Katherine Quinn teases out trends in global research and innovation

“What can physicists do? ” is an interview series that profiles physicists who opted for careers outside of academia.

What was your research focus?

Statistical physics and complex systems applied to cosmology, neural networks, biophysics, and machine learning. I also did research in physics education.

What were you looking for in a job?

My goal was to be a professor. But during my postdoc, I had a moment of introspection: Is this really what I want to do? Or is it what I should want because I’m good at it?

I also realized that I didn’t like the faculty lifestyle: They are overworked and poorly compensated.

I reached out to my network to learn about other careers. I settled on the policy route.

How did you find your job?

I was a congressional fellow for a year. [The fellowship was sponsored by the American Institute of Physics, publisher of Physics Today, as part of a larger program overseen by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.] In my job on the Hill, we had to do things quickly, and think tanks kept popping up in the context of “let’s rely on an authoritative source.” When it came time to job hunt, I targeted the National Academy of Sciences, advocacy groups, and think tanks. The Center for Security and Emerging Technology is a think tank dedicated to policy analysis. I started here in 2022.

What do you do?

We ingest terabytes of data from publications, job postings, legislative documents, and other public sources. I create public-facing tools. I lead research projects, such as making a deep-learning classifier from which we model trends to pick out emerging areas of growth in science. And I write—white papers, policy reports, blog posts, an op-ed, and academic papers.

For funsies, I teach a class on data analysis and visualization at Georgetown University.

How do you use your physics background?

Modeling and programming. And the way I dissect problems.

What new skills have you needed to learn?

The ability to form a decision when you don’t have all the facts and to decide when something is good enough to ship out. It’s about optimizing quality with expediency.

What do you like most about your work?

I love working with smart people who bring different expertise. And the policy problems I focus on—and how they impact society—resonate with me.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

I wish I had known earlier that this job existed. If I had approached my graduate experience with a broadened horizon, it may have lessened the pressure.