Asklemmy

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What do you do for a living? I'm always fascinated to know. (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 3 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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in addition to that, did you choose your job or was it something you fell into? do you enjoy it? I wanna know all the neat lil details, this stuff is really cool to me.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

I have a bit over one year left to complete my PhD. My topic is spectroscopy, mostly time-resolved. So I spend a lot of time aligning lasers, preparing and measuring samples, and fitting data. Sometimes I get to go to synchrotrons to perform measurements using short X-ray pulses.

My original plan was to study the evolutionary biology of salamanders, but while studying biochemistry I discovered that what I found most interesting usually involved light-driven processes (photoreceptors, photosynthesis, pigments, pH color changes, optogenetics, etc.), and I wanted to understand them in more detail. So I decided to go into a PhD to understand molecular photophysics better.

I am happy and I do enjoy it. But I am not sure about what I will do next... This work is fun, but it is dark in the lab, and I would like to do more work in the field. My dream would be to be able to mix field work and spectroscopy. If anyone has some opportunities doing some spectroscopic studies in a tropical rain-forest please let me know! 😸