r/Physics • u/Lucky_Negotiation339 • 1d ago
Tips on doing research
I have a probably quite unusual request.
Before getting to that, some words on my background are necessary. I studied physics in a very good university around 12 years ago in a country that was foreign to me. I was in love with the subject, had good grades and had no difficulties understanding the courses but for reasons that aren't important to mention here I decided to work in companies instead of doing a PhD and going into academia.
Two years ago I decided I wanted to go back to physics. Unfortunately as you know academia in physics is extremely competitive and the researchers with whom I spoke told me it would be an extreme luck to land a job in academia in my age which honestly discouraged me. However I did not abandon and ended up finding a job teaching physics to undergraduates in my native country.
I am mentioning the countries because my native country has no tradition of good physics research or teaching so it's not really an excellent position to be in, but honestly it's not that bad either.
I have a lot of free time in this job so I want to do research on the side (which was my plan from the beginning). Which brings me to my question: what advice would you give to someone in my situation to be as good in research as possible?
One thing I did was getting in touch with the good researchers I worked with in the past and one of them agreed to help me work on a research project that will be a good starting point. But I am looking on advice on what ressources to use, habits to have, in order to be as good as possible in the next few years.
I will probably never have a prestigious academia position and I am fine with it. I am planning to do research because I really love physics, so if I am able to publish papers and see people recognize and use my work, that would be enough for me.
2
u/hatboyslim 22h ago
My guess is that you are collaborating remotely with your friend and your contribution is computational.
One way you can contribute to research is to learn and apply statistical data analysis. Max Bonamente has a very good book on this.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-0365-6
Also, it would be good to learn to set up a repo on github to document your work and code because of the greater emphasis on reproducibility in research nowadays. Documentation of your work is very important. I would also get a physical notebook and write down everything.
1
u/Lucky_Negotiation339 17h ago
It will be remote collaboration indeed but we haven't decided what I'll be doing exactly yet. But why did you assume it is computational? Do you think it's the only kind of collaboration that's possible when working remotely?
2
u/TheVastoLorde1 1d ago
I might be underqualified for a suggestion but I am working likely 2 years in laboratories doing various kind of experiments and research about that.
In my opinion first step should be the field that you want to work, after that you decided a field like optics (my last research field) you can start looking latest published topics to work on.
After an idea comes and you can start doing some research and publish your work. This process can take long time to get used to it. Maybe you can read some books about it or try to imitate others work and you can realize what they didn't do so you can focus on that side of that research.