Marina Radulaski
In this installment of Senior Member Insights, OPN talks with Marina Radulaski, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Davis, USA, where she leads the quantum nanophotonics laboratory. She obtained a Ph.D. in applied physics and postdoctoral training in electrical engineering at Stanford University, USA, and holds undergraduate degrees in theoretical physics and computer science from the University of Belgrade and the Union University in Serbia, respectively. Radulaski is a recipient of the AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award 2023, Google Research Scholar Award 2022 and NSF CAREER Award 2021.
What first interested you in pursuing science?
When I was in high school, I really enjoyed mathematics. Then I went to a program that was more physics-based, and I thought, at that time, that physics was just mathematics with applications. I got to try lasers and some creative ways to measure distance using sunshine, mirrors and triangles. All of that lit up my curiosity and I thought, I just want to be doing this more and more.
I was very lucky to have the opportunity to do research projects in high school in my third and fourth years. Some were more on the coding side and some required an understanding of quantum mechanics. From there, as a college student, I was able to get really fun international internships and do research around the globe.
What aspect of your current work do you find the most interesting or exciting?
I really like my academic job overall; there are so many different hats that I need to wear every day. I love that it feeds my curiosity. Science in itself is a curious subject—we get to explore things and learn about our nature, materials, engineering and physical phenomena.
I also love interacting with students, training their critical thinking, and seeing what kind of ideas and questions they come up with. I see that their wealth of questions will go into our community to build the next generation of hardware, create new science or educate other people. I can see how much good science can generate for all of us.
What tips for successful networking do you have for early-career professionals?
Every event that you attend, try to make it worthwhile for not just yourself, but others in the room. Ask questions if you’re on a panel or in a talk. That shows people you’re engaged and you want to participate, and they will remember you.
Be sure to prepare—if you’re going to meet someone, look at their CV, what they’ve published and where they went to school. Maybe you’ll learn something about them that reflects well on you, as you plan your career. That way you can find out more about how certain jobs might suit you or how institutions can support you.
What skills do you think are most important for someone interested in a career like yours?
You have to take care of yourself—think about what you’re going to commit to in a day and also how to carve out time for yourself.
I would say prioritization. During a Ph.D., you have to learn that skill because there are more tasks than you have hours in the day for. In a faculty position, that’s only amplified—there are so many different areas where you could contribute, whether with science, education or administrative work. You have to take care of yourself—think about what you’re going to commit to in a day and also how to carve out time for yourself. Think about what makes you feel good and what self care you can put into a day, so when you come to work, you bring the best version of yourself.
What’s the best career decision you’ve ever made, and why?
I started my career in Serbia, and we had this special event coming up in a different city—a week-long workshop on quantum information and quantum computing. This was back in 2006, I believe, and I asked my undergraduate institution to support me for this trip, and it did. Even though I was just a second-year undergrad in a room with mostly Ph.D. or senior undergrad students, I asked a lot of questions, took a bunch of notes and asked for extra material to understand this exciting area. That led me to an internship with future Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger and his team.
It really shaped my career that in my second year of undergrad, I had an opportunity to go to Vienna, Austria, and work in a very intellectually exciting field that didn’t yet have the many applications we now see in the quantum computing industry. It used to be this very interesting quantum information optics problem, but as I grew as a professional, the area grew in its acceptance across different fields, so those two met very nicely. Now I’m a faculty member working in the quantum nanophotonics area!
Can you speak to the benefits of international work within your career?
When I was in undergrad I did some research in Serbia, but I also had five international internships in Warsaw, Poland; Vienna; Berlin, Germany; Oxford, UK; and the United States. Each of these places had a different research culture and focus, and the questions that I was asked and how people interacted were different. That was all very informative and taught me different ways of thinking. In some places, I was thinking more as a physicist and a theorist, and in other places, as an experimentalist or an engineer.
Those experiences really helped me later in my career, as my field turned out to be very interdisciplinary, and I have to switch languages depending on which collaborator I’m talking to or who I’m presenting to at a conference.
What advice do you have for young scientists who are discouraged about their current work or career path?
What I’ve found, and maybe this is not obvious early on, is that what you’re most passionate about is where you’re going to have the most influence.
What I’ve found, and maybe this is not obvious early on, is that what you’re most passionate about is where you’re going to have the most influence. Sometimes students are discouraged from certain fields by their surroundings, by their own preferences or because it seems like there are no jobs in that area. But as long as you’re becoming proficient in a topic you’re excited about, you’ll find areas where you can apply it. Find the place where you can maximize your enthusiasm and training to get the highest quality result.
What is one piece of advice that you wish you were given as a student/early in your career?
A Ph.D. is such a long trip, and you don’t know how or if it’s going to end. I wish someone had given me examples of what other people had done and what was enough to get a Ph.D. I think I was exposed to a lot of examples of excellence and words that were hard to live up to. It would have been maybe more concrete to know, for example, how many papers you need, what first-author papers usually look like or what someone did to get a first-author paper.
If you weren’t in the sciences, what would be your dream career?
I’m already in my dream career, but other places could satisfy me. They would have to do with critical thinking and broadening the access and ability for people to exercise critical thinking.
That could be in many different ways—through a company that makes smart toys, or through consulting and a speaking business, or through legislation, trying to provide access to knowledge to as broad a set of people as possible.