Plenary Session: APS Career Panel

Novarah Kazmi Policht is a Senior Application Engineer at Ansys Government Initiatives (AGI). In her role she has been teaching users practical skills in digital mission modeling using STK for over 7 years. She specializes in using STK for orbit design and maneuver planning for satellite and spacecraft missions as well in electro-optical infrared (EOIR) sensor performance and image prediction. She has trained over 7,000 users in her tenure at AGI and is also one of two AGI engineers to become Penn State adjunct instructors enabling students to earn CEUs for approved classes. Novarah earned her undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And as a space enthusiast she is excited to use modern tools to design future missions.

Cynthia Aku-Leh is a Research Scientist at ISciences LLC, Ann Arbor, Michigan. She conducts research and development and has worked on various projects including improving reflectance models. Prior to joining the team at ISciences, she worked at the Max Born Institute in Berlin in the division of Femtosecond Spectroscopy of Solids. Before this, she was employed by both Kings College of London and the Institute des Nanoscience in Paris as a postdoc. She worked on spin-polarized electron gasses in semi-magnetic quantum wells. Cynthia received her Ph. D. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, in experimental condensed matter physics. Outside of research, Cynthia has taught as an Adjunct Faculty at Baker College. She has served as an officer and organizer for the APS Local Links in Ann Arbor, the Ann Arbor Section of the Optical Society of America (Optica) and the Eastern Great Lakes Section of the APS.

Dr. Michelle Lollie (she/her) is an Advanced Laser Scientist at Quantinuum, a full-stack quantum computing company. She earned a BA in Business Administration/Finance from Clark Atlanta University, a BS in Physics from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, an MS in Physics from Indiana University - Bloomington, and a PhD in Physics from Louisiana State University. A career changer, she left the retail banking industry to pursue her passion for physics. She’s an advocate for under-represented persons in STEM fields and is dedicated to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts in physics. She resides in Colorado where she is growing as an amateur violinist and hiker.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in physics from Caltech, Brian enrolled in graduate school at Princeton and joined the atomic physics group of Prof. Will Happer where he studied spin-exchange optical pumping of noble gases and alkali salts and alkali-vapor spin physics in high magnetic fields. In 2008 Brian joined the Budker group at UC Berkeley as a post-doc, where he researched Earth's-field atomic magnetometry and other applications of atomic systems. In 2014 Brian joined AOSense, Inc., a research-focused company specializing in inertial sensors based on matter-wave interferometry. While at AOSense he gained valuable experience in proposing and managing government research contracts and working on laser-cooled atomic clocks and ultraprecise magnetometers. Since 2018 Brian has been with the Think Tank Team at Samsung Research America, where he uses his physics and project management background to develop technologies that will enable new products and user experiences. Somewhere along the way, Brian also attended culinary school at L'Ecole Ritz-Escoffier in Paris.

Dr. Crystal Bailey is the Head of Career Programs at the American Physical Society (APS). Crystal works on several projects which are geared towards marketing physics and physics career information to high school students, undergraduates, graduate students and physics professionals. Some of her principal projects include workshops at APS annual and division meetings, the APS Job Board and Job Fairs, and mentoring programs like the Career Mentoring Fellow, Industry Mentoring for Physicists (IMPact) and National Mentoring Community programs. Crystal is also Director of the Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics. Her mission is to promote the integration of meaningful workforce development into physics education, and to broaden awareness of, and interest in, non-academic physics careers. Before coming to the APS, Dr. Bailey did research in nuclear physics at Indiana University, Bloomington in the area of few-body systems. In 2008 she received the Konopinski Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching from the IU Physics Department. She graduated with her PhD from IU in 2009.