to tell you about a new paper…It’s about making photons, which are very useful for many quantum info tasks. …see more
The quantum internet could revolutionize how computers talk to each other. Parts of the quantum internet will be realized by sending quantum light through waveguides, such as optical fibres, that are connected to quantum devices. …see more
Have you heard about the Unruh effect? It’s super weird! …see more
It’s common to think of photons as “particles of light”. It turns out that photons are nothing like ordinary particles. …see more
Light moves at nature’s speed limit, and doesn’t degrade for hundreds of kilometres, making it our best medium for sending information over long distances. But to send quantum information, we will require quantum light. …see more

Life

Anyone who has gone through the immigration process knows how gut-wrenching it is to have to wait months, sometimes even years, for a decision. …see more

Personal

I received this book over the weekend. What do you think? A good title for my upcoming podcast? 😂 …see more
Thank you Horizon Quantum Computing for this amazing poster!!! I love it! 💙 …see more
[Dark Matter coffee] I just got back from a trip to Northern Ontario. …see more
I’m thrilled to announce that I will be joining IBM next month! …see more
This Friday will be my last day as a PSI Fellow at Perimeter Institute. …see more
I’m super proud of my amazing student, Christian Drago, for successfully defending his MSc thesis at the University of Waterloo this month! …see more