Category Archives: outreach

Nominate yourself or someone else for the APS/FIAP Career Lectureship Award (FCLA)

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APS and the APS Forum for Industrial and Applied Physics (FIAP) just reworked their distinguished lectureship award to focus more clearly on careers. It’s now called the FIAP Career Lectureship Award (FCLA). The goal of this award is to find physicists with fascinating careers outside of physics and support them in giving talks on their career to physics students. Does someone you know have a cool non-academic career? Do you? If so, considering nominating them (or yourself)! Applications are due June 1.

More information here.

And a little humblebrag: I did help redesign this award as part of my work on the APS Committee on Careers and Professional Development (CCPD).

iaizzi

April 14, 2023

Today, 4/14, is World Quantum Day 🎉 (4/14 is a reference to Planck’s constant 4.14…×10−15 eV⋅s). Have a superluminal day!

Black cat glaring at camera
Here’s my cat, who refuses to take part in any experiments after that incident with Schrödinger.
My vaccination card and health insurance card with vaccination sticker

Vaccination update: I got my second shot!

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Update 2021-07-13: All adult residents of Taiwan now eligible to sign up to the vaccine waitlist. You’ll get a text when you can make an appointment.
Update 2021-07-06: Free PCR tests now available in Taipei (previously ~$270 USD) [Focus Taiwan].

Today (Monday July 5, 2021), I got my second shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine at NTUH. If you got your first shot through the “self paid” vaccination program, you should be eligible to make an appointment for your second shot.

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Vaccination update: self-paid vaccine delayed 2-4 weeks

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Update 2021-07-05 — Actually got my second shot. Details in new post.
Update 2021-06-21 — I got a second notice from NTUH. I think online appointments will open 6/23. Details at the end.

As promised, I’m writing to update you all on the progress of getting a self-paid vaccine in Taiwan (see my earlier post). I received a text message from NTU Hospital telling me not to come to my second shot appointment scheduled for Monday (6/21), and that the second shots for self-paid vaccines will be given at an interval of 10-12 weeks instead of 8 weeks. Details below the break.

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Join now! The Materials Modeling Stack Exchange forum is now in public beta

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I’m thrilled to announce that the Materials Modeling Stack Exchange forum is now in public beta. This means that anyone can browse without having to sign up for sign up for an account and the questions might start showing up in google search results. We’re still actively recruiting more physics-oriented contributors, so I encourage you to check it out.

There are already hundreds of questions and answers on the forum, here’s a couple great discussions you might want to join in on:

Write your congressperson to support science during COVID-19

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APS President Phil Bucksbaum recently wrote a letter with recommendations for how congress can protect science during COVID-19 and ensure a quick recovery afterwards. “The letter’s recommendations include: providing grantees full or partial cost extensions, ensuring the supplemental funding necessary to restart labs and experiments is provided, and substantially increasing REU funding for Summer 2021.”

APS is also organizing a letter-writing campaign to call Congress’s attention to this issue. They’re provided a easy-to-use tool where you can plug in your voting address, sign your letter (and add some of your own thoughts) and they will send it off to your congressperson and senators. It takes less than five minutes and it makes a huge difference. On narrow issues like this, you letter might be the only one your elected official receives!

Sign and send your letter now!

New Stack Exchange for Matter Modeling

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Some of my colleagues have worked very hard to build up a Materials Matter Modeling Stack Exchange forum, currently in beta. They need more contributors to graduate to a full-fledged forum, so I encourage anyone reading this to join at materials.stackexchange.com (you will have to create an account to join the private beta, but it’s super easy). Much of the discussion is currently on computational chemistry methods like DFT, but the admins are actively seeking more physics content to differentiate themselves from existing Stack Exchange forums.

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