Tag Archives: jobs

Instructional Assistant Professor of Physics Position

Posted on 26 September, 2018 by | Leave a comment

Chapman is hiring an Instructional Assistant Professor of Physics. Although non Tenure Track, this is a full faculty position with the possibility of promotion to Associate and Full professor.  Please encourage all qualified candidates interested in a teaching career in physics to apply.  We are particularly interested in people who can help develop our lab curriculum and teach physics to life sciences majors.  See the job advert here.

Leave a comment

Posted in Quantum Quandaries

Tagged , ,

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Quantum Foundations

Posted on 14 November, 2017 by | Leave a comment

General Information

The Institute for Quantum Studies within Schmid College of Science and Technology at Chapman University invites applications for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Foundations of Quantum Theory, beginning August 2018.

Chapman University, located in the heart of Orange County, California, is ranked in the top tier of western universities by U.S. News and World Report, and has gained national recognition for its commitment to excellence through innovative research and teaching. Schmid College of Science and Technology embodies Chapman’s commitment to interdisciplinarity, fostering an outstanding community of teacher-scholars across a broad range of undergraduate and graduate programs. More information on the College and its future 140,000 square foot home, the Keck Center for Science and Engineering, can be found here: www.chapman.edu/science.

Qualifications

Postdoctoral Fellow must hold a Ph.D. or an equivalent of a doctoral degree by the beginning of employment at Chapman University. The doctorate or equivalent must have been awarded within the last five years and candidate has not exceeded five years of prior postdoctoral experience.

A publication record showing a strong promise for future independent research is highly desirable.

Responsibilities

The postdoc will work in the group of Dr. Matthew Leifer on the project “Fine Tunings and the Nature of Quantum Reality”.

A “fine tuning” refers to a property of the operational predictions of quantum theory that cannot hold at the level of reality. Fine tunings are exposed by the various no-go theorems for realist accounts of quantum theory, such as Bell’s theorem, the Kochen-Specker theorem, and recent results on the reality of the quantum state. The project encompasses: rigorously defining the notion of a fine tuning, characterizing and quantifying fine-tunings in a resource theoretic framework, exploiting fine tunings for information processing advantages, developing ontological frameworks for quantum theory that are free of fine tunings, and explaining fine tunings as emergent.

The postdoc is expected to work with Dr. Leifer on this project, but may also pursue their own independent research.

The postdoc is expected to publish their findings in academic journals and present their work at academic conferences and workshops. The postdoc is also expected to contribute to the research culture of the institute and university. Examples of ways of doing this include: giving seminars, helping to organize conferences and workshops, helping to organize seminars and talks, and discussing research with undergraduate and graduate students who are working on research projects.

Contact Information

Applicants should send electronic copies of their CV, research statement, list of publications, and three references to Dr. Matthew Leifer at leifer@chapman.edu.

Applications should be received before December 7, 2017 in order to receive full consideration, but the position will remain open until filled.

Fellows are offered a competitive salary, benefits, research support, and personalized professional development in research.
Chapman University is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive academic global community. The University is dedicated to enhancing diversity and inclusion in all aspects of recruitment and employment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, military and veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, genetic information or any other characteristic protected by state or federal law. The University is committed to achieving a diverse faculty and staff and encourages members of underrepresented groups to apply.

Chapman University, One University Drive, Orange, CA 92866 Human Resources Department

Leave a comment

Posted in Quantum Quandaries

Tagged , , ,

Job/Course/Conference Announcements

Posted on 26 November, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Here are a few announcements that have arrived in my inbox in the past few days.

Perimeter Scholars International

Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI), in partnership with the University of Waterloo, welcomes applications to the Master’s level course, Perimeter Scholars International (PSI). Exceptional students with an undergraduate honours degree in Physics, Math, Engineering or Computer Science are encouraged to apply. Students must have a minimum of 3 upper level undergraduate or graduate courses in physics. PSI recruits a diverse group of students and especially encourages applications from qualified women candidates. The due date for applications to PSI is February 1st, 2011. Complete details are available at www.perimeterscholars.org.

Foundations Postdocs

Also a reminder that it is currently postdoc hiring season at Perimeter Institute. Although, the deadline for applications has passed, they will always consider applications from qualified candidates if not all positions have been filled. Anyone looking for a postdoc in quantum foundations should definitely apply. In fact, if you are looking for a foundations job and you have not applied to PI then you must be quite mad, since there are not a lot of foundations positions in physics to be had elsewhere. Details are here.

Quantum Interactions

I will admit that this next conference announcement is a little leftfield, but some of the areas it covers are very interesting and worthwhile in my opinion, particularly the biological and artificial intelligence applications.

————————–

CALL FOR PAPERS

————————–

The Fifth International Symposium on Quantum Interaction (QI’2010, http://www.rgu.ac.uk/qi2011), 27-29 June 2010, Aberdeen, United Kingdom.

Quantum Interaction (QI) is an emerging field which is applying quantum theory (QT) to domains such as artificial intelligence, human language, cognition, information retrieval, biology, political science, economics, organisations and social interaction.

After highly successful previous meetings (QI’2007 at Stanford, QI’2008 at Oxford, QI’2009 at Saarbruecken, QI’2010 at Washington DC), the Fifth International Quantum Interaction Symposium will take place in Aberdeen, UK from 27 to 29 June 2011.

This symposium will bring together researchers interested in how QT addresses problems in non-quantum domains. QI’2011 will also include a half day tutorial session on 26 June 2011, with a number of leading researchers delivering tutorial on the foundations of QT, the application of QT to human cognition and decision making, and QT inspired semantic information processing.

***Call for Papers***

We are seeking submission of high-quality and original research papers that have not been previously published and are not under review for another conference or journal. Papers should address one or more of the following broad content areas, but not limited to:

– Artificial Intelligence (Logic, planning, agents and multi-agent systems)

– Biological or Complex Systems

– Cognition and Brain (memory, cognitive processes, neural networks, consciousness)

– Decision Theory (political, psychological, cultural, organisational, social sciences)

– Finance and Economics (decision-making, mergers, corporate cultures)

– Information Processing and Retrieval

– Language and Linguistics

The post-conference proceedings of QI’2011 will be published by Springer in its Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. Authors will be required to submit a final version 14 days after the conference to reflect the comments made at the conference. We will also consider organizing a special issue for a suitable journal to publish selected best papers.

***Important Dates***

28th March 2011: Abstract submission deadline

1st April 2011: Paper submission deadline

1st May 2011: Notification of acceptance

1st June 2011: Camera-Ready Copy

26th June 2011: Tutorial Session

27th – 29th June 2011: Conference

***Submission***

Authors are invited to submit research papers up to 12 pages. All submissions should be prepared in English using the LNCS template, which can be downloaded from http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0.

Please submit online at:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=qi2011

***Organization***

Steering Committee:

Peter Bruza (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)

William Lawless (Paine College, USA)

Keith van Rijsbergen (University of Glasgow, UK)

Donald Sofge (Naval Research Laboratory, USA)

Dominic Widdows (Google, USA)

General Chair:

Dawei Song (Robert Gordon University, UK)

Programme Committee Chair:

Massimo Melucci (University of Padua, Italy)

Publicity Chair:

Sachi Arafat (University of Glasgow, UK)

Proceedings Chair:

Ingo Frommholz (University of Glasgow, UK)

Local Organization co-Chairs:

Jun Wang and Peng Zhang (Robert Gordon University, UK)

Leave a comment

Posted in Quantum Quandaries

Tagged , , , ,

Return to blogging

Posted on 10 September, 2010 by | 1 comment

I have decided to try to make a return to blogging and I am intending to write new posts about once or twice a week. Making a statement like this is dangerous, as veteran bloggers know well, as it usually leads to several month’s radio silence. Nevertheless, I hope that making this announcement will give me enough motivation to actually go through with it.

For those of you who are not up-to-date with the latest Matt Leifer gossip, I essentially gave up blogging at the end of 2007 because I came down with a mysterious illness that, amongst other things, ruined my ability to do anything that requires concentration. I had to take an indefinite leave of absence from work in April 2008 and I can attest that this is not a fantastic thing to do for your academic career when you are still a postdoc. I have since been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a controversial syndrome that does not have any very effective treatments (at least none of them have really worked for me so far). Although I am not really feeling any better, I have decided to try and work part-time for a couple of days a week and I am in the process of transferring the remainder of my FQXi grant to University College London to pay my salary for about eight months.

As you can imagine, I have built up a lot of internal rants about quantum theory in the couple of years since I stopped blogging, so I do not think I will have much trouble coming up with topics to write about. One person who should be especially glad about my return to blogging is Chad Orzel, because it means that I will have far less time to write overly long comments on his blog whenever he writes something about that touches on the foundations of quantum theory.

Hope to see you round here sometime soon!

1 Comment

Posted in News, Quantum Quandaries

Tagged , , ,

Get Paid to do Foundations III

Posted on 6 December, 2007 by | Leave a comment

‘Tis the season to get employed as a foundations researcher.  Perimeter Institute is currently advertising vacancies for Junior Faculty positions in Quantum Foundations.  See here for more details.  Deadline for applications is Jan 15th.

Leave a comment

Posted in Quantum Quandaries

Tagged , ,

Get paid to do Foundations II

Posted on 23 November, 2007 by | 6 comments

It seems that this blog is becoming the official website for Quantum Foundations job announcements.  Sadly, in the current climate this still means that I don’t have to bug you with job adverts too often.  In any case, there are two postdocs available via the PIAF (Perimeter Institute — Australia Foundations) partnership, which look like a pretty sweet deal for any finishing postdocs/grad students in Foundations.  They involve spending 9 months of the year in Sydney and 3 months here in Waterloo.  Theoretically, this means that you could completely avoid experiencing winter for the three years of the postdoc.  The job ad is posted here and the deadline is 7th December 2007.

6 Comments

Posted in Quantum Quandaries

Tagged , ,