- #1
ChrisVer
Gold Member
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- 464
I was wondering...
How "desirable" is specialization in experimental physics?
The thing is that you can always find pros and cons to all kind of personas, and let me explain:
For example you have a person who did a research on some particular topic during his/her phd. During that research they "mastered" most of the topics around their research (that is what I call specialization). They finish with the PhD and want to continue for a postdoc... This is what's confusing me:
1. should the postdoc be on the same topic as the phd? That would be awesome because they already know all there is on the field and so they can lead a group/supervise master students or phds... But also they have "nothing" to gain out of it in the sense of researching (ok there are some "exclusions" to that), since they are already "masters of the topic".
2. should it be on some other topic (eg go from CMS to T2K)? They get the opportunity to deal with something out of what they knew so far, to come across new experimental challenges and so on, which obviously builds up their "physicist" title... but it takes things off the specialization...
What is your opinion?
How "desirable" is specialization in experimental physics?
The thing is that you can always find pros and cons to all kind of personas, and let me explain:
For example you have a person who did a research on some particular topic during his/her phd. During that research they "mastered" most of the topics around their research (that is what I call specialization). They finish with the PhD and want to continue for a postdoc... This is what's confusing me:
1. should the postdoc be on the same topic as the phd? That would be awesome because they already know all there is on the field and so they can lead a group/supervise master students or phds... But also they have "nothing" to gain out of it in the sense of researching (ok there are some "exclusions" to that), since they are already "masters of the topic".
2. should it be on some other topic (eg go from CMS to T2K)? They get the opportunity to deal with something out of what they knew so far, to come across new experimental challenges and so on, which obviously builds up their "physicist" title... but it takes things off the specialization...
What is your opinion?