Research funding? For me?! Awww you shouldn't have...

Imagine me as a 7 year old opening a birthday envelope and squeezing the card to have the check drop out. That's how it feels like when you received the "Your proposal has been recommended for funding" notice. These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity but during it all I received good news on two fronts, one project has definitely received funding for 2 years and another has been recommended for funding for 1 year. While these aren't long term funding streams (and the 1 year project hasn't been officially granted yet), it definitely eases my group's financial footing. In total it would cover 3 of my students for the next year and the 1 year grant will hopefully lead up to a Phase II, and covering students for the remainder of their PhDs.

The other reason why this is very good is that these are two new funding streams, one indirectly from NIH and one is Phase I project with a company. Hopefully the more medical focused project will lead to future R01 funding while the Phase I will lead to Phase II and then continued funding directly from the company.

And while I'm extremely happy and fortunate that at least 1 and maybe 2 of my projects will get funding, I still can't seem to shake this funk that I'm in. It's really weird but the "highs" from my current successes don't seem so high as in the past during my PhD work, even though they should. But the lows are definitely lower than in my PhD work. I'll save that topic for a future post.

Postdoc vs Research Engineer

In one of my last posts, I mentioned that my group has grown excessively large to 10 graduate students. I do not think I am writing anything that is not obvious to everyone in my group: it is very hard to manage that many people and write grants and write papers and perform the level of university and national service that I do. One of the things that I pride myself on is explaining the status of my group to the students. They know, e.g., the current financial situation (whether good or bad), know when I am hiring or not, and whether they can ask to attend conferences they would not normally attend. One of the recent things that has become apparent to me as a result of my participation in a faculty search committee is whether the candidate understands from where his/her funding comes. Now, most of my students are likely to end up in industry so this may be a moot point but I want them to at least understand where their funding comes from, even if they are not responsible for bringing it in.

Lately, I have been debating whether I should bring on a postdoc to help me advance my group. There are numerous reasons to do this: a postdoc can focus more on research instead of classes, can understand a higher level of applications, can write journal papers, and [hopefully] can manage graduate and undergraduate students. Now I know most STEM folks in the blogosphere are in the biomedical fields which have different expectations and funding mechanisms than those of us in engineering. When I talk to folks in the biomedical fields, they say that 40k is sufficient for a postdoc, maybe 42k if they are really good. But in engineering, you can easily make 10k-15k more than that with a BS, with stock options and a 401k so why would any engineer looking for a postdoc accept that salary??! The numbers I'e seen are more like 55k and when you factor in the 33% benefit rate and then 53% overhead rate, a postdoc costs me 112k/year. And that is for an average postdoc. To be honest, before I came to SnowU, I had a postdoc offer for ~73k/year. That's close to 150k/year if I wanted to hire someone at that salary. 

So this begs the question: is a postdoc worth the 112k-150k per year that I need to bring in to support them?

The basic (and more in-depth) answer is: NO. That same amount of money can get me ~2-3 students who will at least be here for until they get their degree, whereas a postdoc will jump at a TT position if offered. (And I'm not blaming them for that!) But I think the bigger question that needs to be asked is why would I hire a postdoc when (assuming) I could hire a research engineer. 

True, a research engineer would cost more than a postdoc but the big difference between the two is a research engineer (or research faculty depending on how you look at it) is able to be PI on their own grants. Other than NIH, which has its own shit-storm of a competition, there is no other mechanism where postdocs can submit their own proposals. However, a research engineer can submit their own proposals to NSF, DoD, DoE, NASA, etc. And if I, as a PI can land a big grant, I may be able to offset most of those costs for the research engineer and then have them help the finances of the group. 

But why would anyone choose to be a research engineer? Wouldn't they just jump at the first TT offer? I don't think that is the case if the right person is found. I know of several groups at SnowU where the lead PI has their research engineer helping them run their group, takes part in the management of students, helps write papers, and is content with trading the TT rat-race for no teaching duties, no service, and the aspects of soft money. Over the long term, especially with the current trends in academic funding, it is likely not sustainable unless you have NIH/DoD/DoE funding but they may be able to help me, as the PI, sustain a group and output level needed to maintain that level of support. 

I'm still not 100% sold on the idea but it has been something I've been thinking about lately. At this point, I think I would take all the help I can get but if I had my pick, I'll probably go with the research engineer rather than a postdoc at this point.

The GEARS Lab

The other main reason why I haven't blogged as much as when I started nor as much as I've wanted is because the GEARS lab has had unchecked growth and has turned into (at times) an unwieldy monster. Over 2 years ago, I wrote a post about the difference between 18 & 27 which can be summed up as: You might as well dive into the tenure track position because you're not going to be successful by being timid. In hindsight, I cannot tell if that is bad advice or good advice, but I can tell you it really sucks at times. I think when I wrote that post I was having delusions of grandeur where I would go 5 for 5 on the 4 DoD YIPs and the NSF CAREER and demonstrate to the world my awesomeness. Fast forward 2 years and 0 for 5 later, my awesomeness has clearly been overlooked by program managers and reviewers. That's not to say I haven't had success with funding. I'm actually closing in on 7 figures of externally funded research as PI or coPI, which I think is a good pace to be on. I just don't know how the hell I'm going to sustain it without getting a bigger award.

The GEARS lab currently has 10 graduate students, a handful of undergrads, and I'm an informal faculty advisor to about 7-8 other students, which has left me strapped for time to get all of the other things I need to do done. Because I have been successful on the funding front, I've picked up twice as many students than in my original plan, which is basically like grabbing the tail of a lion. You can only hope to hang on at times, let alone corral it. I mentioned advising 10 students to some faculty at UGU, and their response can be summarized as "what the hell are you thinking?!?".

The good news is that I have a nice mix of students from three different departments that are all hardworking, dedicated, intelligent individuals. Most are either writing their first first-author paper or waiting to hear back from reviewers (fingers crossed). That's pretty awesome. I also have some good undergraduates that I think should be able to write a patent on their work and then submit a paper on it. That too has been pretty cool. We've had a couple of patent applications and invention disclosures too, which I think has been some pretty good output so far. And probably the best thing, at least individually for me is that my book was finally published and I have received a copy in print. I've even had a random cold-call question from someone who has actually bought it and read it.

Basically I've been spending 10-12 hours a day, sometimes 6-7 days a week on [trying to] maintain this for a while. It is pretty daunting, frustrating, and mentally taxing but does have its moments when it is all worth it. Now, I haven't had one of those in a while, so I think I'm in a funk right now, but I'll save that for the topic of another post.

Overtime in the Lab

I think my graduate students are finally starting to gather some momentum for doing work for themselves in the lab. I had an Engineer Blogs post some time ago on momentum and how I think my students transitioned from milling around and watching me to actually being able to do stuff for themselves. Well, this past weekend, they got a taste of what it's like to have deadlines approach and not have things go the way they want them (or I want them) to go. 

I thought I wrote a post a while back, either here or at Engineer Blogs, on using conference proceedings as a stepping stone to get results for a journal submission and to set a series of deadlines. I tried looking for it but I can't find it, so let me 'splain myself right now.

I use conference abstract submissions as a good way to set a short term goal (~4-6 months away) to get some results and give you something to work towards. In my field, conference abstracts tend to be a review of the abstract, which is 1-2 pages. The acceptance is based on that abstract and then a 4-6 page full conference proceedings is then submitted prior to the conference. This contrasts to some IEEE conference that I know where there is a full proceedings review process, etc. etc. 

Well, we submitted an abstract and were accepted for an oral talk for a conference at the end of June and the proceedings is due next week. Seems like no big deal. However, we've had to borrow some equipment from other labs which needed to be returned by yesterday at the latest. And everything was going smoothly until we saw, shockingly, unexpected results*. This was around Wednesday of last week. This proceeded to send of a panicked frenzy of activity with late nights in the lab, work over the weekend with me aligning components while wearing my professorial robes, and, most importantly, my graduate students thinking independently. 

I think they've crossed another threshold in research. They went from just watching me in the lab, to being able to perform prescribed actions in the lab, to thinking of solutions independent from me. That's really awesome. Also, I feel like I can discussions with them on a higher level because they understand a lot more about the field they're working in. The only sad part is that we still haven't figured out the source of our problem in our system and now we're down on equipment to test with it. 

* I actually was shocked by the results because the system was designed to alleviate this problem.... :-\  

Research Group Dynamics

Today, over at Engineer Blogs, I discuss the dynamics of building a research group and put forth a few key ideas that I focused on in the beginning. If you have comments, they're greatly appreciated.

Abuse of Power

If you've been following my twitter account (@profgears), undoubtedly you've seen a flurry of tweets about student expectations, terrible advisors, and politics of publishing. This stemmed from GMP's post the other day over at Academic Jungle and DrugMonkey's post on the subject clearly in GMP's camp. DrugMonkey's post heading The Care and Feeding of your PI: a tip for grad students and postdocs should tell you all you need to know about their position on the matter.

I clearly disagree.

As a grad student, you're not there to serve a professor at their beck and call. As a professor, you're not there to wipe the nose of your students. Both should have expectations and duties that are clearly laid out. I've already discussed this a few weeks ago. The professor (or PI, or whatever you want to call them) is supposed to be the student's professional mentor. The prof is supposed to be the student's guidem helping transition from a student to being a autonomous researcher.

This clearly breaks down when there is a lack of communication between both parties. For instance, the prof expects the student to publish as many papers as they can before graduation. But you'd be surprised how many students don't know that and how many profs don't tell their students that. So you have a prof that's expecting paper drafts and a student wondering what to do with their data. The student tries to schedule meetings but the prof has little time to discuss it. Months go by. Still no paper. There is increasing frustration on both sides.

Inevitably, a downward spiral happens and things turn to shit. The prof did a bad job of mentoring their student, yet from the prof's perspective, their student is a slacker. The prof thinks their student isn't working enough and so the student gets even less time than the minuscule amount the prof already gives them. The student gets frustrated because their mentor and career guide doesn't respond back to them and now the student starts worrying about graduation deadlines and whether they are even going to get a recommendation.

At this point, both are in the wrong because they didn't communicate with each other. But the professor is always in the power position and it should never be abused. And it sure sounds like some Profs/PIs do abuse that power by holding graduation and recommendations over their students' heads. Those are the same Profs/PIs that are supposed to be mentoring their students. That's a terrible situation to be in if you're the student because the one person you're supposed to go to for advice is giving you shitty advice and guidance. In the odd chance that student makes it to the next level, how likely is it for them to mimic their advisor's behavior? I say that's highly likely and I sure as hell don't want to be that kind of prof.

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On the topic of publishing and who gets coauthorship, it's very hard to describe in 140 characters. My general feeling is this. Anyone who contributed to the writing, data gathering, interpretation, and oversight should be a coauthor. However, everyone one of those people should be capable of writing a significant chunk of the article. That doesn't mean only the person who wrote the article should be the sole author.

Here's how you test it. Ask each person if they could write the draft. If someone says they could probably get 60% of is done, that's fine (that's a significant chunk). If they said 10%, they don't belong as a coauthor. That's what the acknowledgements section is for.

In practice, most groups aren't that strict because everyone needs more papers to be considered successful. But if I adhered strictly to that, I'd be missing my prof on every paper. And for me, when I'm in that same situation, I want to be involved enough to always pass that test. Otherwise, I would and should expect my student to submit it without my name on it because I haven't contributed enough. But if it comes to that point, then there's obviously something else going on in our advisee-advisor relationship and there's a bigger problem at hand than coauthorship on a paper.

Advisor-Advisee Expectations

A few days ago, I posted about Submitting it Anyway, which was a dig at advisors who take forever to give comments on papers. Or in my case, take forever to the paper and say "I have no idea what's going on but it looks good. Submit it".

If I take a step back, that's a somewhat terrible relationship to have with your advisor. That's really good way to sow dissension amongst the minions. Students don't want to work for you. You appear (as their advisor) to not give a damn because you're some really uber busy professor. That's why when I posted about my research group and number of students, I didn't think having more than 4 or 5 students was worth it. With the downward spiraling of academic funding, I don't think it's easier to maintain more than that. You're too focused on funding rather than your students, your teaching, and your research.

Later tonight, I have a presentation over the interwebs for first year grad students at SnowU who are looking for an advisor. In this presentation (and in the future), I lay out what I expect from students and what they should expect from me. If there's a discord in the future, then we should both be adults about it and discuss it to make things right. Miss MSE's comment on my post that she had to involve her department chair and graduate coordinator in her advisor's lack of involvement is very unfortunate. I'm speculating (and you can tell me if I'm wrong) that if Miss MSE's advisor was approachable and available, that they could have discussed this issue to iron out some kinks.

Below are the main points that I want to get across to first year students looking for an advisor. They should know what their advisor expects from them right from the start and they should know what to expect from their advisor.

As a Grad Student, I expect you to...

• Show up, be diligent, be willing to try new/odd experiments, be creative
• Treat this like a job. When you have your PhD, you'll have to anyway
• Get comfortable in the lab, you'll be there often
• Write journal papers and attend conferences (it helps both of us)
• Present your research regularly, both internally and externally.
• Support your colleagues as needed
• Not be afraid to ask for help from myself or any of your colleagues. We should be willing to say I don't know

As a tradeoff, you will learn a ton of things along the way, such as...

• Lab Skillz. When you walk into any lab in the future, you will feel comfortable
• Multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving. See that soldering iron? It works for mechanical engineers, optical engineers, physicists, just about anyone.
• How to write and review journal papers, critique your work, write tactful answers to dumb reviewers
• To give presentations where no one will be asleep
• To be confident about your research and your abilities
• Enough knowledge to give you a sizable base for a career in _______

But you should have expectations from me. As your advisor, I will strive to...

• Answer your emails in a timely fashion
• Show up in the lab (frequently!, daily?!)
• Help you transition to be an autonomous researcher
• Work with you to achieve your career goals, whether they're in industry, academia, or national labs
• Get you connected in our greater research community
• Be available, approachable, and reasonable.

If, for any reason, neither of us are living up to this, then we should be able to discuss it like adults and come to a suitable conclusion.

Quirky New Engineering Prof Seeks Passionate, Creative Student for a Professional Research Relationship

While I haven’t officially started at SnowU, I am essentially preparing when I do start. Aside from looking over class notes, preparing a new lecture, and lining up my proposal schedule, I need to find students. SnowU has been very good about identifying potential students for me and I will get a chance to pitch my research to new students before they generally make their decisions about a PhD advisor.

So this past weekend, I worked on a few advertisements about the first few projects I want to run. I initially started with the generic Background, Project Description, Responsibilities, etc. After writing a little bit, I took a break and then looked them over. There were two things that struck me upon rereading the advertisements: 1) these say nothing about my personality or about how I would run my group and 2) I certainly wouldn’t want to work for myself based on what I read.

I scrapped those and started over again. I started to go with ads that were essentially personals. One of the headlines for a laser project was Wanted: Cute Redheaded Laser seeks crafty Engineer for a Controlling Relationship”. I know it sounds cheesy but that’s certainly more eye catchy than Project Title: Control of Red HeNe Lasers. I thought those might get me into a little bit of trouble, so I started over again.

In the end, I settled on a format that shows a little bit of personality, a little bit of my quirkiness, and tells a little bit about what I expect from students, while still mentioning the basics like project description, etc. These are much more to my liking, while still be on the good side of professional.

When you were a first year student roaming the halls, what caught your eye on the bulletin board? If you didn’t have a specific advisor in mind, would you take a chance on “The New Prof”? I tend to think (and did so for my MS) students prefer to work with a well established Prof because they think that will help them in the long run. For my PhD, I worked for a new Prof, was still successful, but was almost in spite of my Prof. Is that still the current sentiment? Would you work for a Prof whose position advertisements start with Quirky New Engineering Prof Seeks Passionate, Creative Student for a Professional Research Relationship?

Dual Advisor Conflicts

Currently, I’m in that grey area as far as my job/research is concerned. Mainly, I’m trying to finish a few more papers before I officially move on. One of my other tasks is mentor the next PhD student to continue this current research trend. So with NewGrad, I’m trying to get a few more experiments completely, enough for maybe 1-2 papers and we collectively have a few conference proceedings submitted/accepted.

Research with NewGrad is going well. I expect a lot from my mentees and I give them a lot of tasks, but I also support my mentees much more than other PhD/Postdoc students do for their mentees in my group.

But as I’m slowly faded out of the picture, it’s time for the real Advisor (also technically my advisor) to take over. Since I’ve been pretty autonomous as a researcher for the past ~2 years, I’ve had to set my own path for the research, so I know where it should go. Not to toot my own horn, but I have been pretty successful at doing so. Advisor does not have nearly as in depth knowledge about the research topic as I do and thus, Advisor doesn’t exactly know where it should go. And Advisor wants NewGrad to go in a different direction than the direction I’ve set forth. These are also the same wonky decisions Advisor steered me toward.

Concerning my future, I am not so worried. Once I have moved to SnowU, I will be guiding my own research, unless I get myself as a grad student. In general, I will be able to proceed down the path I want on this topic.

I am more concerned about NewGrad and how this will change NewGrad’s situation. There is clearly a disconnect between myself and Advisor and NewGrad is aware of that. Also, NewGrad knows that I’m leaving shortly and Advisor will be the main person to turn to for the rest of the PhD project. And NewGrad does not want to run the risk of alienating Advisor so early in the project.

I think it is a weird situation to be in for the both of us. What would you do if you were in NewGrad’s shoes? Have you been part of a supervising tandem where you had conflicts with the other supervisor? How did this affect your underlings? Thoughts? Comments?

Lab Wars

It’s smaller than I thought…

How’s that for an opening line?

I recently received the floor plans and was asked for my desired modifications for my new lab space. When potential lab space was discussed during my interview, I had an estimated space in mind and I do believe the University (I really need a nickname) did meet my initial size estimation.

However, I think I low-balled the amount I needed. The space is manageable, for now. In subsequent years, I would hope to pick up a handful of students, which means there’s going to be a shortage of space.

Part of yesterday’s post on courses to teach stemmed from my reaction to my newly allocated lab space. Another reason for teaching a self-imposed lab class is the potential to carry out experiments in that space over the summer or when the course is not taught.

I know Lab Wars (cue the music) is a common activity at universities. Hell, I generally go through that on a weekly basis (and win =D ). But the University did meet my requested space size and are willing to make modifications to enhance the space for my specific research needs. So I think I’m somewhat stuck. Hopefully, I can wow them with publications and results within the first few years so I can plead my case for more space.

The App Package (Part 2)

After the CV, the next two critical documents for your application package are the Statements of Teaching and Research. During my preparation, I received the whole gambit of advice from having short 1-page statements for each to having multi-year, elaborative exposés on your future plans. In practice, this usually gets sorted out based on the position for which you are applying.

For instance, if you’re looking for an assistant professorship, they aren’t going to expect you to have gobs of info on teaching. Thus, a lot of the places have a limit of 1 page each or 3 pages total. In those cases, you only have enough space for the core points in the SoT/SoR. For teaching, it helps to show you have a teaching philosophy. By now, you’re probably either an experimentalist or a theorist. But in engineering, you’ll need to be able to teach both. Also, you should have an idea about the core program classes that you can teach. These core classes should be pretty common in some shape or form in most engineering programs. Lastly, you should mention a few ideas about classes that you’d like to develop.

On the research side, when space is limited, I think there are only two things you need to get across. The first is that you have larger plan for where you want to be 5-10 years for now because you think the technology is headed in that direction. The second is that you have a series of projects already outlined which help you plan out that 5-10 year period. One thing that I learned (and was asked during an interview question) was “How is my future research different from my current group?” In my case, that was fairly easy to answer but for others, that may be difficult. If you’re not doing something new or there is a research group focused on that already, how are you going to get funding?

And speaking of funding, that bring me to topics that should be included in your SoT/SoR that should be considered if you have sufficient space. On the research side, in addition to outlining where you believe the technology is going and having projects which lead in that direction, you also have to show that you know how to get there. In academia, that’s via funding and group management. Naming key grants that you will go after during your tenure track period and defining how you will set up your group will go a long way to showing your future colleagues that you’re ready for this challenge. This includes the number of students and a rough idea of the cost per year of running such a group. Lastly, adding a section on your previous research can give an indication that you’ve already been trained for this type of research and you’re the right person to lead it in the future.

For the SoT, space permitting, having some good grandiose ideas about novel classes that would greatly add to the curriculum shows that you haven’t just focused on research. These should be treated differently than your suggested courses that you would add because these ideas should be a department or college initiative. This could be something like a minor or specialization within a degree or a course which would take some significant support from the department. Also, look for higher education teaching grants. This would show the department that you’re serious and that you think there are additional support mechanisms which would help you get this started.

The last piece of the puzzle is the Cover Letter. In general, the Cover Letter should be customized for each position. It should specifically draw connections from points in their advertisement to why you fit the position. This is where you can get specific about why you fit this exact position. The SoT/SoR should largely be independent per position for which you are applying. Some other considerations are that this should be addressed to the committee chair if it is publicly known but you should expect the rest of the committee to read your letter. Also, some people say a two page cover letter is fine but I think at this stage in your career, one page should be enough.

The last thing I’ll say on this is to be hopeful but don’t get your hopes up too high. I ended up applying for 10+ positions and received no reaction from almost all of them. All of those positions that I wasn’t successful for didn’t even have the common courtesy to have a form letter rejection saying they were “going in a different direction”. I think that’s a little improper, but that’s the world we live in. If a semester has past and you have followed up several times and you still haven’t heard anything, it’s not looking too good. This can be the most frustrating aspect (not officially knowing) but it takes persistence to get a position. Also, it [sometimes] helps to know someone on the faculty. More on that tomorrow.

Group Dynamics

Lately, I’ve been thinking student and research group managements. Given the dynamics of lab setup, startup money, and teaching responsibilities, I probably will have about 3 grad students for the first few years. Once I start building up resources from external funding sources, I might be fortunate enough to support 5+ students and maybe a postdoc. The question is, is that necessary to run an effective research group?

During my MSc work, I was in a smaller group (~4 grad students) and during my PhD, I was one of 8-12 PhD students and up to 3 Postdocs. With a group that large during my PhD, it was easier (and more productive) to essentially break off research with one of the postdocs and just work on our own stuff together. Basically we had our own “small group” within the large group.

The pros of that situation were obviously good and fruitful (otherwise I wouldn’t have the opportunity that I have now...). We were able to focus our research, crank out papers, attend a lot of conferences, and pool resources. At the same time, our interaction with the rest of the group dropped off and there were so many students, that keeping track of what we were doing was difficult for our advisors.

Twice, I have benefitted from a smaller group and clearly seen the ineffectiveness of a large group (although 1 data point doesn’t make a trend). At the same time, during interviews and discussions with other faculty, the general trend seems to say bigger is better. The break seems to be between 4/5 students and 5+ students. For the latter, a postdoc is necessary to help manage the group. At the same time, the amount of funding per year also jumps. More students/postdocs equals more papers (theoretically) which leads to a perception of a more “successful” research group. That should increase the amount of funding. At the same time, the amount of time in the lab decreases, you are spread thinner for your students, and you become less effective at pushing the research focus where needed.

So what is the ideal group size? How has a smaller(larger) research group benefitted you?