Planning A Research Career

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Planning A Research Career
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Outline

• How you build a research career
• What are key skills that need to be developed as
  a graduate student?
• What are the most important things in your first
  two years of graduate school?

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Big Picture

• It takes planning to build a research career
• Need to develop the needed skills
• Need to develop the appropriate mentors, contacts
• When you choose research projects you need to
  decide how the projects fit into your career
• It is not good enough for a project to be fun and
  fundable.
• The project needs to also advance your career

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Key Objectives Of A Graduate Education

• Research skills
• Knowledge of the literature
• Skills to do state of the art research
• Ability to plan/direct a state of the art
  research project
• Ability to write proposals
• Classroom/mentoring skills
• Ability to direct others to accomplish your goals
• Communication skills
• Talks, papers
• Sell your work
• Mentors
• Who are the 3-5 people who will write letters of
  recommendation for you?
• Contacts

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It Is Important For You To Take Charge Of Your
Career

• Acquire the skills to meet your career objectives
  including
• Technical skills
• People skills
• Communication skills
• Mentors
• It is your job to make sure that you acquire
  these skills in grad school

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Key Tasks For Your First Year

• Take most required classes
• Pass Qual
• Start research
• Read the literature
• Take some data or do some calculations before
  your orals

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Key Objectives For Your Second Year In Graduate
School

• Learn how to do state of the art experiments
  and/or calculations (Key job in your first two
  years of grad school)
• Learn how to evaluate your own work. What is
  good, what are the weaknesses
• Become your own worst critic
• Learning what you are good at and enjoy
• How do your skills compare to others in the field
• Learn what leaders in your field are doing and
  how you might contribute
• Start to develop mentors
• Not just your advisor

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Communication Skills In Second And Third Year

• Learn how to organize and write a paper
• Learn the minimum publishable unit
• Learn how to present your work in seminars and at
  technical meetings
• Learn how to teach, mentor students

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Key Concept Of Research Planning

• When you are planning research, you are not just
  planning a research project
• Instead you are also
• Developing skills
• Developing contacts/mentors
• Developing your reputation

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The Knowledge Curve
Knowledge Evolves With An S Shape Curve
Time to move on
Filling holes in existing work
Progress
10-20 publications
Mining discoveries
Discovery
1-5 pubs
Time
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Planning Research
Knowledge Evolves With An S Shape Curve
Time to move on
Start here Develop Skills Work Down
Filling holes in existing work
Progress
10-20 publications
Mining discoveries
Discovery
1-5 pubs
Time
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When You Are Evaluating An Idea It Is Important
To Know Where It Is on the Knowledge Curve

• Completely new ideas/molecules
• Nothing like this published before
• Areas/sub areas with 10-20 publications but still
  significant holes
• Areas with 20-50 pubs
• Areas with 100 publications that need to be
  cleaned up

Route to fame but high risk before tenure
Prime target for postdocs beginning faculty
Beginning grad students
Usually people near scientific retirement unless
area very important
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Matching A Project To Your Career path

• Starting graduate student
• Choose a project that allows you to develop
  skills How to do experiments, write them up
• Senior graduate student
• Need a project that allows you to develop
  independence to carry out a project
• Postdoc
• Project needs to provide you the opportunity to
  plan a research project, direct graduate
  students, develop mentors, fans

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Key Benchmarks For Success Of Your First 2-3
years of Graduate school

• By sometime in your third year you should
• Have a first author paper accepted in a technical
  journal
• Give a paper at a technical meeting
• Know who will write your letters of
  recommendation when you graduate (usually 3-5
  required)
• Finish your masters thesis
• Know the literature in your area
• Know what you are good at
• Answer Masel handout

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Objective For Years 4 and 5

• Cement your relationship with mentors
• Build your reputation through papers and talks
• Learn how to do an independent research project
• Learn how to write a proposal
• Find your next position

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Developing Independence In Grad School

• Develop the skills to carry out a research
  project independently
• Learn to carry out a research project without
  close direction
• Reading the literature to know what has been done
  before
• Choosing appropriate techniques
• Developing a research plan that can get useful
  results
• Getting publications on your results

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Building Your Reputation

• Students, Postdoocs build their reputation via
  papers
• Publication count is critical
• Need a first author papers by your third year in
  graduate school
• Try to get 8 or so total papers in grad school
• Includes second author papers
• Pay attention to the minimum publishable unit -

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Postdocs Build Their Reputation Via High Impact
Papers, Mentors

• As a postdoc you should try to get papers in high
  impact journals
• Nature, Science, JACS
• Need mentors
• Well known research advisor
• Others at your university
• Others in your area
• Submit an NSF or NIH proposal if possible

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Who Are You?
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Self Assessment Tools Are Available

• http//www.quintcareers.com/online_assessment_revi
  ew.html
• http//www.careerperfect.com/content/career-planni
  ng-work-preference-inventory
• Not specific to scientists

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You Need To Evaluate Yourself In The Following
Areas?

• Excellence in scientific practice
• Manipulations actually doing things
• Excellence in scientific reasoning
• Understanding/analyzing data
• Excellence in other key skills
• Communication
• Organization/management
• Effective team work
• Potential leadership qualities
• Self discipline, confidence

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Example Self Assessment Questions

• How good are you in the lab/computer
• Compared to others in your research group
• Compared to others in your field
• How good are you and analyzing data, modeling
  results?
• Compared to others in your research group
• Compared to others in your field

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Sample Assessment Questions Continued

• Are you a leader?
• Compared to others in your research group
• Compared to peers
• Do you communicate well
• Orally?
• In Writing?

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More Self Assessment Questions

• How does your publication list compare to
• Others in your research group
• Students in other groups in the department
• Are you a team player
• Compared to others in the dept.

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It Is Also Important To Assess Your Interests

• Why did you become a scientist/engineer?
• What is the most fascinating part of your
  research?
• What is the most tedious part of your research?
• What fields of science are of interest to you?
• Why do you find them interesting?

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Additional Interest Assessment Questions

• What are you excited by?
• Being the first at something
• Doing something better, more carefully, than
  anyone else
• Being the worlds expert in a narrow area
• Helping students learn, mature
• How important is it to you that you
• Understand fundamental questions about the
  universe your field?
• Advance the Nation in areas such as human health,
  energy, homeland security
• Contribute to the Nations economy
• Get rich/famous

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Field Specific Questions

• What do you see as the most important question(s)
  that need to be answered in your field?
• How do your skills allow you to answer the most
  important questions in your field?
• What are the leaders in your field doing,
  interested in?
• What could you do so they notice you?
• What particular questions are you interested in,
  and how does it fit in?

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Summary

• You are responsible for building your career
• Develop needed skills
• Develop needed contacts, mentors
• Developing research ideas
• Getting publications
• Always Need to focus on the next paper

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Questions?