AIP fellow Rana goes to state department

“I’ve spent my entire career so far in physics, but I’ve always been interested in politics and international relations and just didn’t know how to combine the two passions,” says particle physicist Lubna Rana, this year’s American Institute of Physics State Department fellow.

Rana began work in September at the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation (ISN). She expects that as a PhD physicist, both her technical background and her analytical abilities will help her make a meaningful contribution.

Rana says that she is looking forward to spending her fellowship year learning about the American foreign policy making process and contributing to issues she had previously followed closely on the news. “I just want to have an extraordinarily interesting life,” she says, “and have the best intellectual experiences I can find that can satisfy my interests.”

After her fellowship, Rana plans to return to her position as a research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park.