An unexpected journey: a physicist's path to consulting

Dr. Adam Iaizzi is a senior consultant on the quantum team at Booz Allen Hamilton, a technology and consulting firm that serves primarily government clients. In this talk, Dr. Iaizzi will show how he transitioned from academic research to a career in consulting in just a few years and give a glimpse into the day-to-day life of a consultant working on highly technical topics. 

 

Adam got his B.S. in physics from Ithaca College in 2011. From there, he went on to Boston University for a Ph.D. in computational condensed matter physics. In 2018, Adam moved to Taipei to work as a postdoc at National Taiwan University. Throughout this time, Adam’s research focused on using computer simulations to understand the behavior of low temperature quantum magnets. In 2020, Dr. Iaizzi was awarded a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship, which places scientists in roles advising federal agencies and members of Congress. Dr. Iaizzi was placed in the Department of Energy, Office of High Energy Physics working on the international legal agreements and diplomatic letters that support large scientific collaborations like the U.S. contribution to the LHC at CERN and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). He was also the lead point-of-contact for the office’s $24M/year portfolio of grants in quantum information science. Since January 2023, Adam has been in his current role on the quantum team at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he has applied his scientific training to a variety of topics from developing simulations to analyzing national quantum strategies. 

 

Note: the views presented here are the speaker’s, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Booz Allen Hamilton nor any of its clients.