On August 13-15 I will attend for the first time to the Swedish Physics Days, an important national event for Swedish physics. This year the congress takes place at Lulea University of Technology, the institute where I am currently spending some time, hosted by the Machine Learning group through a Guest Researcher fellowship granted by WASP (Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program).

In the previous article here, I tangentially examined a situation that arises often in collaborative data analysis: the digestion of the results in scientific graphs. The focus of that discussion was the building of a sceptical thinking attitude in my student - it is a really important asset in experimental science.

Lately I have been writing lots of reference letters for students who are applying to Ph.D. positions in Physics, and in so doing I have found myself pondering on the dubious usefulness of that exercise. So let me share a bit of my thoughts on the matter here.

Reference letters are meant to be an important input for academic selections, because they provide first-hand information on the previous experience of the candidates, from scholars who are supposed to be authoritative enough to be trusted, and unconcerned enough to provide a unbiased assessment. 

After a month of intense travel, which among other things included attendance to the MODE Workshop in Crete and the EUCAIF conference in Sardinia, I am back to northern Sweden. Besides significantly improving my well-being, given the horrible heat wave that hit Southern and Central Europe in the past few weeks, the move north allows me to finally give a relaxed look back at the most relevant information I gathered at those events, and other relevant things.

Applications for MSCA Post-doctoral fellowships are on, and will be so until September 10 this year. What that means is that if you have less than 8 years of experience after your Ph.D., you can pair up with a research institute in Europe to present a research plan, and the European Commission may decide to fund it for two years (plus 6 months in industry in some cases).

In order for your application to have a chance to win funding, you need to: 

1. have a great research topic in mind, 
2. be ready to invest some time in writing a great application, and 
3. pair up with an outstanding supervisor at a renowned research institute. 

Time is a gentleman - it waits patiently. And in physics, as in all exact sciences, problems and mysteries eventually get resolved, if we give it enough time. That is how science works, after all: the consensus on our explanation of reality changes as we acquire more information on the latter.