LECSTalks! "Writing Research & Teaching Statements for Faculty/Postdoc Positions" by Lance Cooper @LISAcommunity

Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago

In this episode of #LECSTalks we feature Professor Lance Cooper from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a talk titled "Writing Effective Research & Teaching Statements for Faculty/Postdoc Positions".

🎤 Tell us something about yourself
I am the Associate Head for Graduate Programs and a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My research interests include optical spectroscopic studies of quantum materials under extreme conditions of temperature, pressure, and magnetic field. I am also interested in science communication and graduate education and I run several professional development programs for graduate students, including an alumni Physics Careers Seminar series, a grad student internship program, a physics grad student travel award program, and a science communication course.

🎤 What can you tell us about your talk?
This talk offers advice on writing effective research and teaching statements for prospective faculty and postdoctoral positions in STEM fields. Examples of and extensive resources for these statements are provided.

LECSTalks! Writing Research & Teaching Statements for Faculty/Postdoc Positions by Lance Cooper

Progress of the investigation for thermal effect in space GW detection mission TianQin

$AMIGO: Astrodynamical middle-frequency interferometric gravitational wave observatory AMIGO: Astrodynamical middle-frequency interferometric gravitational wave observatory Wei-Tou Ni, Gang Wang and An-Ming Wu AMIGO is a first-generation Astrodynamical Middle-frequency Interferometric GW Observatory. The scientific goals of AMIGO are: to bridge the spectra gap between first-generation high-frequency and low-frequency GW sensitivities; to detect intermediate mass BH coalescence; to detect inspiral phase and predict time of binary black hole coalescence together with neutron star coalescence for ground interferometers; to detect compact binary inspirals for studying stellar evolution and galactic population. The mission concept is to use time delay interferometry for a nearly triangular formation of 3 drag-free spacecraft with nominal arm length 10,000 km, emitting laser power 2-10 W and telescope diameter 300-500 mm. The design GW sensitivity in the middle frequency band is 3 x 10^(-21) Hz^(-1/2). Both heliocentric and geocentric orbits are under study. All options have LISA-like formations, that is the triangular formation is 60 deg inclined to the orbit plane. For AMIGO, the first-generation time delay interferometry is good enough for the laser frequency noise suppression. We also investigate for each options of orbits under study, whether constant equal-arm implementation is feasible. For the solar-orbit option, the acceleration to maintain the formation can be designed to be less than 15 nm/s2 with the thruster requirement in the 15 {mu}N range. AMIGO would be a good place to implement the constant equal-arm option. Fuel requirement, thruster noise requirement and test mass acceleration actuation requirement are briefly considered. From the orbit study, the solar orbit option is the first mission orbit choice. We study the deployment for this orbit option. A last-stage launch from 300 km LEO (Low Earth Orbit) to an appropriate 2-degree-behind-the-Earth AMIGO formation in 95 days requires only a {delta}v of 75 m/s.$

Resolving Galactic binaries using a network of space-borne gravitational wave detectors

Highlighting a milestone for LISA: Our understanding and long-term results of LPF interferometry

LISA Symposium XIV Parallel B Cosmology part 1

Applying machine learning methods to MBHB parameter estimation

Rapid detectability estimation for extreme mass ratio inspiral populations using machine learning