A friend's academic journey

It's crazy to think that a year ago I was interviewing for faculty positions. Time really does fly when you're terrified of what the future holds.

A friend from my National Lab days after my MS went to industry after his PhD and now he's applying for positions in a similar field to mine (this is his 2nd application cycle). I helped him with his applications but I still have no idea what committee members look for. He's only applied for 3 schools this since he's very particular about where he lives. And he's said that this is his last year. Otherwise, he'll just stay with the company he works for forever. This will be more monetarily beneficial but he says he isn't stimulated.  Now, I don't view him as a spectacular researcher, though he does have great pubs and he went to a top-10 school for his BS, MS, and PhD.  One big thing is how his students react when I ask about him.  THEY LOVE HIM!!!

They have mentioned how he is the sole reason for keeping in the field.  He clearly cares about students; much more than most profs I've talked to.  He's far from selfish and can truly inspire students while getting some cool results out.  I guess a lot of profs have fed back to him that he doesn't have enough academic interbreeding....that he went to the same school (though a great one) for all his degrees.  He needed to stay close to home for family reasons...his dad was very sick and died which he was in grad school.   I never heard of academic interbreeding before this.  And I kind of wish I wouldn't have.  Now I'm wondering if when I get to be on search committees if I'll pass judgment on this simple metric.  This is someone that really cares and if you feel the main job of a professor is to educate, then he's perfect.  I told him to look at maybe some R2s that wouldn't care and maybe make his way up.  His schools are better than mine, but wasn't able to change schools because he took care of his dad.  So his career is forever tainted.  

Patent or perish

Question from a reader:

I want to make the transition from industry to academia, as you are about to.  I haven't published in five years, how can I supplement my CV?  I'm assuming you were in the same boat as I, and most advice I find online is about making the transition to a professorship from a current academic position (post-doc/grad school).

I can't publish my industry work in journals.  The only data of mine that goes public is in FDA filings, so this isn't always the most novel stuff.  I'm somewhere between second-fifteenth author on a couple major publications and conference abstracts where physicians have put me on their work since it's my device they're using, but I didn't really think these counted.  And any data that I got on my own needs to stay within the company.  If competitors take my data and turn it into a successful product then shareholders will be quite upset.  The only way I've been able to publish my work (and keep my CV fresh) was to turn this novel data into medical devices.  This is where patents come in.

With patents, I come up with an idea based on something crazy I think of in the shower (hot, right?) or when I realize that we can turn our data into a device I write a paragraph and attach a couple pics then upload it to our lawyers.  Our lawyers do a prior art search (I can write about the patent process from my point-of-view if you'd like...) then come back to me with how we should write the patent.  Without going into all the details, eventually this results in a plaque with my name and USPTO number on it.

This is how I bridged my academic publications and my industry work.  You've heard of 'publish or perish', in most high-level medical device jobs it's 'patent or perish'.  We get awards, crazy money, and recognition for patents...even if we just submit it and it never turns into a patent...or just a utility patent.  If you're not patenting (thereby preventing the competition from pursuing your awesome idea) then you're falling behind.  Those in the highest levels of scientific leadership here hold tons of patents.

I don't know if this is actually the best thing to do, and some companies choose trade secrets over patents...in which case I don't know what you'd do (advice from other readers, please?).  But this is how I managed to convince academics that I've done something between grad school and my current position.  I'm not sure if this even mattered.  Maybe the pedigree matters more than any patents or pubs...

Phone+business

I never use my phone for work.  The only thing I have in it is Busy/Available synced to my work Outlook so I don't mess up my scheduling for tests/dinners/etc.  Also, since I travel for a lot of studies and corporate portfolio meetings I need to make sure I'm not in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The email on my phone is personal.  No one, but a select few from work, have my cell.  Not even the president of my company (my boss). I don't even do web searches on it for work.  Here's my open tabs:

Cracked
NPR News
AV Club
Food Network
Amazon for watches
Wikipedia for Frozen (Film)
The homepage for my new department<-this is kind of work related, I know....

Nothing related to my current work.  Something about work encroaching on my real life bums me out.  My entire group is like this.  There should be work-life balance; not work-life integration.  We all realize that if you don't have time to switch off then you'll burn out.  Some people can handle it, we just would rather be hiking or hanging out with friends.

But my soon-to-be-successor asked me today how to get his phone on the 'network'.  Then he was shocked and started passing judgement on us when we said we didn't know.  First, he said we were luddites!  Then he said it made us seem undedicated!  We work on the cutting edge of technology.  We have created complicated implants that can manipulate the body into doing what we want.  We've written software that Google would drool over. But because we don't want to constantly be connected to the office we're undedicated and dumb?  Our group of a few has impacted more lives than the thousands of other groups in our company combined even though we switch off at the end of the day.

I understand some people like to be connected, but don't insult us when we want to have separate lives from work.  There's a conference next week where he'll be showcasing some of our technology with me to some MDs.  I guarantee he can't answer the first question they ask him.  And when leadership hears this I'm certain he'll be moving groups.  Probably through a promotion...

R1 versus R2

I hadn't really heard anything about R1 versus R2 designations until I started to look for faculty positions. I picked my undergrad and grad schools because they were cheap and I saw cool research coming out of them. So when I started looking for faculty posts my advisor asked me what I wanted in a faculty job and I said I wanted to do cool research, be my own boss (mostly), have more freedoms in my hours, be on the hunt for the greater good, and mentor students...not necessarily in that order. He said to look at R1 schools first. So I looked exclusively at R1s with a couple R2s sprinkled in where I thought I'd make a good fit. I didn't really question this since I thought R1 schools would give me the best chance at grant success, and ultimately, my success as a researcher.

As I was interviewing I found myself liking the R1 schools for no good reason. I think I started to bias myself. So I did the logical thing and started researching what R1 means. I'm sure most of you know this, but the first thing I learned is that no one is supposed to use R1 anymore. Carnegie has new names for the same thing. I'm going to stick with R1 because I'm typing this on my phone and R1 is faster. 

I thought R1 was more specific to the department, but it turns out it's university-wide. So let's say you have some heavy-hitter departments trying I  that bring in crazy NASA or DoD funding, or maybe you have a fantastic medical school that bring craptons of funding, or maybe you have a ton of PhD programs but don't produce good students or do worthwhile research, these few good departments can be the sole reason your university is R1?  I'm not sure though.  If this is the case, the crappy departments in the university could be able to recruit better candidates because the other departments are pushing the whole school into R1 status. 

What if you're the only multi-million dollar department in a university?  Your name will be dragged through the dirt because the other departments can't step it up. Now you won't be able to bring in the best candidates because of a number after 'R'?  I understand that each discipline knows which schools are the heavy-hitters, but the R1-2 designation is like a scarlet letter, keeping universities down, no?  It just seems like this to me, and I might be completely incorrect (in which case, please correct me blogosphere), but I was blown away by this revelation. It didn't stop me from concentrating on R1s because I thought they would provide me with the highest amount of research time, cool equipment, and great collaborations. Not to mention, I've been told by several researchers that the university name matters when applying for grants. But part of me, in the back of my mind, thinks that I can help bring an R2 up. Help build something new and better.  Am I misinterpreting?  If I am, I'm actually kind of glad.  People focus too frequently on titles: Dr-this, Fellow-that, VP-this, Prof-that...my business card has my name, department, company, address, and phone number.  Honestly, this blog is the only thing that is related to me having three letters.  I regularly tell people not to call me 'doctor'.  I really have to wonder if these titles and designations weren't around if I would have accepted a job with an R1.  Maybe my hidden bias creeped in, and that's why I selected the university I selected.