New equipment at my new school

When I accepted the academic position I'm going to be taking in a year (seriously, I'm getting crazy excited and anxious), my new school (NS) agreed to buy a critical piece of equipment so long as I run it as a core facility. 

NS is pulling kind of a dick move: they're asking me to find a lesser costing system. A system that will be able to do the job, though not exactly what I want. I really should have gotten this in writing. On the plus side, they said I can start ordering equipment and outfitting my new lab space. This will allow me to really start as soon as I show up (I hope) and get students faster (I hope) since everything will already be ready (I hope).  

One thing I'm trying to work out given the lesser equipment is that I may be able to get a lab tech with some of the saved money difference. Though a couple year's salary of a lab tech hardly makes up for the equipment difference. I'm going to miss the days of my practically unlimited budget....

Dear Yelpers,

As I have been traveling a ton lately, I am trying to find good places to eat. Some coworkers know of places, some friends have recommendations, and I randomly walk around in cities and find some gems. Sometimes I turn to the internet. Yelp is usually my go-to.

There are a few breeds of Yelpers:

1.  The kind that just reads. 

2.  The kind that posts pics of food. 

3.  The kind that posts pics of the business. 

4.  The kind that posts funny pics.

5.  The kind of posts personal pics. 

6.  The kind that review everything and have to throw in their opinions all the time. 

7.  The kind that genuinely have good tips. 

8.  Combinations of the above. 

Yelp also has review-inflation. This is one of the worst parts of Yelp: most people have horrible tastes in food compared to my preferences. A five star review rarely results in five star flavor.  I sometimes think people are scared to go against the majority so reviews just become more and more positive.

So Yelpers, here's a few comments in regard to each archetype you may fall into:

1.  If you see something missing from a review (incorrect hours, better bartenders than others, etc).  Add it. Otherwise, you're just a user. But be sure to at least rate the place, regardless of whether you post a review. 

2.  There are enough pics of food. Do a quick search and see if the food you want to post hasn't been posted. If it has, then don't post. If it hasn't, absolutely make sure that of the 400+ photos already posted that your's will actually contribute. 

3.  Thank you. I frequently want to know if the restaurant is dingy, has a good view, etc.  These pics are rare, but again, if it's been posted then don't post.
4.  I don't care.  Unless it sheds light on the ambiance.
5.  I really really don't care.
6.  Please make sure it's not the same as every other review.  If it is, just rate.  While you may think we all care about your opinion...we don't.
7.  Please keep posting.  I know your good, unique tips get drowned out by the crap, but I dream of a world where the crap disappears.
8.  See above.

Seriously, a recent city I was in had hundreds of pics and reviews per place and it was impossible to really see what the restaurant had.  Five stars, but worth maybe two.  The bathroom was the dirtiest place, and $$$.

Yelp is supposed to make things easier.  In the time it takes me to see all the freaking pictures of the same foods, and people, and crap reviews I could just go to the restaurant and learn for myself.  In my home city, that's fine, but when I'm traveling in countries where I probably won't visit again, I want to make sure I get the best.  Though I've started to just play restaurant-roulette lately and ignore Yelp. If any readers out there work for Yelp: a feature where you upload and have to list whether its food, ambiance, or other would be awesome.

Sincerely,
Phindustry

So much travel!!!

I hate traveling. And I've been on the road more than at home lately. Normally time on the plane and airports and getting driven around gives me chances to relax, blog, watch movies, etc.  But things have been so damn busy that all I've had time for is work.  With a multiple devices getting ready for FDA-level animal studies and human studies I have to be around to support a lot of MDs. I get to talk advantages while the VP of my company, sales, and other engineers watch. 

Because of this travel I've been missing home a ton. And realizing that I hate the following cities (don't be offended, to each their own...I love certain cities that people despise...and I never get mad at people when they rip on them): Los Angeles, Phoenix, Hope, Houston, and Marseille. And being away from home makes me even more mad about these other cities. And I haven't had time to blog about the frustrations!  My Möbius strip of frustration. 

One interesting thing: yesterday in the airport I sat next to a kid and his mom. They're looking at apartments in the city of a certain Ivy League school. This kid has a lot to his advantage: clearly rich parents that can afford to send him anywhere, years of right control over his life and extracurriculars and school. Part of me is kind of jealous since I got into a lot of these schools but couldn't afford to attend. And I can't help but wonder if a better pedigree would've made job hunting easier. But part of me realizes how the focus of this persons life has been school and school alone. I talked with him a little and there are few people more boring than him.  There must be a good balance of overbearing parent and having an interesting, funny, and balanced kid. Right? ....starting to feel the pressure of wanting to be a parent....

One last thing: I've been flying to tons of places and with tons of different airlines. I love Delta, Alaska, and Virgin airlines. Economy, first, and business classes are all awesome with these two airlines. Considering the prices aren't much different how come other airlines can't bring it like these airlines have?

My no-longer-replacement

I've written about the guy that my company said is to replace me here. At a recent conference he was showcasing some of our new stuff to a few select physicians (the kind of physicians that will keep their mouths shut about our up-and-coming products).  Some of these physicians know and like me, and it's always nice to chat with them. I would introduce my replacement and we would all talk about the medical devices on the horizon. My replacement (Mr. MBA), would chime in every once in a while when he was directed a question during our discussions. He was able to joke around and develop back-and-forth with the physicians, but as soon as anything technical came up (either about the diseases or the devices) he seemed like an idiot.  On top of this, it didn't seem like he cares about patients, which is part of why I despise this guy. The physicians relayed this to me and my superiors that were there. And they were not amused.

So the president of my company has notified me that Mr. MBA will be transferring to marketing since the physicians have notified management that Mr. MBA is not someone they want to work with. Party with, yes, but work with, never. This makes me feel good and bad. Good that he'll be gone (he was horrible for our group) and bad because the physicians don't think I'd be fun to party with. 

So the president, realizing that they made a bad decision, has put me on charge of the hiring committee. I have 2 weeks to make a short-list and 1 week to complete the first round of phone interviews. Then on-sites after that. They want to rush this so they can start training under me.  I've been pushing to get my #2 in charge of my group when I depart in a year but for some reason leadership is obsessed with finding someone external. I suspect it's because my #2 is a quiet kinda gal.  She isn't too aggressive (unlike me), though she's insanely motivated.  I'm planning on training her for the committee.  I suspect her reserved attitude is part of why leadership doesn't want her leading my group.

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...

Paper review

To stay in the academic loop, I'm a reviewer for two major journals in my field.  Been doing this since as soon as I graduated a few years back.  The past year I've reviewed about a dozen papers.

When I was in grad school, at first I thought everything was brand spanking new and going to change the world. That quickly changed as I realized that the research was cool and beneficial but 99.9% of it won't have any direct clinical impact. For the stuff that isn't basic science it's still so far cutting edge that the impact is unrealized. In industry, my work has changed the medical device world with tons of direct impact. Well, maybe not the world, but 10's of thousand's of peoples' lives. But it's not really brand spanking new besides a few things.  But I have to keep these things on the D.L. to keep other companies from utilizing it.  A lot of the ideas in the papers I've read have been thought of before. I've only read one article that I was amazed by, but it was written so poorly it nearly got completely rejected. I reviewed this paper this week and it reminded me about how awesome writing is. 

It's a great way to organize your thoughts. Throw some pictures and diagrams in a great document and you've just won yourself a multimillion dollar grant. Or look back at your old writing and discover how much better you've become. Or discover how you've changed as a person and scientist. But you don't necessarily need good writing for nonprofessional writing (ahem...this blog).

I love technical writing because it's the culmination of a lot of hard work. Through the planning, organizing, reporting, and discussing results, it's a lot of fun to pull everything together and let the world know what's going on. In order to do this, the language of most prevalence is English. While my English isn't the best I'm pretty decent at disseminating my work. This paper I'm reviewing is reminding me that if you want to do science you should either learn great English writing or work and publish in an area where you don't need good English. With this paper I'm reading it's just such a shame that the PI approved submitting this paper without reworking the writing and figures. I'm going to try and push this into major revs (so it's not killed) because it's great work. It's just very tough since the writing and figs are sub-par. As a big fan of writing, it just kills me to see work like this that's been approved by a PI. If this person tried to submit this crap to the FDA he would be heavily punished for it. The PI is doing the grad student that wrote this a disservice by not pushing the student to learn better writing skills. Some people will probably say, "students won't listen, are incapable, don't have time, etc".  To that, I was a mediocre writer when I entered grad school. My former advisor wouldn't let me submit anything for publication until he says it was acceptable. This improved my writing dramatically.  At first it took forever (months of constant rewrites) to submit pubs.  Holding off publication (and therefore graduation) is one of the few things PIs can use to control the students. And it's for good reason: learning to disseminate information is part of the scientific process, so this needs to be learned. 

Again, this is probably just my naïveté. But my advisor was just as busy as the rest and had time to teach me writing. I teach entry level scientists and engineers better writing. Why can't the corresponding author on this paper teach good writing? Or at least not let this garbage get submitted. 

#InnovationDeficit

I've always wanted to help become a bridge between industry and academia. I think this is part of why departments took kindly to me while looking for an academic post. I think so, but I still don't know how the faculty hiring process works. This involves a few different approaches (I'm omitting some things but these are the biggest):

1. Funding acacdemic labs to do basic science I don't have time for

2. Hiring interns from schools

3. Giving talks at academic conferences and universities

4. Convincing my company to sponsor academic conferences and different university events and students

5. Working directly with local schools (K-12 and universities) and my company to show the youths that STEMs are fun, lucrative, necessary, and useful.

The last one involves me traveling to schools, taking part in tours, outreach with FIRST, SWE, ASME, MAES, SASE, and BMES (e.g., random acronyms) events, etc.  I try my hardest to get people into STEMs.  We need more of us of any race, religion, and creed.  The problem with this is we can convince more people to want to join, but without the funds to pay for college and have jobs for them, my recruiting efforts are useless.

While I wasn't born in the USA, I bleed the stars and stripes.  I love this country, which is part of why I recruit so heavily for STEMs.  To prevent our country from falling behind we have to have innovation.  And we need people with advanced knowledge to spur this on.  And to have innovation, we must have the funds to provide the best possible education, paying for tuition, fees, and stipends; especially for those who can't pay on their own.  We need funds to pay for more (and accountable) professors (and K-12 teachers) for the influx of students.  We need the funds to create the technologies that turn into the next generation of businesses to fund many a STEMer to come.  In industry, I fund a lot of academic research, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what the NIH/NSF/DoD give out.  But to handle the influx of STEMers we need to keep innovation going on the homefront. We need more investment.  This is something I've always preached.

This bring me to this website: http://www.innovationdeficit.org

When I saw this today, I saw statistics that I've always seen, but this is a very nice way to present them.  There has been all kinds of talk about funding being so bleak right now from federal agencies.  I have heard it in regard mainly to grant-funding.  But there's so much more to the lack of funding occurring in the academic environment. There needs to be more professors to handl the influx of students (and grants for them), we need the best labs and classrooms for them. And events to get them pumped about the fields.  As a country we need to start thinking about this and understanding our priorities.  Or companies need to start investing in our future since these students will be the eventual STEMers these companies need.  There needs to be an interaction between industry and the government.  Discussions about how they can work together: the government spending in a way to protect our intellectual future, with industry willing to shoulder some of the burden.

#InnovationDeficit

Sponsoring the children

I donate to a scholarship where I can sponsor the students I specifically pick (all applications are from the same university). It costs me around $10k/student/year (I sponsor two) and mainly this provides a partial stipend, but the schools appreciate the private money so much the university fills in the rest if the stipend and covers tuition/fees/etc. I had this when I was in grad school so it's only right that I give back.  If the student has a fellowship already then this money goes on top of that.  Pretty awesome.  I pick my students based on what kind of research they do and then their personal/professional essays.  I've met some great people this way.  There's a big ceremony where the students get their awards and get to meet their sponsors.  It's a lot of fun to take part in as a student, and just as fun as a sponsor.

I really enjoy this because I get to see some of the state-of-the-art, talk with interesting people that really care about research, and get a couple nice dinners.  At the most recent dinner I started to realize that I may not be able to take part as much for a couple reasons next year.  First, I'll have less disposable income.  Second, I'm concerned about the conflict-of-interest.  Is funding a different PI's student at a competing university ethical?  I guess I could reach out to my new school's local chapter of this scholarship and fund a student, but what if I like one of my own student's research the most.  If I don't select the one I want to fund I fear it's wrong, and if I do select my own, then I'm using personal money to fund one of my "employees".  But giving to another university when my new place could use the money presents me with a dilemma.

Regardless, I will take part, if nothing else but volunteering with the organization.  I really enjoyed my experience with this scholarship, and I don't want to give up sponsoring students.  Should I?

Requesting vacation time

When I took my industry job I ended up with 2.5 weeks of vacation time in my first year. Coming from grad school this was actually kind of low so I ended up using every second. After the first year I was promoted to a pay grade where we're required to have 4 allocated weeks regardless of time with the company (typically promotions here give 2 days/year of service) with 0.5 weeks added per year. I use about 3 weeks when you factor in the holidays, occasional Fridays off, miscellaneous time for when family or friends are in town, half days, etc.  The amount of time off doesn't bother me since my schedule prevents me from taking more than that, my problem with vacation time is that I have to request it, get approved, and make sure that I'm not taking too much time off in the eyes of the higher-ups.  I get even more judgment passed on me because I have a bustling out-of-work life with plenty of friends and hobbies. The higher-ups work all the time. So when I'm taking long weekends and extra vacation time beyond the 1 week the higher-ups allocate to themselves I get looks of disappointment. I felt guilty at first but now I don't. While I love my work, I love my personal life more. 

But I still hate getting the looks of disappointment/anger every time I put on vacation time. That is one thing I'm really looking forward to about academia. If I need to take off for something personal or just need some time off to decompress, or help out family or friends. I don't have to formally request anything.  It also opens me up for longer lunches.  So long as I make meetings and classes I get relative freedom. Sure, there will still be judgment and lots of work to make up for, but I won't have to login to the vacation website and request a set number of hours while keeping track of what I have left. There's a quote I've heard before: "academia is great; you can work 80 hours a week whenever you want."  I'm fine with long hours, I just want to work and take time off without requesting it. Something about that website reminds me of how owned I am. And NO PERSON SHALL OWN ME! :)

Life's been nuts!

I saw my old advisor recently and he was very excited about the summer: two conferences, no teaching, all the students spending most of their time on the lab, etc. He said he gets more free time for whatever he wants. I would love that. 

My schedule has been absolutely crazy as of late. I try to keep a few short term goals for every couple months. My current goals include finishing four projects, and trying these out in animals by June 1.  We're on track, but we still have to do bench testing. So I've been working with my techs to get these done so I can try these out ex vivo. This is coupled with some big corporate meetings that are taking a lot of my time. But more importantly, I'm also prepping for conference travels. These are conferences to start building my academic reputation. I can't present work, but I can show up as an industry representative, take professors out for dinner and drinks on the corporate card (their students will have to come to make it a recruiting expense...otherwise it's just stealing money), and talk starting up my own lab. I want to get this kind of research out of the way so as soon as I get there I can start getting equipment. My plan is to go out there a year from now to start recruiting students and finding a house. 

So I've been doing a lot of research at home, started on grants, and even started spewing out exactly the equipment I want to buy. This has been in my off-time, which there isn't much because of these devices I want to get out before I close-up-shop. I also want to really show leadership how I got stuff done, and that they would be stupid not to fund my academic lab. 

So during the day I'm doing R&D, planning studies, traveling, and reporting results. At night I write, read, and plan for my future life (this is in addition to donning a cape a mask for all the crime fighting at night).  I know that the less I plan for now, the more hectic life will be when I'm trying I find a house and set up my lab come next summer.  Too darn busy. 

So while my advisor is relaxing in the tower, I'm preparing to visit the tower while also working in the fields. Part of me wants to just delay all the academic stuff until I start, but I don't want to screw over future-Phindustry. 

This is all packed on top of several social obligations that have arisen recently (weddings, dinners, game-nights, etc). I rely heavily on friends for support. And so I spread myself thinner to ensure friends (and spouse) don't feel ignored. Honestly, these are the only people I care about disappointing. And so I type these blog entries when I'm in public and it's too noisy to get work done. It's the only 'alone' time I have to decompress from obligations.  I don't know how the hyper busy people manage their lives. Do they let something slide?  

My boss is technically a senior citizen and never been married. And I never hear him talking about friends. My fear is that I'll eventually slip into his mindset and be devoid of the things I find most fun in life because I'm too focused on ensuring the career is taken care of. I don't have kids but I liken it to having multiple kids. If you spend too much time on one, the others will fall behind on parental influence. I want a well-rounded family but I find that 24 hours in a day just isn't enough right now. 

Dancing for the executives

Every year, throughout my company and its sister companies, we have to present a bunch of new technologies to the executives.  Today was that day.  This is a way to let management know what's in the pipeline.  If we present technology that they like, we get to keep our budget. If we present technology they hate, we can all be confident people will be getting fired. However, if we present something absolutely amazing they will give us an extra $15 million (this happened last year). So tensions have been high lately. People have been doing everything they can to show off as many ground-breaking things as possible. Internal groups compete like we're from different companies. It's absolutely insane, and I despise it.

I hate it because I feel like such a pawn. I put on my tap shoes and have to dance for a bunch of higher-ups that think of me as just another chess piece they can replace. I've never felt so unappreciated. And I hate talking sales all day, when we SHOULD be making these products to save lives. This week we worked 2x our usual hours to get ready for the visit. We tested every last project, and wowed the executives. 

We got a crazy amount of money for two projects specifically and they want these in people by December. Considering we haven't done a single animal study we're a little on-edge. Except me. I don't feel anything. I feel like a kid that just worked overtime for my parents' praise, got it, but realized that life will go on and I can be happy without it. I'm glad we got the money since it will go a long ways to save lives. I just hate having to do this show every year. I feel like I'm whoring my science out to a bunch of rich businessmen...

Added to this are the talks by the executives. I was the representative from my division for a meeting attended by a bunch of board members and presidents of sister companies, and I heard "forward-thinking", "synergize", "vertical integration", and "value added" enough times to drive someone mad. I went nuts.  These same people came by to look at my group's new technology and they kept asking "what's the market?" and "what kind of sales would you expect?".  These are different ways of asking "what's the disease target?" and "how many lives will this save?".  The difference is that business-types think of sales numbers. This is something I can't wait to get away from. In my bio I say I'm a PhD in the medical device field trying to cleanse the soul and get into academia. This is the soul-cleansing I'm talking about.  I understand that we always have to fight for more money, but I hate being trotted in front of the executives like I'm at Westminster.

On the plus side, my boss took my group out for one hell of a nice dinner. 

My replacement

A year into my job out of grad school I proposed the idea for the creation of my group. It was a new idea for research and medical device development that has proved to be very successful for the company and for patients. We started off in leftover lab space with a dedicated, smart, but inexperienced team (I was the oldest...and only a year out of grad school...). We slowly developed into the best group in the company and a little over a year ago started working in a custom-built lab that we designed down to the border on the windows. It has all the equipment I wanted, with the exact layout I thought would be most condusive to doing great research. I love it. And I love my team.  It's incredibly fun; a start-up feel with big company name and dollars.  And the concept has worked out so well that a year ago I was made the international representative for this kind of group.  Every division across the world now has a group similar to mine.

When I accepted my academic job I started to talk to management about cultivating my right hand person to take my position. They've been with the group since the beginning and is only second to me in patents/year in the company. Leadership agreed this was the best move. 

But today I was given some troubling news. Leadership has found someone they want to join my group and shadow me to pick up everything they can in the one+ year before I leave. This person has a very good track record as a leader in other biomedical companies, but doesn't know much about applications.  Mr. MBA, as I've been calling him. Also, we've all talked with this person and our personalities don't match at all. Our group dynamic is one of the most important things about our team, and I'm pissed that leadership wants to mess with this dynamic.  He tells very different types of jokes, and comes in thinking he knows everything.  He worked in the old-world way of biomedical development, and very different from how my group does R&D; focused on money not lives.  And we can all tell that he's here to move up the ladder.  I would have never left my group if not for academia.  Even if they offered me the CEO position.  I love my group too much, and he's definitely here to leave.  Honestly, I think leadership put him here to quickly get experience in leading the best team in the company before moving up the ladder with that 'experience'.  There's no way this is going to stop me from leaving, but I'm suddenly fearing that the group will go downhill when I leave. And my group has been responsible for the vast majority of the company's recent success. I've got nothing to lose so I'll DEFINITELY be voicing my opinion.  My #2 isn't upset they're getting pushed back, and they definitely won't leave because the group is too important to them, too.  The rest of the team is sticking around, too.  But they definitely aren't happy about this.

I already hated business-types. I'm about to hate them more. 

My beef with patents

In a lot of biomedical companies, you are judged by the number of patents you hold. So we seek out every type of patent we can. I've been asked to file three patents today that I know will never be worked on by my company because we already have a ton of products in our pipeline. We're taking up the patent in order to prevent our competition from working on it. Or they can work on it, and we'll license the patent to them. But all we're doing is making a couple crappy sketches and filing. No actual R&D work. However, if you file lots of patents you get pats on the back, promotions, and $2000 per patent.

Let's say this product could have saved 100,000 lives. Now it won't, because no one can work on it, and we're not planning on developing it. This is contrary to journal publishing. We can steal, build-upon, and refocus from one another, but ultimately, nothing useful happens with the data...just like with some of these patents (by the way, my legal department says this isn't patent trolling, even though I think it is). So which is worse?

I'd say patents for a few reasons. First, in publications, nothing's happening with it (the time spent on my medical device patents will save more lives in a year than all my publications combined for the rest of the timespan of humankind), but at least you're letting anyone use it, including a company if they want to. A patent is locking up the idea. Second, patents don't contribute anything. They only take away. Patents are often written as broad as possible and very little engineering and science go into them. So no one can learn too much from them. This is on contrast to most manuscripts, where they are filled with all sorts of intellectual awesomeness that other researchers can build on. In addition, most of the claims are substantiated by data.  So someone else could potentially take the broad idea to market and save lives, but they can't without paying crazy license fees for a patent the issued company isn't using.  Patents have data, but it's not as scrutinized as most academic papers.  The change that the USPTO has made where you don't have to prove due-diligence and the patent is awarded to first-to-file is only going to make things worse (I can explain more on the patent cycle and medical device IP if any of you want to read a post on it).

Ultimately, I despise locking up an idea that could save lives if we don't intend on utilizing it. It's a defensive move that only helps shareholders. We could use these defensive patents as offensive weapons against the competition and the diseases. But ultimately, they sit back with their pitch and arrows just preventing anyone else from reaching good. 

Growth versus growth

I was in a meeting where the CEO was giving a talk about my particular division's growth relative to the rest of the company. When the CEO comes in, it's a big deal. He wears his $50,000 suit and leads one of the largest medical device companies in the world, and he's a ruthless businessman. He showed a plot like the one I have here (the left one), and a junior engineer from a different internal group than mine asked, "How many saved lives is that?".  He had no clue. Luckily, the president of my division knew that approximate figure. The CEO looked peeved that he was asked that.

I'd say ~90% of the people in my field I've talked to, and 100% of those in my group, got into this business to help people. The CEO was definitely in the 10%.  I have given presentations talking about growth and potential markets and I never once have put a dollar figure in because I only care about the people.  That's the only thing I talk about when interviewing people because it's the most important thing.  The only dollar figure I care about at all is the cost of my devices. If the device isn't cheap enough, even given 99% efficacy, no one will be able to afford it to cure their ailments. 

I understand that someone has to talk numbers, because without my $millions/year operating budget I wouldn't be saving ANY lives (well....maybe a few). But we should be happy that we're beating out our competition for lives saved, not that we made more money, but because we know our products are superior and our growth means even more patients saved by our products.  I understand money will also be a part of my academic future (I'm only kind of naive), but there's still the greater good...right?

How to turn down an offer?

Those that have been keeping up-to-date with me know I've already turned down two offers during my leave of absence from the blog. This is an(other) old post I wrote.  Though this one was written before my hiatus, I didn't get the chance to post it then. I'm still curious about your thoughts, blogosphere, since I'd like to compare how I actually handled it versus how you all would've.  I'll edit the post later for how I handled it.

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There's an oral offer on the table (or in the air....or whatever an oral offer is). I thought I could handle the negative things about the city and department, but after the visit I don't think I can. I really don't see my research flourishing there.  This school has gone out of their way to recruit me, and they have been trying extra hard to take advantage of my industrial contacts and medical device experience.

I want an academic position very bad, but not there.  If I'm honest, they might feel I'm spurning them because I think I'm better than them.  A little part of me might actually be thinking that, but part of my desire to enter academia is to do my own crazy research, and this university won't allow that to happen (at least, I think that).  I think I'm just going to tell them that I feel I'm a great fit, but they don't have all the facilities I think I need to do my research, and the ramp-up would be too long, blah blah.  I don't know.  Grrrrr....I'm so angry at myself for leading them on this far...

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How I handled it:

I was very honest. I said that they don't have the facilities I need, and I didn't realize how much I did not match with the town until I actually visited. I was obviously very thankful, and threw in some stuff about future potential collaborations. The search chair said I could negotiate for some of the equipment I wanted and I was brutally honest saying that I don't think they could. But even if they could, the city just wasn't for me. I offered them luck on filling the position and even offered to reimburse the department for the travels. But they let me go and haven't heard from them since other than noticing they have a new faculty member on their website. 

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.

Update on "Throwing in the towel" and me...and one more

This is something I wrote during my hiatus. It's obviously a little out-of-date, but I wrote it, so I'm going to post it!  No typed word goes to waste...I'm going green up in here!  I wrote this immediately after going offline.

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I haven't been writing much on my job searching unless something different happens for a couple reasons. Mainly, a lot of it is the same: I have an interview, they do or do not call back, I go on-site, etc.  To the profs I've been talking with: you think you're unique but my experiences are all the same with some of you being funny and interesting and welcoming, and some of you being high-horse douches. Nothing special to write about. I've got a couple on-sites under the belt and people contacting me afterwards. So this faculty-thing might happen. However, I'm not a fan of any of these cities or schools thus-far after the on-site. Right now, I'm strongly considering turning down offers to hold out for a potentially better offer next year. It's a gamble, but I think it'll pay off. That's the update on my search. Nothing exciting.

Update on my friend from before who's giving up: she still hasn't gotten any serious interest. I know she'd be a better teacher than most profs I've had are.  And her research is awesome. It's such a shame. However, in the past month since I gave her my recommendation, my company has given her an offer. More than double the salary she would've gotten on academia, but she'll be in another group in my company. So I won't be able to work with her :( . But she'll be here :) .  She's seemed extra stressed and depressed about this whole thing since she knows she's qualified, it's just that departments don't want her for some reason. It's like she got a consolation prize worth more money than the grand prize. It's a shame she won't be training our next scientists, but she'll at least be creating devices that will keep them alive longer. 

I have a different friend who's been at a post-doc at a highly regarded school for four years. Same post-doc. For four stinking years. He's been academic focused since a child and applies every year. The first year he got no bites, then each year after he gets between 2-4 on-sites with no offer. He only applies to top-notch schools. Not just R1, but cream-of-the-crop R1s.  He clearly wants it more than my other friend since he's willing to try year-after-year with little luck. I jokingly said that he could go to industry (although I don't consider him as talented as the other friend: boring research, okay teaching record, plus he's a white male. His advisors are adored though, which I think he's banking on), and he very sternly said no. He wants to teach and do research. I really don't think I have the energy to do what he has gone through the last few years. Consistently getting turned down. Making very little cash. I do envy that he gets to do crazy seemingly nonbeneficial research. And he gets to pick his hours and be surrounded by smart people all the time. He's feeling like it's not going to happen again this year, and he said if that happens he will consider going to a lower-level R1.  It's really crazy how badly he wants it. I like him a lot as a friend, but honestly I don't see him being a great prof like my friend that has given up. I really hope he finds the position he's looking for, I'm just blown away by the dedication. Maybe that's what it takes: berating search committees year after year until they say yes. I've got 2 more search cycles in me, we'll see if I have his type of dedication. 

Finding a new intern

Working with undergrads was some of my favorite experiences from grad school, so every time I get approval to hire an intern, I get pumped.

The problem with interviewing undergrads is that they're desperate for things to slap on their resumes, so they'll say anything: "I designed complicated circuits", "I can use machine shop equipment", "I know advanced biology/chemistry/physics", etc.  They often overestimate their abilities because they don't know any better and they think the skills they've learned are advanced.  Unfortunately, they're taught at a very basic level and aren't really taught the knowledge in detail before the application. 

So I ask a few basic questions in each interview. The questions vary based on what's going through my mind, but they usually encompass these questions depending on the type of position I'm trying to fill:

Why is the sky blue?

If I have a bath with saline residue, how would I clean it?

How do I make 0.1M of NaOH?

How does the heart beat?

How can I sterilize this equipment?

*Solve dy/dx=x for x
Heat conduction is a function of what?

What's Snell's law?

What do the kidneys do and what's the functional unit?

Name 5 components of a eukaryotic cell
What's mechanical stress?

**What's the unit of electrical current?

Really simple questions depending on the position. Today I interviewed a student who has a 4.0 from a top 20 university. She's finishing her MS I'm biomedical engineering after a BS in biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering. Her answer to * was "x"; her answer to ** was "watt".  What the heck?  Is this seriously what schools are pumping out?!?

I wanted to scream. Of course, I corrected her and explained it. It seemed like it was the first time she was seeing these answers. At first I thought she was nervous, but if she was, she masked it very well. She seemed quite confident in herself. I really hope she was just not in the proper state of mind today, because I'm probably not going to be interviewing too many people from her background or university. I hate to stereotype, but I don't have time for this crap.  I hire interns to have someone to mentor, but ultimately I have to get things done.  When someone is this far behind, by the time they are ready to actually contribute, their seven month internship is over.  I've been pretty lucky with interns where they can usually contribute within a couple months.  Interns of all races and sexes.  Unfortunately, this young woman is not going to cut it.  Schools, please do better.  I haven't started my academic post yet, but I'm really hoping I don't let kids pass by with this remedial knowledge.

Why blog?

One of my biggest fears is that someone discovers who I am.  I thought that the likelihood was low because I don't really blog to get famous.  I blog because it's cathartic.  The interactions with other awesome people (well, I hope you're people and not bots) has been a great side effect (or affect...I never know which one).

On this note, someone I know in my real life discovered who I am.  Someone in a competing group within my company.  And groups within my company are cut-throat. We compete like rival companies compete so the threat of him trying to hurt me was real.  What the heck were the odds that someone would find me out?!?!?    He mentioned it in a passing fashion and said, "that must be you [in reference to a blog from a PhD in the med device industry], huh?". It seemed half-joking, but the timing of my posts with things that happened in my real life (especially the award I won a little while ago), made this person act more serious about the accusation.  I thought this person was going to out me.  They said they weren't, but everyone (including me) has let things slip that they shouldn't have.

This would have been very very detrimental if people here found about about the academic search.  Especially since I have two products getting ready for human studies.  If I got fired or moved around, this could potentially change the lives of the patients that might have relied on these products.  I was terrified.  So I left the blogosphere.  Well...I went private.  I needed to turn the identity off.  I still read everything I could, and not posting comments was killing me!  I couldn't risk any of my posts going public.  I know my comments weren't damning, but I felt I needed to switch off to protect my job, and the patients.  He said that he would keep it a secret, but we were one argument away from him letting everything loose.  My goal was to keep things private until I had an academic offer in-hand.  I try not to disclose anything that my company wouldn't want me to disclose, so I know I wouldn't get in trouble, but I couldn't risk losing my job or being shifted away from my projects.

Notice how everything's been past tense.  I got two offers shortly after taking the blog private, and so I thought that I was home free. But neither of these positions were right for me. Either I hated the city or the department, or both. Then something magical happened: the perfect school in one of my favorite cities gave me an offer. I thought I was home-free. I could quit my job, take this new one, and get back on the blogosphere.  As I was in negotiations with my new school another product of mine had been approved for human studies.  This has the potential to double efficacy for this particular therapy.  My involvement in this study is crucial. So I turned down what could be my dream job.  I can't leave patients in the lurch and thought there will be more opportunities. The department head said he was very disappointed, then a week later mentioned that I could start a year late. A year from this upcoming August, if I wanted. This was too perfect: I get to finish this human study and pass off my devices in a nearly complete stage, meaning patients will see it much sooner, and afterwards I get to start my dream job in a much more awesome city (not to mention-make my crazy high salary for another year)!  This also gives me a chance to work on grants early-on and submit and start running experiments as soon as I start the faculty post.  I know it may seem cocky that I think I'm the only one that can get this product past the first human studies, but I've been burned three times in the past when handing off projects to people. They've screwed them up bad in animal and human studies delaying release of the life-saving devices.

Everyone in my company knows I'm going to leave, and my final 1.5 years here gives me a chance to pass on a ton of knowledge and leave on great terms (helloooooooo industry money for the lab :) ). It also means, that even if this person does out me, it'll only make him look petty. So I don't have anything to lose. The paperwork has been signed.

I can start to post again!  Ahhhhhhhhhhh.  It feels so good.  Given that I haven't been able to post my writing, it reminded me about why I like to blog.  Below are a few disconnected thoughts related to why I like it.  In the next few posts I'll be posting things I wrote up but had to keep on the DL.  Some things related to the job search, and some things related to industry. Some might be a little outdated, as I wrote them while on hiatus.  Oh yeah...and there will be other random thoughts, too.  I'm worried that this guy will out me to my new faculty colleagues, but I'm not worried if people find out now.  I intend to try different things to make it difficult to tie me to the posts.  I intend to make it very difficult for people to link my Earth-self to my blogosphere-self.  In the next 1+ year I intend to post more on industry, my transition, and ultimately ending my industrial tenure...for a whole different type of tenure :).   Thank you to those that have emailed me about my little hiatus.  I am really pumped about interacting with all of you again!  I'm so excited to be coming back!

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Why blog?

In the past couple of months I've done a lot of self-evaluation. I think my current situation is partly to blame in addition to the fact that writing all this stuff down in a blog causes one to reflect. The only friend that knows my real identity said that blogging would be a waste of my time.

I've said this before, but I'd like to reiterate. Blogging has been great to get things off my chest. I play things very political here on Earth, and try not to ruffle feathers.  So I rarely get to vent. It really is cathartic.   But in the blogosphere...in the blogsphere, I can say anything I want.  Politics don't exist here (mostly).  But since politics don't exist here, it's a place of fantasy; hence the existence of trolls.  But as long as you don't feed them, they starve and die. 

Reading is cathartic, too, as many of the issues that plague research, work, life, etc. are universal. Something about knowing that RandomInternetPerson is having issues lets me realize that I'm not on an island. 

I'm constantly getting ideas for new projects at work/home and topics that I feel could make an interesting post. But I don't really have time to make really detailed posts all the time. So I try to keep my posts short (this one totally violates this principle) and I mostly read short posts.  I find that I don't have the patience for typing or reading really long posts. Not to mention, I type most of my posts on my phone while I'm on-the-go. So lengthy posts can wear my thumbs out. 

Aside from the psychological benefits of the blog, I also like to let people know about how searches go and how life is in industry. I'm sure my industrial position is different than others, but I'm sure there's overlap. And graduating students should get a feel for what it's like in industry, what it takes to succeed, what's great, and what sucks.

My friend that said blogging is a waste could possibly be correct, but I fear I'd turn into a psychopath without an outlet. Ted Kaczynski could've used a blog...

Self-doubt and the impostor syndrome

In my pre-biomed days I was an engineering physicist at a major national laboratory.  I was involved in projects ranging from star wars-type projects to using lasers to destroy stuff (including biological stuff...hence part of my interest in biomed...on that note, I got an email asking about my background...thinking of making a post about this...).  Some of the coolest stuff I liked to work on was related to astronomy stuff.  I have always been obsessed with space and I still keep up to date on astronomy.  My BS and MS in physics help out with understanding astronomy.  I was looking for something related to 2014J, and this article was linked:

http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7280-574a

This link was linked from that one:

http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7245-468a

It's about feeling like you're not good enough when you are.  I'm not going to go into my demographic because I love secrecy (sex, race, etc.), but the impostor syndrome is very relevant.  Since I entered the science world, I constantly have to prove myself, whereas it seems other people of different backgrounds get the assumption that they know what they're talking about.  I feel like I'm constantly being challenged heavily.  I know I belong wherever I go because my publications, presentations, products, and patents speak for themselves.  I know I have the talent to do crazy things, but I often feel bullied, resulting in losses of confidence.  I've developed pretty thick-skin, starting at my national lab days.  Nothing will turn me away, and since I love to argue, I will always fight.  I really do get off on this fighting.  But I can see how people (especially women or minorities) could get turned away from the field because of this.

This is part of the reason I choose to listen to everyone.  I take everyone's opinion under consideration, since I don't want them to feel less valued and potentially turn them away.  I'm very proud of my mentorship track record.  Every student/tech/engineer I've been involved in mentorship with has stayed in the field.  And ~80% of these people are women.

Being in the midst of the academic search makes this article resonate even stronger. I know I'm good enough for a good academic post, but the fact that my top schools haven't called makes me wonder if I'm just an impostor.  My documents are solid, or so says the 10 profs that have reviewed it from multiple universities.  And these are brutally honest profs.  I'm good enough to perform well in my niche field, but I feel that I just don't know enough, or maybe I can't argue that well anymore.  I sometimes I feel I got to where I am, not because of my skills, but because of other extraneous factors.  I feel that I definitely don't argue as well anymore because I find myself losing more arguments...I feel like I'm losing steam...like all the years of constantly being on the defensive (and subsequent offensive) more than the average person has been wrecking my brain.

The impostor syndrome is tricky because younger scientists don't know exactly if they're not good enough.  We have metrics like grades, but once we're on teams or on the job, I often wonder, am I in this position because the company has to fill out some kind of statistic, or is it because I'm actually good enough.  I think I'm good enough, but we have to be more cognizant of times when we've all felt a little inadequate (there's an impotence joke somewhere in here...I just can't seem to find it).  We need to remember that we've all had self-doubt, why should we feed into it more.  The article says to just remind yourself how you're not lucky, you're talented.  But this is so much easier said than done.

I hate Windows!!!!!

Since I was in high school I've used Mac or Linux OSs. I used Windows for some simulation work in grad school, but that was the only time. Even then, I used a Mac to post-process the results from the simulation. In the past few years I've had to use Windows.  And an old version of Windows, at that. It's a company mandated thing since they can control data flow and security in Windows. To me, Windows is slow and clunky. I can use it, and I use it better than most of my Windows-for-life colleagues but it seems like there's always something slowing it down or screwing it up. Hopefully, too few people read this blog to start an OS flame war.  I just hate being forced to use this system.

In grad school I had freedom in my OS choice with the exception of Windows-specific programs (of which, there weren't many).  The first thing I'll do when switching careers is stop using Windows at all. And if a program necessitates Windows, I'll stop using the program. There are other (digital) fish in the sea.  Again, this is just my experience. I don't have a preference for Apple, Microsoft, Open Source. I have a preference for things that work. And actually, Apple's new OS has made it so I can't use some of my own programs. And it's a little slow with more crashes since the update than all past updates I had combined. So I may have to start sticking with Linux. 

I just can't stand another random error message, waiting for my computer to do things, or a blue screen. Grrrr.

Letters for an old mentee

My last year in grad school a high school student started doing volunteer work for my lab. She was a senior trying to get some lab experience and trying to see if the field was a fit for her. She would get out of high school an hour early three times a week to come by the lab. My advisor assigned her to me to find work for her to do.

I trained her in a project that wasn't going in my dissertation, but was necessary to get grants based on my project when I left. (Side note-I did this because I'm a good human being. My dissertation was done, and I stuck around because I still had funding and wanted to make sure my papers were out and the project was in a place where someone could continue it. I owed that much. Even though I had a job lined up, I was willing to hang around an extra 6 months. Students out there, respect your mentors and do the same because what goes around will inevitably come around).  Now, back to the student:

After talking with this student several times, it became pretty obvious how smart she was. Not just for a high school student, but for a junior level undergrad. This made sense given the amount of AP credits she was coming in with. She had very advanced math and physics skills, and she picked up the biology very quickly.  But what struck me were her critical thinking skills, he willingness to do work, her personality, and her maturity. I felt like I was talking to a 23 year old, not a 17 year old. I knew that I had to make sure that she stayed on the correct course for success. I had to make sure that she not only picked STEMs (preferably something that required math...not just bio).  So I put in extra effort with her since she was undecided and I didn't want to drive her away from the field. I turned on the charm, made everything sound amazingly cool, and made sure she thought she was smart and doing well (which she was).  I put in more effort than usual because she was undecided; when student already have a major and have dedicated a lot of time to it, I don't have to put in as much effort, and it's draining to act that pumped up about the research all the time. 

On top of all of this, she was always punctual, never fell behind in topics, and never procrastinated. She managed to manage friends, family, schoolwork, a waitress job, lab work, hobbies, and sports without an issue. After I left grad school we kept in touch for many reasons, part of which was that she needed letters of recommendation. Also, she had become a little sister of sorts, coming to me for advice or just to joke around. 

Her first year in school she started to sway from engineering because of the introductory engineering courses where you learn teamwork and do crappy projects. I'm a professional engineer and I haven't used one skill from that stupid freshman engineering class. Anyways, she still stuck with STEMs, just moved a little more towards a combination of the physical sciences, math, and biology; no more formal engineering education. I'm glad she stuck with STEMs though.  Her second year she was still with it and maintained a 4.0 while getting miscellaneous lab experience and scholarships. This whole time I put in my effort to give her whatever support she wanted. This is something I've done with every student so far, however, there's more of a personal connection with this one (she's like my little sister!).

So she texted me asking me to submit a last second application for an internship. She knows I don't mind last second stuff since the letter is pretty similar for each app but I asked her why she waited so long.  She said relationship issues were getting in the way. 

She has been in three serious relationships in her life, and since I've been a little more around the block I usually give her advice. Sometimes she will give me questions about balancing her personal and professional lives and most of the time she's been able to work through it: not sacrificing her personal life for professional happiness, but correspondingly not letting her personal problems ruin her professional life. This time, her personal problems have gotten in the way. She's a young girl in love with a boyfriend of 6 months and she's spending a lot of time with him and letting any drama get to her. 

I got the letter in with plenty of time but she didn't even start her essays until the due date. Now, I'm a huge fan of work-life balance. I preach it all the time, but I'm starting to get worried that she'll make dumb mistakes that will make her future career more difficult. This has happened before where the students have failed out or struggled to the point where it will be difficult to get a good career, and it kills me each time. This time will be infinitely worse since I've become more attached to this particular student. It's the eternal tug-of-war between you personal and professional lives. I always chose not to let them fight and compartmentalize (I hate that word) my personal and professional lives it's very rare for one life to encroach on the other and I try to dedicate as much time as I can to either one. It's like having two kids.

I've been honest with her and she totally agreed with me because she's smart and reasonable. However, emotions will sometimes take over regardless of how together her head is. I've done dumb things for love, but I've worked very hard to train myself in separating these lives. Maybe I'm just being an overprotective older sibling, but I truly do care about these students.  I guess all I can do is let them make mistakes and be here if they fail...

Teaching where you learned

My little brother's kid just had his 1 year birthday. In my home country (my family migrated when I was a kid), the one year birthday is a big deal. I know it's like this in a lot of countries, and like in many other countries, we have a large feast the kid doesn't know anything about or remember. I would love to be closer to my nephew because I love kids, but can't be because of distance. They live in my old college town (OCT...I know OCT has other meanings in the biomed world, but let's just pretend it means Old College Town) and I live...away.

My younger brother is a screw up.  He started to get his life more together the past few years, but he's still got a lot of growing up to do. I love mentoring kids (part of why I want to get back into academia), and I'm concerned this kid won't grow up to greatness because of his parents. So I fly down pretty frequently on weekends (a 2hr flight). I wish I could see them more, but it's not possible. If only I could find a job in OCT.

Oh wait! A faculty posting just popped up at OCT University! The search head has said my application would be very strong, but I heard it's bad to become a faculty at your PhD school. Is this true? Why? A friend of mine that did her BS, MS, and PhD from the school she's a assoc prof and said it's because reviewers see it as you can't separate from your advisor.  She had to really reach out of her school to make sure she could prove her independence. Not sure if that's the actual reason-just what she told me.

My brother will be graduating with his BS soon and he's looking for a job in two places: OCT and City I Have an Interview at for TT Job. I'm going to do what's best for me and hope my minor involvement will help keep the kid on the  righteous path. But, I wouldn't mind working in OCT. It's my favorite city ever. 

Anonymous comments and policing research

I'm a big fan of anonymous posts and comments. Like tenure: it (mostly) absolves you from the consequences of your written actions. I posted anonymously for the past few years before creating this blog, but I try to attach my blogdenity (blog identity) now since my blogdenity is still anonymous.

This got me thinking about this anonymous corporate reporting program my company started. It's a worldwide program where if you hear something suspicious (like a product not working like it's supposed to), even if it's from someone in the street that uses one of our products, we have to report it. It's supposedly anonymous, and I reported something I found scientifically unsettling. It doesn't involve a product directly, but a method of validation for early stage products.  My manager approached me today to ask me about this, since it couldn't have came from too many sources. I said "yup", knowing that he can't do anything about it. Nothing has been done to me, and nothing has changed in the science. Side note-part of me attributes this to BS science. Not bullshit, but Bachelor of Science. It's cheaper to high people with BSs most of the time, so the quality of science isn't that great. In grad school we're trained on properly designing experiments, processing data, and documentation. These BS level engineers are trained in the basics of science and the details of implementation of principles to design. They're not capable scientists without further training. Anyways...

In industry there are several levels to police the company, but self-policing is rare because of the money on the line. Although you would think there'd be more self-policing because of the lives on the line in the medical industrial setting. In academia, there seems to be a communal policing method, with researchers calling out one another, and new programs being created to catch falsified information. I pitched the idea of communal policing at a conference at the FDA, where one company would review anothers' FDA filings.  The review company would naturally want to scrutinize the data to prevent the filing company from releasing a successful product. At this point everything's moving to public information like patents so there's nothing to hide. I know that the reviewing company will probably make stuff up, so there will need to be oversight from the FDA, but damnit, I think it's a good idea. 

Thanks for the rejection

I'm not being sarcastic at all when I wrote that title.   I got a rejection email today, and it got me thinking about how courteous a timely rejection email is.

I've been involved in the hiring of 12 people so far at my company in the past few years: 6 for my direct group, and 6 for other groups. We have committee-based hiring at my company, so in essence, I've chaired 6 committees and served as a regular member on 6. These positions ranged from techs to higher level scingineers with salaries ranging from $50k to $150k.

We get around ~200 applications for any given position, the recruiter narrows it down to ~30 for us and we start narrowing down further. At this point, we phone interview between 5 and 10 of them. We invite between 3 and 6 for on-sites. 

Once I've talked with a candidate, even on the phone, there's a more personal connection. The person has my email; knows my name. So if they don't move on to the next stage of hiring after an interview, I kindly call or email them with a message saying that they're no longer being considered. An automated email will suffice for those that didn't even make the first cut, but someone that takes time out of their life to interview with me over the phone or come out to my lab deserves the common decency of a rejection email. It allows them to stop thinking about it and move on. Ripping off the Band-Aid, if you will. 

I have much more kind thoughts from a company/school that tells me ASAP that they don't want me, rather than not hearing from someone too chicken to tell someone on their short-list they didn't make the next cut. It's common courtesy.   I do it even though I'm just as busy (if not more busy...at least from my conversations with my old advisors) than most academics. With 10 candidates to email it should take no more than an hour. Even if it means I'm typing from home. But maybe I'm the only one that believes in this courtesy.

For those paying attention to the count, I've accepted a couple more phone interviews and I'm waiting to hear back.

Outright Rejections (their loss): 11/29
Phone/Skype interviews offered: 14
Phone/Skype interviews accepted: 8
1st campus visits offered: 5
1st campus visits accepted: 2 (although I'm still waiting to hear back after I accepted)
2nd campus visits offered: 0
2nd campus visits accepted: 0
Offers: 0

Funding academics

Normally, when there's a technology I discover through publications or a competing or start-up company, I have to make a critical decision for my company:

a) Make a better version of the technology,
b) License the technology, or
c) Collaborate.

There's a d): keep it to myself, but let's assume that doesn't exist.  Each of these has pros and cons (obviously), and a couple weeks ago I discovered a technology that will be very cool in one of my products.  And I know that with my involvement, it will be much better (one of the best things about the internet is that I can be cocky and not feel bad for it :) ).  Not just because of my knowledge, but because of my budget.  In this particular case, it's a lab at a major state university in a different state (not one of the schools I applied for...for those of you thinking about conflicts of interest).  So I'm weighing which of these options I should pursue, and since I have some experience in a), b), and c), of course I want to blog my thoughts.

a) I've done this before with a start-up that had a technology that they weren't willing to share at all.  I came up with a prototype alternative using a different physical principle, but giving similar, but better, data.  This method was cheaper and had other clinical advantages.  The company didn't get purchased for the hundreds of millions of dollars they wanted from us (don't cry for them, they got bought by one of our competitors).  My version is getting ready to save a ton of lives as we've gotten approval for sale in the good ol' USA.  This was relatively cheap, and turned around in less than half the time of the company acquisition and integrating their technology.

b) I didn't have time to create a specific product, so I knew of a company that had something close-to-done.  The product isn't really something complicated, just something that's necessary for the particular surgical procedure.  So I led the licensing effort, and ended up with a product that got recalled after 3 months.  Not a pleasant experience, and now I'm redesigning the product myself.

c) I collaborate with two university medical centers to perform animal and some human studies.  But they have relatively little engineering input, they just perform the procedures and process data for us. Nothing spectacular, although I've gotten these universities over a half million bucks each per year.  The one time I found a university to work with me on an actual product things never worked out because of legal.  They wanted a crazy amount of overhead (500%), and our people were not okay with that.  Then our legal department got mad, then my manager got mad. Not a great experience.

So, I talked to legal a few months ago, and got approval from the VP of my company.  I've been allotted $800,000 over two years to allocate to this.  The PI has a couple smaller grants, but nothing big.  He was very receptive, and he has gotten his legal department on board.  We have agreed to 400% and my company gets to keep the IP.  This significantly cuts into the budget.  We'll be able to fund maybe two students, but we will have enough left to do what we need.

I'm really looking forward to this because I'll be able to work with students again!  Being treated like a colleague from the PI is fun, too.  He doesn't really act like I'm his boss, which I appreciate.  I just want to do cool science.  My #2 working with me is pretty pumped about this too, because it's her alma mater for her MS and BS (she has a PhD).  I'm going to try and make sure she's very well trained.  If I get admission to the ivory tower, she'll need to take over.  And if the academic search doesn't end well, then at least I'll have this academic exposure!  Bright sides!

Throwing in the towel (not me...someone else)

It's funny.  We're peaking in terms of hiring activity for TT jobs, and so my conversations with friends in-the-hunt have been slowly turning away from the usual immature conversations to talking about the successes, failures, and frustrations of the faculty search cycle.  Because of this, I'm intending on throwing in a couple posts of my friends' experiences since I think their stories are interesting.  This post covers a friend at a VERY elite school who has been academic-focused since she was a kid:

A good friend is finishing her third year in her second post-doc.  She's been applying to many many universities with no hits whatsoever except one phone interview.  Her BS/PhD pedigree is similar to mine, just I went to industry and she stayed in academia (plus, most people really really REALLY hate her PhD advisor).  She got a pretty cold reception in her phone interview and they haven't gotten back to her for 4 weeks.  We Skyped earlier today and she has told me that she's officially throwing in the towel: she wants me to give her a referral for a job at my company.  I'm going to oblige because I know we will take care of her, and the things I don't like about industry and my reasons for going to academia don't necessarily apply as strongly to her.

This is really unfortunate because she's a very talented researcher (double digit pubs, good presentation record, solid ideas), and if I can bring her into my company, she's going to be a quickly rising star.  I read her research statement and CV, and if I had the budget, I would bring her in my group at a senior-level in a heartbeat.  She's also a great teacher, winning multiple TA awards during her time in grad school.  I think she'd make an unbelievable faculty member, but it's not going to happen.  I told her it was way too early to be giving up, but after years of rejection she's done waiting.

I guarantee that the people in charge in my company will recognize the talent she has and scoop her up very quickly.  I have 11 patents (submitted+awarded) from the past few years, and I wouldn't be surprised to see her pass me in a couple years.  Why can't academics see her talent?  I've read stories of people giving up, but I've never seen it.  It was heartbreaking, and it actually pissed me off.  I've came across many professors that are bad teachers, don't bring in too much grant money, and are total assholes.  My friend would be far better than half of the professors out there, I'm sure of it.

It was heartbreaking, and I'm pretty upset that she won't be able to train the next generation of scientists and engineers.  But, on the bright side, she's going to change the medical field (plus, we'll be able to hang out more. YAY!).  And if I end up giving up (though I'm not giving up hope, yet), she and I will be changing it together. :)

What the heck takes so long?

When I got my current industry position the timeline was roughly like so. Each offer I got was very slightly different, but the timing was similar.

Late Oct: Put together letter and resume. 

Early Nov: Applied to position.

Late Nov: Phone interview with recruiter.

Early Dec: Phone interview with hiring manager.

Mid Dec: Second phone interview with hiring manager's team.

Late Dec: On-site. 

Early Jan: Second on-site. 

Mid Jan: Offer.

Early Feb: Negotiated offer and acceptance.

Early Mar: Started. 

This process was a four person local and 2 person international team to decide hiring and needing the VP of R&D's permission.  They needed someone to do the job, they posted a specific position, and quickly filled it to get work done.  For my academic search, here's how quickly things have been shaping up for the position I'm furthest in on. 

Mid Sept: Started putting together materials

Mid Oct: Applied. 

Early Dec: Got request for phone interview. 

Early Jan: Phone interview. 

Now: Expressed interest in bringing me in for on-site. 

By now I had a written offer from industry after 3 phone interviews and 2 on-sites from the job I eventually accepted. What the heck takes academia so long? After the two schools that have said they'd like to bring me on campus told me so, I responded to the email with something like "Great! Please let me know which dates work best for you, as I have some international travel coming up to test some new devices."  I threw in the devices thing 1. Because it's true, and 2. Because I want to hammer in the point that they want someone with my experience.  This was a couple weeks ago.

The two schools that have said they are interested in bringing me out seem to be holding still.  So what could possibly be taking so long?  In industry, I got emails saying "unfortunately, we had to go with someone else", or "how does INSERT DATE HERE work for you?".  But no response since my response to their interest-emails.  Not even an email saying, "we will let you know more details as get closer to scheduling".  Bear in mind that they have already gone out of their way to say they want to bring me out.  I'm bewildered as to what's taking so long (although maybe ~2 weeks isn't that long?). Maybe I just operate on a much shorter time scale than most other people I know. I know if I took this long to get candidates together, short-list them, and bring them in I would be in deep trouble from my boss wondering what the heck is taking so long. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: 

I'll never understand how this process works. 

Landed the on-site!

Of the 2 Skype interviews I've had so far, they've both gotten back to me with on-site requests. One is an R2 school in a city I'm not a huge fan of, the other is at an R1 in a city that I truly adore. I'm working on my job talk and I'm a little torn.

I decided on 4 projects that cover a wide range of fields so everyone will be interested at some point (my field is quite interdisciplinary).  One of the projects is my favorite project from my work in industry. Because it's industrial work I have to be very careful.  This project has already had successful animal studies, and this will revolutionize the field.  Most of the impact in the field has been incremental, with two major advances that significantly change patient outcome.  My company has been using small changes to sell more products the past few years.  This product I'm so proud of will change the medical device world.  It will be amazing.  It's patent protected, but other companies don't know how close we are to getting this product ready.

I strongly feel that if I just focus on my grad school work and little things that are in patients in my current position my job talk won't be as strong.  I'm trying my hardest to figure out what to present.  I have my two favorites from grad school, and my future projects.  I feel like showing my current favorite project would really show them that my industrial experience is valuable to them.  But how? Maybe I'll use hypothetical statements...


Outright Rejections (their loss): 9/29
Phone/Skype interviews offered: 11
Phone/Skype interviews accepted: 5
1st campus visits offered: 2
1st campus visits accepted: 2
2nd campus visits offered: 0
2nd campus visits accepted: 0
Offers: 0

Corporate awards

At a company luncheon today I found out that I have won a big fancy award from my company for a product I conceived a year ago, and then another award for diversity and public relations for my role in my company's charity. All-in-all I take home $20,000, a plaque, and a vacation. Not bad, considering I do this because I enjoy it and want to help people.

I regularly say to my team, "would you feel comfortable using this on you child?", if we're creating a device that might not be up to our standards. I do this because I care. I overheard someone saying, "You can tell that Phindustry does this work to get company recognition and the awards. Phindustry is trying to make the move up."  Personally, I hate company awards. Supposedly, it gives employees something to strive towards, in actuality it inspires jealousy, resentment, and internal competition. We are on the same team. When something good happens we should all be rewarded here.  Maybe it's the socialist in me (although I consider myself a capitalist, tried and true) in academia, you're a little more on your own, so recognition should come on a more solo basis (although in academia, recognition rarely comes at all). I'm divvying up the part of the award for the invention among the three people that worked on this project with me. I did this with the last award I got, and it seemed to improve morale. 

The comment I overheard is annoying because I present myself as interested in the greater good. I don't care about patents or recognition. I want to have fun and help people. That's it. I felt so insulted. I understand why they said it: I work very hard, argue a lot, and dress up every day for work. The managers like me for my skills and for my public image. I really want to tell those jags (jackass douchebags) talking about me that I am trying to leave industry for good. That I moved up the ladder because that's how I could make a difference in patients' lives. Also, I want to tell them that they didn't get the awards because they suck. 

I know academic awards exists for all kinds of things with plenty of undeserving people getting them. But I've never seen someone in academia step up their game to get a specific award (unless it's a grant). Maybe I'm just naive, but science should be about improving the world and broadening our understanding. Not a plaque that I keep in my desk drawer. 

I'm a Watcher

If I had to guess how I got to my position (youngest person in my pay grade and leadership level in the history of my company) I would attribute most of my success to being able to please people. This occurs frequently through scientific or engineering achievement, but a lot of it through pure observation. I feel that I've developed a knack for reading what people want through a joke, plain conversation, a look, or just telling people what they want to hear. I made it a point to acquire this skill along with whatever technical knowledge because I've observed the most successful people having this skill.

These successful people can keep people laughing in the workplace, they can play politics without pissing everyone off, and they can give a presentation on a mundane topic and keep the room engaged. I practiced these skills tremendously. Sometimes more than practicing my art.  This has worked very well for me both in and out of grad school.  Especially after grad school.  I can tell I'm a different person in my industrial lab.  I just wish I could utilize this skill in my interviews for academic jobs.  For some reason I can't...

My problem with this is I sometimes feel fake. Unfortunately, technical ability alone does not equal advancement. In academia, my advisor said he had to kiss the asses of grant reviewers and program leaders. He went to conferences mainly to socialize, not present work. All of this was deemed necessary to get grants. In industry, having a boss like you as a person will get you much farther than having him or her like you as a scientist or engineer.  And these people-pleasing skills are something I picked up from meticulously watching those people perceived as great.  I don't practice this is my personal life, and most of my friends are from outside of work, so I don't feel fake outside of work.  I know that the more I move up and the more money my group gets, the more lives we can save (have I mentioned that we're the best group?).  So 'playing the game' is necessary, even though it's not right.

I was taking to someone about this (another person in scientific leadership in a sister company) and they said that, if you play yourself, you get stuck in a rut. You don't have to be 100% fake, just strategic. If you're in a room full of people from the south, it's probably best not to throw a southern draw and talk about incest the whole time, even if that's something you would do at home with your friends. That isn't much different than putting on a work personality. Don't rock the boat and try to make yourself someone that people would want to publish and fund. In industry, do the same thing, but you do it to get promotions, your ideas taken seriously, and more funds for your lab.  And to be the kind of person people want in scientific leadership, you have to watch.  I don't like this, but I tried to change it when I first showed up, but I knew I wanted to move up and make an impact.  With my team, I find myself acting more like myself, but I'll always watch since it also provides me with ways that I shouldn't act.  Maybe growing up overseas without my parents or a lot of Americans has taught me to mimic those around me to fit in.  I know people aren't going to like this, but there are some things that won't change, and the only way to change things is to play the game and move up.