Oneiromancer
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Well, just today I passed my thesis defense, which means I will soon have my Ph.D. in Physics. (I still have to fix a few things in my thesis, and turn it in, but I'm essentially done.) So I'm a freakin' doctor! How crazy is that?!?

Unfortunately, I don't have a job lined up just yet, but hopefully soon I'll be doing real work for the first time since before I started grad school, back in 1999. And I should have much more time to play DROD and make some new holds!

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Zmann
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Wow. That's exciting. I've always wanted to be called a doctor for the raw coolness factor.

Also, out of curiosity, what kind jobs can you get with a Ph.D. in physics? Forgive my ingnorance in the subject. I know my physics teacher has a Ph.D., but I'm sure there are other jobs in the field.

Anyway, congratulations, and good luck in your new coming job!

Malarame
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Wow! Congratulations! I doubt I'll ever get a doctorate degree since I think it's only really useful for professors and people doing research, and I do want a job at some point. I hope to get at least two masters degrees though, one in engineering and an MBA sometime in the future.

Just out of curiosity, what's the topic of your dissertation? And is your Ph.D. just in general physics, or is it in a more specialized category (like theoretical physics or something)? And what school are you going to be recieving the degree from?

[Edited by Malarame at Local Time:05-25-2005 at 02:26 AM]

____________________________
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Class of 2007

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Oneiromancer
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Well, a Ph.D. in Physics isn't necessarily limited to professorship or government research...many R&D positions look for them as well. Although I honestly probably wouldn't have gone for a Ph.D. way back then, knowing what I do know...it would probably have been better just getting a job with my Bachelor's. But hey, I'll work with what I got! There have been several jobs I've sent my resume to that seem perfect for me, in industry...but no responses yet, unfortunately.

The topic of my thesis is "Superconductivity, Heavy Fermion Behavior, and Crystalline Electric Field Effects in the Filled Skutterudite Series Pr(Os1-xRux)4Sb12". It's pretty much all experimental work, the field is Condensed Matter Physics, but the degree is simply Physics. And it's from UCSD -- University of California, San Diego.

Game on,

[Edited by Oneiromancer at Local Time:05-25-2005 at 02:33 AM]

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Malarame
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Any chance of giving us a layman's explanation of what that thesis topic means? A short description of what you did would be great.

Physics has always been my favorite subject. Before I decided to go to Webb, I was strongly considering being a physics major somewhere. One of the things I dislike about Webb is the lack of any type of modern physics courses. We learn lots and lots of Newtonian physics, but absolutely no modern physics at all. But then again, I guess knowing about quarks and bosons and quantum theory isn't really a prerequisite for designing a ship.

____________________________
Matt O'Leary
Webb Institute
Class of 2007

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-Groucho Marx

goldenlion
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Congratulations. Doctorates definitely aren't easy. Good luck with your job search!

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zex20913
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More congratulations upon thee! I'm sure the path was perilous, and at times quite daunting, but you have survived and written something with a title where I'm lucky to know half of the words, and none of what they mean.

Good luck with the searching for the job.

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eytanz
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Hey, congratulations!

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silver
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layman's explanation of title: he did a bunch of superconductivity experiments with a particular kind/class of crystal and drew some conclusions about why/how the electrons decided to pair up in those circumstances?

Congrats. Mucho impressivo.


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DiMono
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Wow, very much congratulations upon thee. I only partly followed the title of your thesis submission though, which just goes to prove knowing how to write computer code doesn't mean anything at all about knowledge in theoretical physics. I really have to commend you for sticking with it all the way through, I got tired of school a few months ago and I just finished up my three year college diploma.

Bravo!

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Oneiromancer
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silver wrote:
layman's explanation of title: he did a bunch of superconductivity experiments with a particular kind/class of crystal and drew some conclusions about why/how the electrons decided to pair up in those circumstances?

That's not bad! Superconductivity means that a material loses all electrical resistance at a certain temperature. Heavy fermion behavior means that the electrons in a material become very strongly correlated at low temperatures, and their effective masses become very strong, up to 1000 times the bare electron mass. When superconductivity occurs in these materials, it's not nearly as well understood as in more convential superconductors, but it is definitely related to how the electrons become correlated (the pairing mechanism is related, as silver implies). Finally, crystalline electric field (CEF) effects...well, that's a bit tougher to explain, basically the electric fields of atoms in a crystal lattice have an effect on a magnetic ion in the lattice.

So, we have this heavy fermion superconductor with CEF effects at low temperatures, PrOs4Sb12...and then this normal superconductor with CEF effects at high temperatures, PrRu4Sb12. The former compound is the first heavy fermion superconductor ever found based on Pr, and it acts differently than all other heavy fermion superconductors. So there's some interest in it, in certain circles of physics. I thus spent several years making new compounds by substituting Ru for Os, and seeing how the physical properties evolve between the two more well known end member compounds.

And now you know!

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

trick
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Congratulations!

Doctor on,
- Gerry

mrimer
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Oneiromancer wrote:
Well, just today I passed my thesis defense, which means I will soon have my Ph.D. in Physics. (I still have to fix a few things in my thesis, and turn it in, but I'm essentially done.) So I'm a freakin' doctor! How crazy is that?!?

I'm going to piggyback on this thread and announce that I defended my PhD dissertation in computer science (on improving the learning process of artificial neural networks). Woo!

That's one chapter closed in my life, which is a good thing because it now allows me more time and focus for other things.
Like developing the DROD RPG, which is coming along nicely.

____________________________
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Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
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Kwakstur
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mrimer wrote:

Oneiromancer wrote:
Well, just today I passed my thesis defense, which means I will soon have my Ph.D. in Physics. (I still have to fix a few things in my thesis, and turn it in, but I'm essentially done.) So I'm a freakin' doctor! How crazy is that?!?

I'm going to piggyback on this thread and announce that I defended my PhD dissertation in computer science (on improving the learning process of artificial neural networks). Woo!

That's one chapter closed in my life, which is a good thing because it now allows me more time and focus for other things.
Like developing the DROD RPG, which is coming along nicely.

First you try to use Whalega on my poor people, and then you use Full-Life on this topic?

So that means you're a Red Mage, which don't have lots of MP.
You probably can only cast a single Cura right about now.

____________________________
Also known as ExpHP everywhere else.

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[Last edited by Kwakstur at 08-29-2007 06:51 PM]

calamarain
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mrimer wrote:

Oneiromancer wrote:
Well, just today I passed my thesis defense, which means I will soon have my Ph.D. in Physics. (I still have to fix a few things in my thesis, and turn it in, but I'm essentially done.) So I'm a freakin' doctor! How crazy is that?!?

I'm going to piggyback on this thread and announce that I defended my PhD dissertation in computer science (on improving the learning process of artificial neural networks). Woo!

That's one chapter closed in my life, which is a good thing because it now allows me more time and focus for other things.
Like developing the DROD RPG, which is coming along nicely.

Congratulations muchly! I'm currently writing my own thesis, so I hope to be starting a thread like this in a few months myself Doing chemical metallurgy myself.

____________________________
My Holds

Briareos
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mrimer wrote:

Oneiromancer wrote:
Well, just today I passed my thesis defense, which means I will soon have my Ph.D. in Physics. (I still have to fix a few things in my thesis, and turn it in, but I'm essentially done.) So I'm a freakin' doctor! How crazy is that?!?

I'm going to piggyback on this thread and announce that I defended my PhD dissertation in computer science (on improving the learning process of artificial neural networks). Woo!

Conga-rats to that!

So I guess you'll be using your endless army of highly-trained neural networks to make the DROD RPG's enemies *really* challenging?

np: M. Mayer - Amanda (Kompakt Total 2)

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Blondbeard
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Cool! The little I've heard about neural networks has been interesting, so I'm sure the combination of you AND neural networks must be very interesting

CuriousShyRabbit
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Congratulations, "Dr. Imer"!!!
The good feeling of never having to do that again will stay with you for years

Oneiromancer
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Yay Mike! I hope you had a nice party and relaxed afterwards. I didn't mention it before, but my lab had a tradition of ordering a cake with the thesis topic graphically represented on it. The bakery was always very bemused by having to make very nerdy cakes. But I suppose that might work out better for physics than computer science if you don't want to use a lot of text.

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Elfstone
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mrimer wrote:
. . . and announce that I defended my PhD dissertation in computer science (on improving the learning process of artificial neural networks). Woo!

That's one chapter closed in my life, which is a good thing because it now allows me more time and focus for other things.
Like developing the DROD RPG, which is coming along nicely.

I skimmed down this thread wondering why in the Eighth a thread from 2 years back had been unearthed and actually I'm still wondering; this really does deserve a thread of it's own Mike, (or should I say "Dr. Imer"?) You deserve hearty congratulations and a glass raised in you honour. Here's to you my dear and to your continued success.

Edit - damn! Curious had the same idea - sorry! I think I'll just leave my post as it is though.

____________________________
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[Last edited by Elfstone at 08-29-2007 11:39 PM]

Tim
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Well done! Yay!

Now that you've become a real doctor, can I assume your next project will have much fewer bugs?

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silver
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Tim wrote:
Now that you've become a real doctor, can I assume your next project will have much fewer bugs?

no, the bugs will just be harder for us non doctors to understand


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eytanz
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Congratulations!

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I got my avatar back! Yay!

NoahT
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Mazel tov, Mr.Dr. Imer!

-Noah

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My stuff:

mrimer
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Thanks for the kind sentiments, everyone. You can call me Dr. Mr. Imer now.

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I am Gandalf the White.
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golfrman
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how about M.D. Imer?


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[Last edited by golfrman at 08-30-2007 05:34 AM]

silver
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golfrman wrote:
how about M.D. Imer?

M.D. stands for Medical Doctor. It doesn't apply to people with a doctorate in Computer Science.

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Briareos
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mrimer wrote:
Thanks for the kind sentiments, everyone. You can call me Dr. Mr. Imer now.

You know, your Dr. desparately needs another title next to it that's abbreviated "Od."...

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Dolan42
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Briareos wrote:

mrimer wrote:
Thanks for the kind sentiments, everyone. You can call me Dr. Mr. Imer now.

You know, your Dr. desparately needs another title next to it that's abbreviated "Od."...

Dr. of Development... DroD. Mr. Imer.

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Tahnan
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Mazel Tov, Herr Doktor! And let me second the sentiment that the best part of finishing a dissertation is knowing that you'll never, ever have to do it again.