Cutting
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Media Release - School
of Physics - The University of New South Wales
Wednesday July 26, 2000 |
What's this?
Not a jobs ad pleading for physics graduates?
 Yes
it is, and it's just a tiny sliver of the hunger for physicists
and other scientists and engineers that is sweeping world job markets
as opportunities in telecommunications and information technology
blossom in the latest wave of the digital goldrush.
While users
happily tap away at their Internet-connected keyboards, watch the
weather unfold on their TV screens or bounce phone messages off
geostationary satellites they rarely realise that most of the tricks
of Nature used to do all this were discovered by physicists. Nor
do they realise the amount of skill needed by physicists and other
scientists to package all these tricks into user-friendly boxes
for us.
But the designers and manufacturers of the thousands of electrical,
electronic, laser, fibre-optical, electro-optical and photonics
products that are pouring into highly competitive world markets
are well aware of their problem. They can't get enough good people.
Four years ago,
Dr David Psaila, was a member of a team of four physicists and engineers
that started a small photonics company, Indx, itself a spin-off
company from the Australian Photonics CRC in the Australian Technology
Park. Their operation now employs 200 people, including an R&D
staff of 40, and David is always looking for more physicists and
engineering physicists trained in some of the tricks that lie behind
the communications industry.
"Over
the past 5 years this industry has leapt from virtually nowhere,
and that's nothing to what's coming," David said. "I
estimate there are about 1000 specialists now working on opto-electronics
in Australia and I predict there will be loads of work for another
5000 in three or four years.
"We already
can't meet all our R&D commitments because we can't get the
people. We are spending a fortune on advertising and we are getting
some top talent but we need more. It's like the computer industry
was 30 years ago. While physicists and electrical engineers are
our greatest need we are also struggling to get production, mechanical,
design, maintenance, manufacturing and software engineers.
"Physics
has suddenly gone from a backroom job to a glamour industry. A
raw graduate in optoelectronics can expect to earn up to $40,000
a year and someone with five years' R&D experience will have
companies offering anything between $60,000 and $90,000 a year.
They could even get a share of the profits," David said.
A recent survey by the US National Science Foundation shows that
salaries for physics PhDs in the US rose by 17.5 per cent in 1995-97,
more than for any other type of PhD surveyed, and that the biggest
rises went to physicists who had obtained their PhDs in the previous
one to five years (see Science, 23 June 2000).
Professor Michael
Gal, head of the laser applications unit in UNSW's School of Physics,
says he is constantly being contacted by electronics and optoelectronics
companies in search of good graduates.
"Unfortunately,
it can take years for the word to get around that there is new
life in an old discipline. Physics has always had a lot to offer
but with the telecommunications revolution physicists can now
expect good salaries. For this reason, we are trying to spread
the word among young people that physics is booming - and will
continue to for a long time to come.
"Anyone who looks at recent advances in physics, and the
economic prizes they have delivered, has to be convinced that
we are still only at the beginning of a huge revolution in the
way the world operates - and that this revolution will be powered
by physics and its sister sciences.
"For all these reasons students who move into science today
will be guaranteed interesting work for the next 50 years,"
he said.
All this sounds
rosy but Australia is still only on the tail-end of the physics
explosion. As the editorial in April's Photonics Spectra, the specialist
US journal, said:
"The
photonics industry is booming. The demand for qualified employees
is at an all-time high. Companies are offering great salaries,
great opportunities and, in some cases, even a chance to own part
of the company's growth.
"Not only are the benefits of being employed in the photonics
industry good, but the image of being an engineer or scientist
has taken on a whole new look. Worldwide, the word 'photonics'
means challenge and excitement, not just sitting at a laboratory
bench," the magazine said.
It went on to
echo the peculiar question we in Australia know too well: why, at
a time of unprecedented opportunity, are so few young people turning
to science careers?
Professor Gal's answer is: because we have not been able to get
the message through to young people: "There's so much noise
in the world of today that it is getting more difficult to transmit
a clear signal," he said, employing a telling physical simile.
Supplementary
information:
Dr Psaila studied
physics at UNSW under Professor Gal. He is now Director of R&D
at JDS Uniphase's Australian manufacturing operation at North Ryde.
"To develop
the technology into a manufacturable product, we initially had
to keep our R&D running at a high percentage of our revenues,
even though Indx had a great product. We could not afford to do
this for an extended time and we were unable to get private sector
or government backing to the level required to sustain this effort.
So, when JDS Uniphase, an American company, now valued at $US100
billion with a turnover of over $US2 billion, offered to buy us
out, we saw this as a way to get the research funding we needed,
so we took the offer," David said.
"So, we have our research funding. All we want now are the
bright young physicists and engineers to spend it on. I am one
of those pestering Professor Gal for talented people and I know
anyone moving into this area of optoelectronics will get a good
run for their money," he said.
The main product
made by David's team is an optical fibre filter. Sounds simple but
with thousands of individual messages pouring down an optical fibre
at the same time, making sure you get your message and your neighbours
get theirs is much more difficult than it sounds.
It goes to show
that all those "theoretical" experiments university researchers
and their students were doing for all those years were not so impractical
after all.
Physics is leading
a new wave of discovery in all the sciences, which is leading to
a rather odd fact: the more we discover, the more there is left
to discover. It's a bit like using your brain, really. The more
you learn, the more there is to learn.
"Five years
ago, a physics graduate's best job opportunities were restricted
to academic positions. Now graduates can pick and choose."
"I wish
I was 20 years younger," says Professor Gal. "Physics
has suddenly become fashionable again as the business world discovers
it is the gateway to money."
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