You didn't say what your father actually researches, but there are tons of cushy research jobs in industry, if you're smart enough. Many big tech companies (MS

You didn't say what your father actually researches, but there are tons of cushy research jobs in industry, if you're smart enough. Many big tech companies (MS, Google, IBM) will hire people to work on whatever they want, simply to prevent them from working for a competitor or to be able to drop names when recruiting other people.