Behind the CV

Story from a Physicist

Members of IoP at different levels of their careers share their personal journey behind the CV. In an informal atmosphere, they discuss how they became the physicist they are today, and reflect on their path and the challenges they encountered. They discuss the choices they made, their successes and failures, the detours and key events that shaped their career, their insecurities, the obstacles they faced and the people who supported them to become who they are today. Their story behind the CV.

This seminar series is open to all students, PhD candidates and postdocs at IoP and related institutes. We hope that these conversations on the unspoken challenges of life in academia will inspire you, and help you with the decisions and challenges you will face in your career.

This seminar series is inspired by “Growing Up In Science” and other similar events in research institutions abroad. We are very thankful to the speakers for sharing their stories with us.

Upcoming: Upcoming: Behind the CV with Sera Markoff, Wednesday 26 February 2025, 17h

Science Park 904 - D1.111

On the occasion of International Day of Women and Girls in Science we invited Sera Markoff, Professor of Theoretical High Energy Astrophysics at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy (API) and GRAPPA (center of excellence in gravitation and astroparticle physics). Sera works at the interface of Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics, and is interested in a variety of problems relating to the accretion process especially around black holes, both big and small. She is a founding member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, currently serving as co-chair of its Science Board and co-coordinator of the Multi-Wavelength Science WG, and is a member of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory Consortium. She has won numerous grants and prizes for her research and outreach, most recently as co-PI of the ERC Synergy Grant “BlackHolistic” to better understand black holes of all scales, including building a new mm-radio dish in Namibia (the Africa Millimeter Telescope; AMT) in partnership with the University of Namibia. She is also co-chair of the Astronomy advisory board to NWO. You can learn more about her group and her research on her website.

Science Park 904

Room D1.111
Science Park 904
1098 XH Amsterdam

Past Events:

10 April 2024 – Special events "What I wish I had known about doing a PhD!" – Special events for master students: a panel of 5 PhD students at IoP working in different fields of physics answer all your questions about doing a PhD. Thank you to Heleen Mulder, Omar Ould-Boukattine, Farhan Tanzim, Elham Mirzahossein, and Ludovica Guarneri for taking part in the panel!
12 February 2024 - on the occasion of International Day of Women and Girls in Science we invited Samaya Nissanke, Associate Professor at GRAPPA (center of excellence in gravitation and astroparticle physics) and at the Anton Pannekoek Institute (API) and the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEF), and a member of Nikhef. Samaya works on gravitational-wave and played a founding role in the field of multi-messenger astrophysics. In 2020, she was awarded the New Horizons in Physics Prize for "the development of novel techniques to extract fundamental physics from astronomical data". You can learn more about her on her website.
12 October 2023 - Peter Schall, is a Full Professor at the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute (WZI) for experimental physics, and investigates the physics of soft and condensed matter at the micro- and nanometer scale.
18 April 2023 – Special events "What I wish I had known about doing a PhD!" – Special events for master students: a panel of 5 PhD students at IoP working in different fields of physics answer all your questions about doing a PhD.
5 December 2023 – Shin’ichiro Ando is Associate Professor at GRAPPA (center of excellence in gravitation and astroparticle physics) and at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITFA). He is currently the coordinator of the GRAPPA track in the MSc Physics & Astronomy, and a member of the IoP Diversity and Inclusion council.
11 February 2022 – During the Faces of Science Park 2022 we held a special edition of Behind the CV with Carina Hoorn (IBED) and Martin Fransen (Nikhef).
3 November 2021 – Noushine Shahidzadeh is full professor at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) working at the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute (WZI) in the soft matter group; she is also currently a member of the board of directors of the Interpore foundation and the scientific board of the Netherlands Institute for conservation, Art and Science (NICAS).
11 June 2021 – Alejandra Castro (University of Cambridge) was at the time an associate professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITFA), in the String Theory group.