Abstract:
Michigan Physics graduate Tim Olson will share insights and learnings from ten years of industry experience. He will share an overview of his career path leading from theoretical physics at Michigan to applied research and development for the space domain at Slingshot Aerospace, with brief detours to other interesting topics along the way, and discuss tips and strategies for successfully transitioning from academia to industry.

Bio:
Dr. Timothy Olson is the Manager for Advanced Concepts at Slingshot Aerospace, driving research and development of patent-pending technologies for intelligent decision and behavior modeling in space environments. He also supports space domain awareness at Slingshot through analytics, predictive modeling, conjunction assessment, and anomaly detection. Prior to Slingshot, Tim received a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Michigan, studying amplitudes and holography with Henriette Elvang. After graduate school, he worked on geospatial and remote sensing applications at Maxar Technologies. Subsequently, Tim spent five years at Yahoo where he developed novel algorithms and patented systems to detect and prevent fraudulent activity in the complex, fast-paced digital advertising domain, leading initiatives to address new activity patterns and risk vectors in emerging technology spaces. Tim's broad experience spans fundamental science research and academic publications through technology development and deployment of mature, customer-facing software products.