Sam Waldman builds instruments for space telescopes

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

What was your research focus?

In graduate school, I worked on neutrinoless double beta decay. As a postdoc and then staff scientist, I worked on LIGO [the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory] for seven years. I had one foot in hardware and a smaller foot in data analysis.

What were you looking for when you left LIGO?

That’s tied up in solving a two-body problem. I got a faculty offer from the University of Chicago. But my wife couldn’t find a job in Chicago, and I couldn’t find one in Washington, DC, where she worked. We quit our jobs to search in Los Angeles; we had been postdocs at Caltech, and we had networks there.

I was also looking for something that would scratch the same itches as my previous work did: a good mission and good people to work with.

How did your job search go?

Through a friend from graduate school, I got an interview at SpaceX. At the interview, I was asked if I could use lasers to measure the distance between the Dragon space capsule and the International Space Station. I said yes and did it. That was on Thursday. On Monday I had a job offer. My wife got a job at the RAND Corporation.

What does your company do?

We focus on computers and imagers that form the core of large space telescopes. We modify them for reliability and to function in the space environment. An example is the wide-field ISS Surveyor. It’s on the space station and is taking awesome data.

What do you like most about your work?

The people I work with. And I like the day-to-day work; I still get to do technical work, which is good for my soul.

How do you use your physics?

The best thing about physics PhD programs is that you are asked to sit in a place of ignorance and come to a place of knowledge. That spirit is surprisingly rare and what we do every day.

What new skills have you needed to develop?

People skills is a big one. And proposal writing. And all the boring and prosaic things about a business—insurance, rent, and so on.