17 ms·

I am a casualty of this. I was originally intending to follow an academic career, until I discovered that my career would be dependent on my ability to secure g

by thayne 6y ago

I am a casualty of this. I was originally intending to follow an academic career, until I discovered that my career would be dependent on my ability to secure grants. Something that if I was not bad at (which I think is unlikely), would at least be extremely stressful for me. It isn't the only reason I decided to to switch to being a software engineer, but it is a major reason.

dekhn 6y ago
Me too; I had my first NIH R01 turned down without a score and left for industry (which has allowed me to do more scientific work than academia ever did). I only realized later that most PIs don't get their first NIH R01 approved until ~10 years older than I was at the time. What's ridiculous is the amounts of these basic grants that beginning scientists are trying to get are tiny- basically 1 person-year salary.
- ramraj07 6y ago
  So surprisingly, many of my friends got their first R01s approved in the last year or two. Some actually didn't even have a good publication record or pedigree or institutional position. One even got 3! But was told that the committees are being lenient with first time appplicants. Somehow that feels worse? Like a heroin dealer giving the first shot at a discount? Glad I got out. I'm still hell bent on finding a way to do research (garage lab? Startup?) But f*k academia and universities. No way in hell I'm going to tacitly condone their ways by being part of it whether I can be successful or not.
  - crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
    I'm working to create a community model with a communal research lab. It's meant to meet my needs as a researcher while also removing pressures/norms from capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. What do you want to research and what's in your way?
    - kayhi 6y ago
      For most it is the start up costs.
      - the_only_law 6y ago
        Yeah I tend to browse eBay and other resellers looking for old engineering / scientific equipment and even for obsolete stuff it often still resells pretty high.
        ramraj07 6y ago
        The way I think about it, people own boats, and this still can be cheaper than that hobby!
        neltnerb 6y ago
        I guess not if they live in them? https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Get-a-Free-Yacht/ https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Get-a-Free-Yacht/ I love this one.
    - neltnerb 6y ago
      I've heard this dream a few times, and have had it myself. Hazardous waste disposal and storage. This is the big kicker for any research project I might want to do. Every other expenses after getting that set up is trivial (in comparison) for an individual researcher, though national lab style shared analytical equipment is nice. That can come later though... It's really hard. It's much simpler to set up a machine shop or similar, but then it's just a new hackerspace that there are good models for already.
      - fuzzfactor 6y ago
        >Hazardous waste disposal and storage. Partner with a hazardous material testing lab, or another type of operation where they use lots of hazardous material similar to yours and end up turning a bit of it into waste themselves. Not necessarily an environmental lab where they actually test waste, better an industrial lab that tests material. Some better opportunities can even be with material or waste handlers who have no lab at all. Hazardous material does not become hazardous waste if you can legitimately sell/ship it off the site as a worthwhile product instead. Otherwise if you need to truly discard excess (even prime chemical assets then become a liability) you need to not only usually pay, but bump your paperwork and liability up from merely dangerous goods to full waste documentation requirements. Ideally, as a scientific consultant (giving free advice only) once you get on the toxic site where yours is a drop in the bucket by comparison, you will be able to identify recycling opportunities worth way more to them than the cost of properly disposing of your paltry amount by the established registered professionals, according to the specific arcane regulations in place which you value their expertise for. They will love you. So you can get the best deal possible. Don't just recycle the equipment, recycle the chemicals.
- rleigh 6y ago
  I stuck it out in academia for (if I total it up completely), 15 years, before getting out and into industry. My experience matches yours--there's just so much interesting scientific work out there, and while some might argue that it's constrained due to the business priorities, the same applies to working in an academic group with specific priorities. Just like choosing a research group in academia, choose a company with priorities and interests which align with yours. On the face of it, it's also a less risky choice. In academia, you're always fighting over scraps of funding, and you're always just one grant application away from a career failure. Just one rejected publication or failed experiment can end you if it causes you to fail to get more funding. While I wasn't a PI, I was made redundant after our group lost some of its funding, and I put some of that down to a paper rejected on utterly ridiculous grounds by a competitor lab. Petty academic politics. In industry, it seems that companies are much better at managing and mitigating risk. Projects are initiated with the expectation that they will have a high chance of failure, but that useful knowledge will be gained. Project managers will give projects a certain amount of runway and then make a go/no-go decision for continuation at defined points. You might run several projects in parallel and know that some will work out and some won't. Being on a "failed" project isn't a career-limiting move in that situation--you'll try your best doing some very cutting-edge stuff and your efforts will still be valued. Rather than being fired, you'll move onto another project and continue doing interesting stuff. It's much less stressful even though I likely work harder! And if the company stops being interesting, there are plenty of others to go to.
twic 6y ago
Same. With a side of seeing senior scientists whose work was mediocre but who were well-connected surviving, while seeing senior scientists whose work was good failing to renew their grants.
de6u99er 6y ago
I got hired after helping an external consultant at my student job. I solved a task I was given one week time, within 2h by writing a simple scriot doing all the work. I only had to fix some few edge cases manually.
idrios 6y ago
Biomedical engineer with a 2.977GPA. Lots of extra curriculars, volunteered in labs, 160 credit hours of mostly STEM classes, lots of grad-level courses, relevant work experience, but GPA was 0.023 too low to pass the automated filters and I didn't get into any of the grad programs I applied for. I ended up doing fine in software development though. Also, the Wright Brothers didn't need a research lab to invent flight. Biology-focused hacker spaces are on the rise so there are still ways to do research.
- dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
  > Biology-focused hacker spaces are on the rise so there are still ways to do research. I am very interested in this concept. Are you thinking of any in particular? I really wish people invested in public spaces people could go do science, particularly chemistry.
  - idrios 6y ago
    I joined one called "BioCurious"[1] in the SF Bay area to work on a project making a fluorescence microscope. The project was advertised on Meetup.com which is how I found it, and there were other similar projects that met up weekly. If you paid a membership fee though you got 24/hr access so I met a person there outside of academia who was using the lab's resources to continue the neuroscience research he had done for his PhD. In the bay area I also know of CounterCulture [2] which I've only heard high praise of but I've never visited. I've since moved to Baltimore and found some places I wanted to check out but unfortunately because of Covid I've been stuck at home. [1] https://biocurious.org/ https://biocurious.org/ [2] https://www.counterculturelabs.org/ https://www.counterculturelabs.org/
    - gww 6y ago
      If you haven't seen it Lior Pachter at CalTech has been sharing open source / 3d printable designs for lab equipment [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/lpachter/status/1354955229532360707 https://twitter.com/lpachter/status/1354955229532360707
gww 6y ago
It's a hard and frustrating career. I work on an academic lab but the chances of me having an independent research program are very low. However, everyone who wants something from you -- especially your PI -- will string you along in the hope you will stick to your low paying job. I am trying to find a better job in industry but the jobs I see posted tend to be for data science (I am not a strong stats person) or too junior for my experiences.Finding the right fit is very hard when my contact network is limited to clinicians and academics that tend to have anti-industry sentiments.
- mlinhares 6y ago
  It might be better for you to take the hit now and land a junior job and progress from that than continue to wait for the perfect job to arrive.
  - joe_the_user 6y ago
    A job being "too junior" for someone often means they can't get it even if they want it - the organization is looking for someone with little experience who is presumably young and can rise through the ranks.
    - neltnerb 6y ago
      And willing to do it as a postdoc making too little to pay rent without more housemates than there are bedrooms in the house. Everyone needs a first job I guess, to learn how much more they're worth than they got paid in their first job?
      - gww 6y ago
        I have already done the post-doc part. It was so painful that I really don't want to do a second one. There's that glass ceiling in academia when it comes to respect and salary they is very hard to break through without being promoted to a full PI and given your own lab.
- neltnerb 6y ago
alpineidyll3 6y ago
The grant system completely compromises most faculty'$ ability to do anything with their decades of training besides sell themselves. Especially young faculty during their most productive years. The only way to turn this around is to change the way we give credit for scientific achievements, and stop rewarding "I wrote the grant" With authorships. (Im ex faculty)
- lumost 6y ago
  I wonder how much of the rise of modern "pop-sci" as a genre in writing, film, and tv is due to the current academic incentives. If you're so good at selling yourself and field why not take the pitch directly to a paying audience rather than grant committees?
  - SCUSKU 6y ago
    While at first I balked at this idea, I suppose what you're proposing is crowdsourcing academic research funding. Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind is how accountability can be managed. One of the major pitfalls of the crowdfunding model seems to be that the fundraisers can make like bandits with the money, with seemingly little recourse, or incentive for the crowd.
    - lumost 6y ago
      I don't think that I was proposing crowdfunding for science, but rather that the incentives in modern academia would give rise to modern popular science figures as those most able to secure funding. It's likely not the healthiest situation for actual discovery.
      - fuzzfactor 6y ago
        There's still this: https://experiment.com https://experiment.com
    - ngcc_hk 6y ago
      One nay wonder one can make a human gene fish ... monkey and pig are what chinese good at but I guess fish is easier. Look at those lovely eye from... want a crowd fund or public fund ... But the key would be attention. It will draw attention. What the worst is private fund one may say then. What is the key issue is what the goverence model or ethical standard. Probably competition across nations ... it will kill us.
jseliger 6y ago
I have met other casualties of this, and meeting them when I was teaching undergrads inspired me to write https://jakeseliger.com/2012/04/17/how-to-think-about-science-and-becoming-a-scientist/ https://jakeseliger.com/2012/04/17/how-to-think-about-scienc...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kaitai 6y ago
Yep, I finally landed my first grant as a co-PI two months after I left academia for corporate data sci. Amusingly, or whatever, of the three grants I had up for review as a co-PI or contributor, two finally got funded -- but I was gone.
avereveard 6y ago
it's worse than that, especially at the beginning it is not your ability to receive grants that matters, but the ability to sycophant for the person that control the grant flows.
amelius 6y ago
I wonder when academia will be a thing of the past. These days, sadly, most research is performed in companies anyway.
neltnerb 6y ago
I wouldn't call myself a casualty, but I was definitely considering being a professor and definitely decided not to after seeing how ridiculously hard my adviser had to work despite her being famous and well funded. It just didn't seem like a job that one could do for decades without ruining their health. I'm amazed by the people who do manage to do it, but I'm confident that my decision was the right one. Instead, someone else will be the person to study how to use ML to develop new catalyst types, and I'm sad that all the thought and effort I've put into figuring it out will probably just never be of use to anyone. I'm not a good enough programmer for Google, so basically what other option would I have other than academia or a national lab? The problem isn't going to be solved in five years, but the rewards... maybe not mRNA vaccine level but reducing energy and resource waste with more efficient conversion technologies across the entirety of modern civilization seems worthwhile. I don't even mind writing grants that much and have gotten lots of them for industry research. And I absolutely love mentoring. But I just know from what I saw that I have no desire to try to handle that much entirely unnecessary extra stress, even though it means that I do mostly straightforward electrical engineering despite having invented entirely new catalyst design technologies being used in industrial facilities. Would I love to still be working in chemicals and energy more directly? Absolutely! Am I willing to do it for a third the salary with 80 hour work weeks having to scramble desperately to network in order to gain enough mindshare to get people to even listen to my proposals? I wish I had that kind of stamina. Which is to say, ultimately, that I have no interest in academic politics. I want to solve these problems, and no longer have the energy to pursue another startup. Maybe in another five years when there are more companies finally doing it I can just get a job there. Sadly I can guess that they will instead just get ML researchers and assume teaching them catalyst science will be easier than teaching me ML tools because ML didn't exist when I was in grad school as much of a thing yet so by sheer misfortune of timing I didn't learn it until my 30s. It's just sad to me that I see no realistic way to get involved even though it's my honest life passion to fix this problem and it's such a stupid struggle to get support. It would have been really nice to feel supported in doing such work inside of academia.
- rsfern 6y ago
  If you’re looking to get back into the materials research industry doing applied ML, now is a great time — no need to wait five years. In my experience there’s a lot of demand for people conversant in both fields, a lot of interest in adopting this kind of work, and a growing set of interesting opportunities. I work in this field at a national lab, but in my experience there are a lot of industry players trying to figure out how to grow in this area Edit: take a look at what the technical societies are doing. MRS and TMS have been rolling out educational programming targeted towards industry members. I’m not in the catalyst field really, but I’m sure ACS and AICHE have similar programming, and following that thread is probably a good way to figure out who’s interested
benibela 6y ago
I have been writing a grant proposal for months I am also supposed to have finished it months ago, but I really have no idea what I should write there. The current grant from my PI expires in two weeks, and then I have no funding
- tomcam 6y ago
  I have absolutely nothing to contribute, other than to say I’m sorry you’re in that position I’m pulling for you. My very best to you.
api 6y ago
I too considered the academic route and had some very interesting, concrete, and I think useful ideas of what to study. I was discouraged from it by existing Ph.D's who warned me about how absolutely brutal the system is and how hard it is to do anything. I'd say we've bureaucratized science to death.
rtkaratekid 6y ago
I had this shift as well. I met a prof who did some really cool research I was interested in but ultimately lost funding. His lab and basically his entire career went down the drain.
yurlungur 6y ago
Grant writing was also one of the aspects that most discouraged me from pursuing an academic career as well. I witnessed first hand the stress it induced in even the most capable professors and the level of result oriented thinking it mandated throughout the scientific process. Being a professor is a bit like being a lead contractor for NIH and NSF. If you want the resources (money) you need to chase where the fad is at. Failing that you will have to do a lot of teaching just to sustain yourself, and will cause your grad students to have a bad time throughout their career in your lab. With all that said...the amount of academic freedom even within this flawed system is still greater than most other places I know of. Perhaps if you are a distinguished researcher working on your own terms and funded by one of the big tech companies things are better.
cosmodisk 6y ago
I would love to do something meaningful, be it research or similar activity but I can't imagine constantly working knowing that the carpet can be pulled from underneath my feet any minute or that I constantly need to do political ballet at some university to make my living. It looks that there are thousands upon thousands in similar situations.

by thayne 6y ago

dekhn 6y ago

Me too; I had my first NIH R01 turned down without a score and left for industry (which has allowed me to do more scientific work than academia ever did). I only realized later that most PIs don't get their first NIH R01 approved until ~10 years older than I was at the time. What's ridiculous is the amounts of these basic grants that beginning scientists are trying to get are tiny- basically 1 person-year salary.

ramraj07 6y ago
So surprisingly, many of my friends got their first R01s approved in the last year or two. Some actually didn't even have a good publication record or pedigree or institutional position. One even got 3! But was told that the committees are being lenient with first time appplicants. Somehow that feels worse? Like a heroin dealer giving the first shot at a discount? Glad I got out. I'm still hell bent on finding a way to do research (garage lab? Startup?) But f*k academia and universities. No way in hell I'm going to tacitly condone their ways by being part of it whether I can be successful or not.
- crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
  I'm working to create a community model with a communal research lab. It's meant to meet my needs as a researcher while also removing pressures/norms from capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. What do you want to research and what's in your way?
  - kayhi 6y ago
    For most it is the start up costs.
    - the_only_law 6y ago
      Yeah I tend to browse eBay and other resellers looking for old engineering / scientific equipment and even for obsolete stuff it often still resells pretty high.
      - ramraj07 6y ago
        The way I think about it, people own boats, and this still can be cheaper than that hobby!
        neltnerb 6y ago
        I guess not if they live in them? https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Get-a-Free-Yacht/ https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Get-a-Free-Yacht/ I love this one.
  - neltnerb 6y ago
    I've heard this dream a few times, and have had it myself. Hazardous waste disposal and storage. This is the big kicker for any research project I might want to do. Every other expenses after getting that set up is trivial (in comparison) for an individual researcher, though national lab style shared analytical equipment is nice. That can come later though... It's really hard. It's much simpler to set up a machine shop or similar, but then it's just a new hackerspace that there are good models for already.
    - fuzzfactor 6y ago
      >Hazardous waste disposal and storage. Partner with a hazardous material testing lab, or another type of operation where they use lots of hazardous material similar to yours and end up turning a bit of it into waste themselves. Not necessarily an environmental lab where they actually test waste, better an industrial lab that tests material. Some better opportunities can even be with material or waste handlers who have no lab at all. Hazardous material does not become hazardous waste if you can legitimately sell/ship it off the site as a worthwhile product instead. Otherwise if you need to truly discard excess (even prime chemical assets then become a liability) you need to not only usually pay, but bump your paperwork and liability up from merely dangerous goods to full waste documentation requirements. Ideally, as a scientific consultant (giving free advice only) once you get on the toxic site where yours is a drop in the bucket by comparison, you will be able to identify recycling opportunities worth way more to them than the cost of properly disposing of your paltry amount by the established registered professionals, according to the specific arcane regulations in place which you value their expertise for. They will love you. So you can get the best deal possible. Don't just recycle the equipment, recycle the chemicals.
rleigh 6y ago
I stuck it out in academia for (if I total it up completely), 15 years, before getting out and into industry. My experience matches yours--there's just so much interesting scientific work out there, and while some might argue that it's constrained due to the business priorities, the same applies to working in an academic group with specific priorities. Just like choosing a research group in academia, choose a company with priorities and interests which align with yours. On the face of it, it's also a less risky choice. In academia, you're always fighting over scraps of funding, and you're always just one grant application away from a career failure. Just one rejected publication or failed experiment can end you if it causes you to fail to get more funding. While I wasn't a PI, I was made redundant after our group lost some of its funding, and I put some of that down to a paper rejected on utterly ridiculous grounds by a competitor lab. Petty academic politics. In industry, it seems that companies are much better at managing and mitigating risk. Projects are initiated with the expectation that they will have a high chance of failure, but that useful knowledge will be gained. Project managers will give projects a certain amount of runway and then make a go/no-go decision for continuation at defined points. You might run several projects in parallel and know that some will work out and some won't. Being on a "failed" project isn't a career-limiting move in that situation--you'll try your best doing some very cutting-edge stuff and your efforts will still be valued. Rather than being fired, you'll move onto another project and continue doing interesting stuff. It's much less stressful even though I likely work harder! And if the company stops being interesting, there are plenty of others to go to.

twic 6y ago

Same. With a side of seeing senior scientists whose work was mediocre but who were well-connected surviving, while seeing senior scientists whose work was good failing to renew their grants.

de6u99er 6y ago

I got hired after helping an external consultant at my student job. I solved a task I was given one week time, within 2h by writing a simple scriot doing all the work. I only had to fix some few edge cases manually.

idrios 6y ago

Biomedical engineer with a 2.977GPA. Lots of extra curriculars, volunteered in labs, 160 credit hours of mostly STEM classes, lots of grad-level courses, relevant work experience, but GPA was 0.023 too low to pass the automated filters and I didn't get into any of the grad programs I applied for. I ended up doing fine in software development though. Also, the Wright Brothers didn't need a research lab to invent flight. Biology-focused hacker spaces are on the rise so there are still ways to do research.

dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
> Biology-focused hacker spaces are on the rise so there are still ways to do research. I am very interested in this concept. Are you thinking of any in particular? I really wish people invested in public spaces people could go do science, particularly chemistry.
- idrios 6y ago
  I joined one called "BioCurious"[1] in the SF Bay area to work on a project making a fluorescence microscope. The project was advertised on Meetup.com which is how I found it, and there were other similar projects that met up weekly. If you paid a membership fee though you got 24/hr access so I met a person there outside of academia who was using the lab's resources to continue the neuroscience research he had done for his PhD. In the bay area I also know of CounterCulture [2] which I've only heard high praise of but I've never visited. I've since moved to Baltimore and found some places I wanted to check out but unfortunately because of Covid I've been stuck at home. [1] https://biocurious.org/ https://biocurious.org/ [2] https://www.counterculturelabs.org/ https://www.counterculturelabs.org/
  - gww 6y ago
    If you haven't seen it Lior Pachter at CalTech has been sharing open source / 3d printable designs for lab equipment [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/lpachter/status/1354955229532360707 https://twitter.com/lpachter/status/1354955229532360707

gww 6y ago

It's a hard and frustrating career. I work on an academic lab but the chances of me having an independent research program are very low. However, everyone who wants something from you -- especially your PI -- will string you along in the hope you will stick to your low paying job. I am trying to find a better job in industry but the jobs I see posted tend to be for data science (I am not a strong stats person) or too junior for my experiences.Finding the right fit is very hard when my contact network is limited to clinicians and academics that tend to have anti-industry sentiments.

mlinhares 6y ago
It might be better for you to take the hit now and land a junior job and progress from that than continue to wait for the perfect job to arrive.
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  A job being "too junior" for someone often means they can't get it even if they want it - the organization is looking for someone with little experience who is presumably young and can rise through the ranks.
  - neltnerb 6y ago
    And willing to do it as a postdoc making too little to pay rent without more housemates than there are bedrooms in the house. Everyone needs a first job I guess, to learn how much more they're worth than they got paid in their first job?
    - gww 6y ago
      I have already done the post-doc part. It was so painful that I really don't want to do a second one. There's that glass ceiling in academia when it comes to respect and salary they is very hard to break through without being promoted to a full PI and given your own lab.
neltnerb 6y ago

alpineidyll3 6y ago

The grant system completely compromises most faculty'$ ability to do anything with their decades of training besides sell themselves. Especially young faculty during their most productive years. The only way to turn this around is to change the way we give credit for scientific achievements, and stop rewarding "I wrote the grant" With authorships. (Im ex faculty)

lumost 6y ago
I wonder how much of the rise of modern "pop-sci" as a genre in writing, film, and tv is due to the current academic incentives. If you're so good at selling yourself and field why not take the pitch directly to a paying audience rather than grant committees?
- SCUSKU 6y ago
  While at first I balked at this idea, I suppose what you're proposing is crowdsourcing academic research funding. Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind is how accountability can be managed. One of the major pitfalls of the crowdfunding model seems to be that the fundraisers can make like bandits with the money, with seemingly little recourse, or incentive for the crowd.
  - lumost 6y ago
    I don't think that I was proposing crowdfunding for science, but rather that the incentives in modern academia would give rise to modern popular science figures as those most able to secure funding. It's likely not the healthiest situation for actual discovery.
    - fuzzfactor 6y ago
      There's still this: https://experiment.com https://experiment.com
  - ngcc_hk 6y ago
    One nay wonder one can make a human gene fish ... monkey and pig are what chinese good at but I guess fish is easier. Look at those lovely eye from... want a crowd fund or public fund ... But the key would be attention. It will draw attention. What the worst is private fund one may say then. What is the key issue is what the goverence model or ethical standard. Probably competition across nations ... it will kill us.

jseliger 6y ago

I have met other casualties of this, and meeting them when I was teaching undergrads inspired me to write https://jakeseliger.com/2012/04/17/how-to-think-about-science-and-becoming-a-scientist/ https://jakeseliger.com/2012/04/17/how-to-think-about-scienc...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kaitai 6y ago

Yep, I finally landed my first grant as a co-PI two months after I left academia for corporate data sci. Amusingly, or whatever, of the three grants I had up for review as a co-PI or contributor, two finally got funded -- but I was gone.

avereveard 6y ago

it's worse than that, especially at the beginning it is not your ability to receive grants that matters, but the ability to sycophant for the person that control the grant flows.

amelius 6y ago

I wonder when academia will be a thing of the past. These days, sadly, most research is performed in companies anyway.

neltnerb 6y ago

I wouldn't call myself a casualty, but I was definitely considering being a professor and definitely decided not to after seeing how ridiculously hard my adviser had to work despite her being famous and well funded. It just didn't seem like a job that one could do for decades without ruining their health. I'm amazed by the people who do manage to do it, but I'm confident that my decision was the right one. Instead, someone else will be the person to study how to use ML to develop new catalyst types, and I'm sad that all the thought and effort I've put into figuring it out will probably just never be of use to anyone. I'm not a good enough programmer for Google, so basically what other option would I have other than academia or a national lab? The problem isn't going to be solved in five years, but the rewards... maybe not mRNA vaccine level but reducing energy and resource waste with more efficient conversion technologies across the entirety of modern civilization seems worthwhile. I don't even mind writing grants that much and have gotten lots of them for industry research. And I absolutely love mentoring. But I just know from what I saw that I have no desire to try to handle that much entirely unnecessary extra stress, even though it means that I do mostly straightforward electrical engineering despite having invented entirely new catalyst design technologies being used in industrial facilities. Would I love to still be working in chemicals and energy more directly? Absolutely! Am I willing to do it for a third the salary with 80 hour work weeks having to scramble desperately to network in order to gain enough mindshare to get people to even listen to my proposals? I wish I had that kind of stamina. Which is to say, ultimately, that I have no interest in academic politics. I want to solve these problems, and no longer have the energy to pursue another startup. Maybe in another five years when there are more companies finally doing it I can just get a job there. Sadly I can guess that they will instead just get ML researchers and assume teaching them catalyst science will be easier than teaching me ML tools because ML didn't exist when I was in grad school as much of a thing yet so by sheer misfortune of timing I didn't learn it until my 30s. It's just sad to me that I see no realistic way to get involved even though it's my honest life passion to fix this problem and it's such a stupid struggle to get support. It would have been really nice to feel supported in doing such work inside of academia.

rsfern 6y ago
If you’re looking to get back into the materials research industry doing applied ML, now is a great time — no need to wait five years. In my experience there’s a lot of demand for people conversant in both fields, a lot of interest in adopting this kind of work, and a growing set of interesting opportunities. I work in this field at a national lab, but in my experience there are a lot of industry players trying to figure out how to grow in this area Edit: take a look at what the technical societies are doing. MRS and TMS have been rolling out educational programming targeted towards industry members. I’m not in the catalyst field really, but I’m sure ACS and AICHE have similar programming, and following that thread is probably a good way to figure out who’s interested

benibela 6y ago

I have been writing a grant proposal for months I am also supposed to have finished it months ago, but I really have no idea what I should write there. The current grant from my PI expires in two weeks, and then I have no funding

tomcam 6y ago
I have absolutely nothing to contribute, other than to say I’m sorry you’re in that position I’m pulling for you. My very best to you.

api 6y ago

I too considered the academic route and had some very interesting, concrete, and I think useful ideas of what to study. I was discouraged from it by existing Ph.D's who warned me about how absolutely brutal the system is and how hard it is to do anything. I'd say we've bureaucratized science to death.

rtkaratekid 6y ago

I had this shift as well. I met a prof who did some really cool research I was interested in but ultimately lost funding. His lab and basically his entire career went down the drain.

yurlungur 6y ago

Grant writing was also one of the aspects that most discouraged me from pursuing an academic career as well. I witnessed first hand the stress it induced in even the most capable professors and the level of result oriented thinking it mandated throughout the scientific process. Being a professor is a bit like being a lead contractor for NIH and NSF. If you want the resources (money) you need to chase where the fad is at. Failing that you will have to do a lot of teaching just to sustain yourself, and will cause your grad students to have a bad time throughout their career in your lab. With all that said...the amount of academic freedom even within this flawed system is still greater than most other places I know of. Perhaps if you are a distinguished researcher working on your own terms and funded by one of the big tech companies things are better.

cosmodisk 6y ago

I would love to do something meaningful, be it research or similar activity but I can't imagine constantly working knowing that the carpet can be pulled from underneath my feet any minute or that I constantly need to do political ballet at some university to make my living. It looks that there are thousands upon thousands in similar situations.