Physics

What can you do with a Physics degree?  Plenty although the reality is that most people being trained in physics at the undergraduate graduate or even postdoctoral levels aren't aware of the broad spectrum of opportunities available to them.  The problem solving skills necessary to succeed in physics are sought after in a wide range of technology financial and industrial sectors. This day will bring together current students and postdocs in theoretical physics with former students who have found great success in a wide range of different areas from startups to big companies finance and even bestselling novels.  Many of them were affiliated with Perimeter Institute and chose their career paths over opportunities in academia.  Through a combination of talks and panel sessions this day will showcase the many career possibilities available to young physicists steps they can take to explore these options and how to avoid the inevitable pitfalls. Lunch will be provided and there will ample opportunities to ask questions and network.

Scientific inquiry in the 21st century is beset with inefficiencies: a flood of papers not read theories not tested and experiments not repeated; a narrow research agenda driven by a handful of high-impact journals; a publishing industry that turns public funding into private profit; the exclusion of many scientists particularly in developing countries from cutting-edge research; and countless projects that are not completed for lack of skilled collaborators. These are all symptoms of a major communication bottleneck within the scientific community; the channels we rely on to share our ideas and findings especially peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings are inadequate to the scale and scope of modern science. The practice of open research doing science on a public platform that facilitates collaboration feedback and the spread of ideas addresses these concerns. Open-source science lowers barriers to entry catalyzing new discoveries. It fosters the real-time sharing of ideas across the globe favoring cooperative endeavor and complementarity of thought rather than wasteful competition. It reduces the influence of publishing monopolies enabling a new credit attribution model based on contributions made rather than references accrued. Overall it democratizes science while creating a new standard of prestige: quality of work instead of quantity of output. This workshop will bring together a diverse group of researchers from fields as diverse as physics biology computer science and sociology committed to open-source science. Together we will review the lessons learnt from various pioneering initiatives such as the Polymath project and Data for Democracy. We will discuss the opportunity to build a new tool similar to the software development platform GitHub to enable online collaborative science. We will consider the challenges associated with the adoption of such a tool by our peers and discuss ways to overcome them. Finally we will sketch a roadmap for the actual development of that tool.