STEM
STEM Blog
When Quantum Mechanics is Your Day Job: an Interview with Dr. Joelle Corrigan ’16
August 24, 2022
Tags STEM
What were your interests and studies at Hamilton College, and how did those experiences prepare you for your current career?
At Hamilton, I majored in physics and minored in math and religious studies. In the beginning, I did not know I was going to major in physics, and I originally applied for psychology. However, when I started taking physics, each new course was a new adventure and exposed me to new areas of physics. After a couple of years, I realized I gravitated more towards quantum physics (the somewhat spooky and mystical rules that govern small particles) and condensed matter (the study of materials, things like magnetism and superconductivity). These interests pushed me to attend graduate school in physics. I went to the University of Wisconsin Madison and joined a group that researches semiconducting quantum dots as a platform for quantum computing, which combined my interests in quantum and condensed matter. The research I did for my Ph.D. directly maps to the work I now do at Intel.
What do you find the most challenging about your job? What do you find the most rewarding?
As for most research-based work, my entire day/week/job is centered around solving problems. If there were no problems, we would have a working quantum computer already! Sometimes the problems are like puzzles, or like a word search, or like a recipe; with enough time, each of these should have a straightforward solution and often there are others with enough experience to give advice or help if you are stumped. Other times you are working on a problem maybe no one else has seen before, and it can be very frustrating trying new things with no improvement or path forward. On the flip side, when there is an improvement or a new finding, these are the most rewarding moments, and often end up softening the memories of all the struggle or stress it took to get there.
What motivated you to seek this career path?
The work I am doing now is very similar to the research I did during my Ph.D. (which is pretty rare). When I was finishing up my Ph.D., there were a couple different routes I could have taken if I wanted to continue in quantum computing research. I could have stayed in academia and become a professor or worked at a national lab (after one or two postdoctoral research jobs), I could have joined a government lab or government contractor lab, or I could have moved to industry. In the end, I did not want to have to worry about publishing and grant writing, which are both very important in academia, and I liked the fast-paced environment that industry offered. Additionally, Intel is a large company with a lot of cool research, which gives me the opportunity to move around or try new things if I want a change in the future. Though not the only reason, industry has better pay and benefits than government or academic work.
What advice would you give to current Hamilton students thinking of pursuing this field of work?
The advice I give to people trying to think about next steps is “follow your spark.” Find the things that excite you, things you learn about on your own time, or that you feel the need to tell other people even if they likely won’t care. There are always going to be hardships and challenges and stress in any career, so you need those moments of spark to remind you why you are doing what you’re doing in order to make it through. If you don’t know what that is yet, or if you know the general area (for me, physics), but not the specific subfield (for me, quantum physics/quantum computing), expose yourself to as much content as you can. Go to talks and colloquia, talk to people about their research, and read posters/abstracts for conferences or papers. There were many areas which did not excite me. But I started to discover ones that did with many similarities, which helped inform my path.
