MPA Career Seminar (CarSem)

With over 600 specialists in financial and risk management for banks, insurers, corporates and asset managers, d-fine is one of Europe's leading consulting firms. As an international company with offices in Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Vienna and London, we are equally at home advising major global banks, medium-sized corporates, international insurance groups and small hedge funds. d-fine has amassed tremendous experience over the course of hundreds of projects ranging from strategic consulting and methodology development through to process design and the implementation of solutions on the IT side. As such, we cover the entire range of services expected of a modern consulting firm. In the lecture “Physicists in the area of risk & finance”, Dr. Matthias Aicher will talk about d-fine, provide examples of the daily work at a consultancy and explain why physicists (m/f) have ideal prerequisites for a career at d-fine.

The booming field of Data Science has opened up great new career opportunities for research astrophysicists. Key fields of the digital future such as Smart City, Smart Factory, Smart Mobility, and Smart Energy all rely on the ability to properly analyze large amounts of data and develop the necessary analysis methods & tools. In this talk, I will discuss my transition from astrophysics to the real business world and the experiences in building up the Startup company OmegaLambdaTec - Data Science Services. I will also discuss the Data Science job market in Munich and permanent job opportunities for excellent astrophysicists.

The Astrophysics Data System abstract service is used by around 50,000, daily, by researchers and librarians like yourselves. We provide search facilities to over 11 million documents from the fields of Astronomy, Physics, and Geophysics, covering all refereed articles from the past 20 years. Despite the 1992-HTML vibe of the ADS Classic interface, there is a team of engineers and curators behind the scenes currently rebuilding the infrastructure of the ADS systems. I will speak about the experience and tools needed to work in the role as a software engineer, the transition I made from research in astrophysics, and the possibilities in the current climate.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) is the field where automotive companies are investing most of their money, because it is clear it will revolutionize the future of how we travel. I will talk about the R&D we are doing at Altran with cooperation with BMW. Particularly I will mention our contribution on making the newest BMW 7 Series car, which internally are the G11 and G12 models, follow up with BMW i8 mirrorless car presented at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. Finally, I would like to show my perspective about the future in the industry.

Harald Jenull is Manager for Technology Transfer at UnternehmerTUM GmbH, the Center for Innovation and Business Creation at TUM, and presents entrepreneurial opportunities for scientists. The challenges of technology-driven Business Models will be discussed and as best practice Professor Franz Pfeiffer from the Chair of Biomedical Physics at TUM tells his own experiences as a founder out of the university.

Dr. Timo Schirmer has a PhD in physics and is manager of the Diagnostics, Imaging and Biomedical Technologies Laboratory at GE Global Research in Garching. With his team of about 30 full time scientists and early stage researchers, he is primarily responsible for the development of new diagnostic imaging technologies. Dr. Schirmer will be presenting a short summary of his own career, the work at his lab and talk about how to manage your career in an industrial environment

With the European Patent Office, the German Patent and Trade Mark Office and the German Federal Patent Court, there are three major patent authorities of Europe located in Munich. All these authorities employ physicists. Other physicists work as patent attorneys, writing patent applications for their clients. I will give a short introduction into the patent system and describe the daily work as a patent examiner at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office. Understanding patent applications, searching for prior art and deciding whether a patent can be granted, requires analytical skills and some legal background.

BMW is one of the worldwide known companies that develop and produce premium cars. The company offers a great variety of jobs for physicists and engineers, such as developing, constructing and testing various vehicle components. Currently, I am working for the R&D department („Entwicklung Antrieb“), where I determine the temperature profile of car engines under certain physical conditions. For this, I perform three-dimensional CFD simulations that include thermal conductivity processes. In my talk, I will give you an overview of my daily work, my experiences in the industry and present some differences between working at MPA and BMW.

Carolin: SAP is Europe's biggest software company for business software. This company is a great work place for physicists. I will present my current job at SAP as a senior Developer. One of my tasks is analyzing complex software issues reported by customers and provide corrections for it. For this task the good analytical skills which physicists generally bring are strongly needed. Part of my daily job is software research and development, too. I will also show you other areas at SAP where physicists might work.

Felix: When I found myself stuck in a PhD thesis which I did not really like, I decided to give work at SAP a try. I’ll give an account of my experiences and why I think that it is an interesting option for scientists who consider to change profession. But of course I will also tell you why finally I went back again to a job closer to astronomy. You’ll hear some details about my current position in the middle of the triangle science / engineering / management. This proves to be a rewarding alternative to a purely customer oriented or purely academic job.