Power of the Internet

My group recently published a paper and my university's media department was cajoled by one of the other faculty in the department into writing a piece about the findings. It feels really great to have colleagues promote my research. (Unrelated, it's frustrating to have senior faculty tell me that I should have more funding by now based all of the results my group already has, I really think they don't understand how hard it is to get funding as a new PI these days). Having heard stories of faculty/media relations gone bad, I did some background research and read some tips. There are actually several good books to help scientists and engineers navigate through the world of reporting. One of the main tips was to have very clear and easily understood message. I knew this, but reading about all the example about how uninformed and what short attention spans the public has these days really drove the point home. I felt very much like a politician during the interview. I'm not so comfortable doing this sort of self promotion, but I think this is what faculty and the entire scientific community really needs to do more of to stay relevant in the U.S. I was selling what the future holds and the end goal of our project without over-selling our current results, which are still very preliminary. Of course very few people in the world would care about this particular set of results, so I followed another piece of interview advice, which is to focus on what this can lead to. Maybe 10-15 years from now, there is some tiny chance that our work can significantly change medicine. It's also a pet peeve of mine when I see researchers in my field say that they've done something, implying that no one else should study the problem, when they have clearly just barely begun to even think about the problem or only solved it one convoluted way. There's a guy in my university that claims to have done just about everything known to science. He would have you think that he invented nanoparticles, plastic, medical imaging, etc. when in reality he's made a few minor contributions to several fields.

Also, as a new TT person, I'm always a bit worried about stepping on other people's toes. I tried to be very explicit in the interview that this is not something we came up with out of the blue. Maybe this is more of an engineering specific problem, but I feel like most research has been already done or at least thought about before. This work is not an exception. There is a group that published nearly the same results, but using a different device a few years ago. We cited them and their paper clearly states that they are working toward the same goal as us, but they haven't publishing another paper on that topic or anything related since that initial paper that came out a few years ago. How much credit do I give this other group? Should I not care at all? After all, they could have gone out and promoted their results.

Anyway, I did a search this morning with some of the key words that I mentioned in my initial interview and I found multiple related stories written about complete strangers and small internet news outlets (I don't know what to call websites that have multiple professional writers, maybe internet magazines? they are clearly more than just bloggers). Everyone is very excited about what I'm selling as a potential life saving sensor in the future. This is really exciting, but at the same time disappointing that I haven't been able to get funding for this very medically relevant project. I'm tempted to cite all of the internet articles in my next proposal, pointing out that the public wants to see this research move forward. Would this have any influence on reviewers or program managers, positive or negative?

Summer Salary

It's almost summer research time and this year, I think/hope because of the sequester, I'm getting some strange emails from the administration. We've had multiple emails sent telling us to consider student funding and to put the needs of the students first when we decide on how much summer salary to pay ourselves and the latest one says that our requests are being reviewed and scrutinized by a department that is normally not involved in research finance. I don't quite understand what this means.

For those unfamiliar with the process, when you put in a proposal you have to justify your budget, including if you will be paying yourself any salary. There are NSF as well as university limits and rules about how much salary one can get paid. My university is primarily hard-money 9 month appointments and you are on your own to find summer salary. Almost everyone does research full time during the summer, except for a few strange faculty that are out of place and annoying, and these few give faculty a bad rep. Almost everyone does research full time during the rest of the year and also teaches. With the current unwritten limits on NSF grants, you are lucky if you can budget one month of summer salary for yourself, usually it's one half month or even less. So essentially, I'm doing research for free most of the summer because I like research and because I want to get tenure.

So what really confuses me are these emails. Is the administration saying implicitly that I shouldn't even pay myself a little so that I can provide a month or a semester of additional support for a student that I didn't budget for in a project anyway? I know NIH is a bit different and cuts budgets on existing grants, but that doesn't apply in general at my university, and I have no problem adjusting to make sure that a student's stipend is covered if it's scaled back 5-10%, although you would think the university could use its overhead to make up that difference if it really cares. Are there actually people out there that pay themselves more than what they budgeted for summer salary? (Many agencies don't follow up to see what money was used for once the grant is awarded). Am I supposed to voluntarily take a pay cut for what was deemed as appropriate pay for my time for a proposal? Am I missing something here? The administration isn't cutting its salary. This feels like yet another way that scientists and researchers are getting screwed over and taken advantage of when we are already being pushed to our limits.

Unbelievable

So no surprise, I just got another NSF proposal rejected. I don't mind not getting proposals funded. Given the current funding climate, I am at peace with reviewers saying this is good or even great stuff, but someone else's idea was better. My reviews this time though, for the first time, are irritating as hell. These are for a resubmission that scored very well the first time I submitted it to this section and the program officer told me I should fix it up and try again. This time it came back not recommended for funding, also a first.

One of the reviewers listed in the weaknesses: the PI has limited teaching and research experience.

Are you kidding me? What does my teaching experience have to with anything?

Another reviewer explicitly stated that proposing a combination of three different technically challenging techniques, which has significant merit and potential is incremental.

I thought April fools wasn't for a few more days.

I'm seriously wondering if these retarded reviews are the result of a collaborator that I added to the proposal as part of beefing up the expertise needed for these experiments.

If NSF reviewers aren't going to bother to take the time to write an even somewhat coherent review, what is the point of this exercise? I had a similar half-assed review on my last grant. One reviewer lists 2 or 3 bullet points for strengths and 1 or 2 for weaknesses, the second paraphrases the points of the first reviewer and the third reviewer barely wrote anything and it didn't even make sense. I didn't mind as much because at least it scored well. Foundations and DoD proposals at least explicitly state that you won't get feedback. This leaves the NIH as the sole remaining source of constructive criticism for TT faculty trying to get their proposals funded.

Professor knows best, usually

At conferences and on the internetz I often come across people saying that their PI has no clue about the research or that their PI asks them to try things that have absolutely no chance of working. Yes, there are faculty out there that propose crazy half-assed ideas that will never work in a million years. I've met a few over the years, but the vast majority know exactly what they are doing. The question should be, do the PIs know the odds of an idea panning out and if they told you that there is only a one in a million chance, would you still do it?

A lot of my research involves trying things that may or may not work. Of course in an ideal world, the experiment would work, but often it involves steps that tend to fail or that don't have high yields. However, if my students were to start lying to me and just telling me that it simply didn't work, because no one can really predict if these high risk experiments will work, eventually the research would come to a complete hault and the group would fall apart. It's good to have an idea of the likelihood that an experiment will work, but just because it is unlikely doesn't mean you don't try as hard as you can.

I think a big part of the reason for this feeling is because trainees don't get enough of the story of why or how something should work. When this happens, they become technicians. Trainees are shy, and international ones are often afraid that they will lose their position and will have to leave the country. Hence no one asks questions and everyone is suspicious.

This is part of a disconnect that is in academia. I don't know if it's always been like this or if this is a new trend. A student should never feel that what they are doing will not work and not tell their advisor. There is a good chance that this negative atitude increases the likelihood that the experiment fails.

I try to have as equal of a relationship with my trainees as possible. If they think something won't work, they need to tell me so and feel comfortable doing so. Of course they also need to explain to me exactly why it won't work. This is the cornerstone of what someone with a Ph.D. should be able to do. You need to trust your knowledge enough to stand up and say this is wrong and why. PIs, for their part, need to have the time to explain to their students why it will work and potentially correct misconceptions.

Way too many trainees feel they can't tell their advisors things without reprecusions. Other PIs out there, what would you do if a student told you that your idea has a flaw in it?

Half way point (a reflection)

So I'm at the half way point in my TT position. Submitted my third year review material and am waiting for feedback from the higher ups. I'm curious to see what they say, I've heard this is the only time you really get to see what your colleagues think of you and your work and see if you have any enemies in the department before going up for tenure. Annual reviews evaluate productivity and don't really provide feedback at my place. Also, we don't go external for third year reviews, so I don't have any knowledge of what people in my field think of me, which will count for a lot when I go up for tenure.

Unofficially, I've done things right so far and am "on the right track," but that means very little to me. Similar to stocks, past performance is not indicative of future results. Yeah, I got some funding and some papers published, that doesn't mean that I'll ever do either again. The papers will probably happen, but I have less confidence in funding, especially now with this sequestration crap.

I'm not sure if I'm happy with my career choice. I've pulled multiple all nighters last month. I'm annoyed that I get paid less than I would in industry, have to work ridiculous amounts of hours, and have undergrads tell me that I only covered the material that was in their textbook. I can work on whatever I want, but really I can only work on things that have trending buzzwords in the engineering communittee, since those are the only things that have a chance of getting funded. That isn't too bad, I'm pretty good at repackaging research, but I'm constantly worried that my trainees can't do what I'm proposing. They are not me and I can't predict what they are capable of accomplishing. They definitely won't do whatever it takes. I'm at a place where the students will simply walk away if you start to push them hard. I'm debating about jumping ship. The funny part is that my colleagues are telling me that I'm doing well. There's no one I can really talk with about options and potential exit strategies. My mentor works like crazy and I've never heard them say that they enjoy what they are doing. I also don't feel like I can have a really heart to heart discussion with anyone in my college without hurting my prospects at getting tenure. Even outside the university, everyone I know is academic and can't imagine doing anything else. I also equate leaving with failure and can't really see myself leaving before I get tenure, since that is the prize in my mind right now.

The mix of teaching, research, and service is frustrating and exhausting. I only have a small sample size, but the TT folks at tier 1 places I talk to seam to be allowed to focus almost all of their time on research. My place says they want to be a top tier research university, but they put equal emphasis on all three. I'm chairing committees and picking up the slack for tenured faculty in other committees that I'm on. Not because they're lazy, our tenured folks are spread thin with even more committee assignments. I think individual faculty should be allowed to focus on one or two of these pillars and to have a department with professors that have strengths in each of these three areas. Why can't someone that likes teaching undergrads be valued for doing that and letting the people that like research work mostly on that? Anyway, that's where I'm at.

Where is college engineering education heading?

I tried to have a conversation about this with some upper level administrators at my school recently and I couldn't get an answer out of them? They quoted statistics about how society is changing and becoming more demanding, but didn't provide any strategy about how we are supposed to deal with these changes. Instead I was referred to education research on how to be a better teacher.

I agree that we need to rethink and revamp the approach of having a professor copy lecture notes onto a board for an hour 3 days a week, but there needs to be a line and we need to be doing what is in the best interest of society and companies that hire these future engineers to work on huge and often potentially dangerous projects.

Where does the song and dance end? Are we all going to end up as clowns that are paid to amuse and entertain students?

Do you really learn anything if you have a derivation shown on a page with a few answers missing?

How many people have/had handouts/worksheets on a regular basis in their upper level engineering courses? Is it really that difficult to listen and write at the same time? Do you want someone who can't handle this simple multitask to be responsible for an oil refinery?

Reviewing Ethics

Where do you draw the line for conflict of interest? I just received a request to review a manuscript on which one of colleagues is an author. This is an obvious no, right? I would never dream of asking someone from the same university to review a paper. Was this just an oversight on the editors side or is this not a real conflict? I would just ask the editor except that it's one of these automated replies with no option for correspondence.

I've also encountered very new journals from unknown publishers that encourage their editors to be sole reviewers on manuscripts. I feel like there is some conflict of interest there as well since the editors are under pressure to fill an issue with articles.

Am I just being a prud? Does the blind review process make these things ok? The NSF has rather strict rules about this when it comes to proposal reviewing.