Abstract: I spent 6 years in Urbana-Champaign, many of which were during the COVID-19 pandemic. I grew to love experimental condensed matter physics research, but when it came time to find a job post-graduation, university life no longer seemed like a good fit. Motivated by the collaborations with the lab that I experienced during my PhD, time spent in northern New Mexico, plus a two-body problem, I turned my attention to LANL as the direction for my next steps. Here I’ll talk about the path I took throughout my PhD to get to LANL and what I now work on as a postdoc as well as some of how the lab is structured and additional pathways to getting hired here.
Bio: Caitlin received her PhD in 2024 under Professor Peter Abbamonte where she used M-EELS and X-ray diffraction to study collective modes in novel quantum materials. She began working at LANL as a graduate summer research assistant in 2022, returning as a GT Seaborg Institute graduate research fellow in 2023. She was hired as a postdoc in the Materials Physics & Applications: Quantum group in 2024. In 2025 she was named a GT Seaborg Institute postdoctoral fellow to support her work on sample synthesis, x-ray diffraction, and neutron scattering on 5-f electron systems.