Keeping Up With SPS: Supporting the Next Generation of Physical Scientists

Excitement is in the air! SPSCon, the 2025 Physics and Astronomy Congress, kicks off today. It’s the world’s largest congress for physics and astronomy students, with more than 700 undergrads attending this year.

Leading up to SPSCon 2025, I had the chance to chat with Alejandro de la Puente about the congress and take a peek at the opportunities he is eager to continue bringing to SPS as the program’s Director. SPS is a professional association that helps physics and astronomy students build skills needed to flourish professionally and be multifaceted individuals in the field. De la Puente deeply values the voices and contributions of undergraduates in this field and is dedicated to setting up the next generation of physical scientists for success through meaningful internships, workshops, networking events, and more.

This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

With your first SPSCon around the corner, what are you looking forward to most? What experiences are you excited for students to get from SPSCon 2025?
I’m most looking forward to having all the students together during the Congress workshop on the first day and having them talk about the issues and opportunities they are facing. I think some of those issues that people have had, that they have now solved, are issues that some people are still struggling with.

Being the Director, it has always been my goal and my mission to ensure that the voice of the undergraduate is heard and included in the conversation.

Can you talk about the SPS Council and their role for SPSCon?
The SPS Council is a legislative body of the Society of Physics Students — Society of Physics Students has been around for more than 60 years. Unlike a lot of places, it is composed of faculty and students, and they have equal voices, although their terms are different in length. A faculty can serve up to three years and get re-elected for another three-year term. A student, because of the length of their undergraduate career, can serve one year and be re-elected for a second.

At SPSCon, their role is to be the ears so leaders can guide students through the complexities of an undergraduate career in physics and astronomy. It is much different today than it was 60 years ago.

There were 5 new internship hosts this year. Can you tell us more about how those came about?
Having had an academic career for some years, being a postdoc, and having done research, I’m connected and I keep myself up to date on the issues in my field.

When I left academia to do a science policy fellowship in Washington, D.C., I started to understand the role of the scientific voice in conversations about future policies. I got to build a big network and see how science is deployed for the benefit of the country.

As I was thinking about my life after this fellowship, I started to understand that I like being a scientist in addition to somebody who can lead the conversation. So, I went back into an analytic role in the Department of Defense where I got to see how physics could be used.

I saw that an undergraduate could come in and shape a lot of the stuff that happens in the Department of Defense and be a voice that matters. So, if you look at the hosts that I was able to partner with, one was my old office in the Department of Defense because they understood what physicists can do as interns and as employees, so that was an easy one. They were super happy with that intern.

From my time at the National Science Foundation, I learned that interns are a valuable asset there because they bring in the undergraduate voice. What do undergraduates need today in the classroom? What do they need in the lab? And again, the National Science Board loved their experience with the internship and wanted to keep this person for a longer time. Additional hosts that we were able to connect with were the United States Geological Survey and Lawrence Livermore National Labs.

What goals or plans do you have to grow the internship program and add more positions?
I think that we have to be very proactive. I have two desired pathways.

One is to identify a set of hosts that we know would benefit a lot from our physics or astronomy intern, but I think one that can help us transform the work that those places are doing. Those are strategic placements like I will try to fund no matter what.

Second is figuring out, with the AIP Foundation and the AIP Content and Engagement team, how to sell our internship to different partners. I want people to think of the internship from SPS as a pool of fresh ideas, fresh perspectives, and one that can actually help strengthen what the undergraduate role is.

What are a few of the awards and scholarships that SPS has coming up on the horizon?
A few examples are the Google scholarship and the Marian H. Rose scholarship. And for awards, we have individual awards – for both students and faculty – and chapter level awards throughout various times of the year.

Scholarships can mean the difference between spending the summer working a job and gaining valuable research experience. Awards can help chapters become more active in their university or local communities by bringing science to the public.

SPS recently hosted the Hidden Physicist webinar with Dr. Josef Koller, the Head of Space Safety and Sustainability at Amazon for Project Kuiper. Can you tell us a little about that and if there are any future webinars for students to check out? (Or maybe, how students can keep up with the postings of future webinars?)
We have a really awesome feature in Radiations called Hidden Physicists where we find cool people that got their undergraduate degree in physics or astronomy. My goal is to never lose that connection to that degree.

Dr. Josef Koller was the Hidden Physicist from our first webinar and he attracted a lot of people, and it looks like there’s an appetite for more. I foresee a year having three to four of these webinars.

Can you talk about professional development / leadership opportunities for SPS officers?
We have over 800 chapters in SPS, but we only have about 300 that are very active. Or there’s a lot of chapters that are active, but they’re just active on their own, and they don’t connect with us. So, the best way to activate chapters is by strengthening their leadership, right?

Kayla Stephens and I are discussing how to leverage some of the organic things we already do in AIP to develop people and start deploying modules that chapter officers can take advantage of to grow their transferable skills — emotional intelligence, crucial conversations, how to live in times of crisis, and things like that.

What opportunities are available for SPS alumni? (talk about the alumni workshops Rianna and Alejandro are doing / what about Sigma Pi Sigma Alum?)
One opportunity for alumni is to connect back with physics and astronomy through their Sigma Pi Sigma membership. In a world where things are highly complex and collaborative, I know for a fact that a lot of these people are looking for each other.

They can also help us co-create new programs that they can help lead, or they could be part of that and could serve students. Bringing alumni back could strengthen the student ecosystem or the journeys of students, like building a more robust mentoring network, for example.

What other conferences will SPS be at in the coming months?
The next big conference for us will be the Future of Physics Days, the American Physical Society Global Physics Summit. It attracts over 500 students at the undergraduate level across all different physical sciences, and it has opportunities that are very similar to what happens at SPSCon.

An undergraduate only programming, the American Association of Physics Teachers conference is always an amazing one because part of a student’s journey will be teaching this physics knowledge, whether they become a Ph.D. or not.

We always go to at least one American Astronomical Society meeting in January or in July. And those are awesome too, because, you know, it just has a lot of really huge shows.

And we’re always trying to go to the American Association of Physics in Medicine conference, because it is a growing field and we want to make sure that students understand that there’s a lot of opportunities there.

Can you talk about SPS publications such as JURPA and the SPS Observer—specifically, the benefits of being published as a student and how students can use the Observer as a resource?
Publishing with the SPS Observer is a way to be heard and to tell your story, while also being a way to grow your skills. We have an incredibly skilled editorial team that will go through your writing and make it better.

For JURPA , the benefit there is to learn about the peer review process. You do research. Maybe you did it on your own, maybe you did it with your advisor, but understanding the peer review process is something that you don’t learn in your school. They don’t teach you that you’re going to be turned down or that you’re going to be getting a referee report that is 5 pages long, and then you’re going to have to go through it.

These are good lessons about how to improve your work while also understanding that you are still an undergraduate. To me, JURPA is the best way to learn how to be peer-reviewed.