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#4 - Ian Cameron - Problems of the academic system
14 Plays5 years ago
Did you ever wonder what the career path looks like for a scientist? The academic system can feel obscure to outsiders and not easy to get into. To scientists themselves, it can create uncertainty and is also fiercely competitive. In this conversation, we talk to Dr. Ian Cameron (@ian_gm_cameron). Ian works at the exciting interface between academia, entrepreneurship, industry and society. We discuss the ‘standard’ career path, transfer of knowledge to society, and the relationship of academia and industry.
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Transcript
Introduction to Academic System Issues
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, what's up, everyone? This is Ajmal Savary and welcome to another podcast episode. In this episode, we talk to Ian Cameron about the problems of the academic system. He uses his management and entrepreneurial skills to identify and solve issues. Enjoy.
00:00:30
Speaker
Hey, everyone, and welcome to another podcast episode. If you're new here, my name's Ajmal. I'm a neuroscientist and entrepreneur. On this podcast, we explore the links between science, technology, business, and the impact they have on
Career Pathways and Academia-Industry Relationships
00:00:45
Speaker
all of us.
00:00:45
Speaker
Our guest today is Dr. Ian Cameron. Ian works at the exciting interface between academia, entrepreneurship, industry and society. He's driven towards the societal applications from neuroscience and psychological research and brings management and entrepreneurial practices to academia.
00:01:03
Speaker
Ian holds an MBA where he wrote his management thesis about the alignment of culture, structure and strategy to achieve societal impact from research. Before getting his MBA, he earned his PhD from Queen's University in Canada and did a postdoc at UC Berkeley. Both involved human neuroimaging and behavioral studies.
00:01:23
Speaker
Specifically, Ian specializes in cognition and sensory motor control in movement disorders, making use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, also known as fMRI, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, or called f-nears, transcranial magnetic stimulation, known as TMS, and eye-tracking techniques. As a researcher, he is interested in big picture questions that connect neuroscience discoveries to clinical and societal applications.
00:01:52
Speaker
In this conversation, we talk about the academic experience. We discuss various aspects going from the standard career path to the transfer of knowledge into society and all the way to the relationship of academia and industry. We try to discuss problems within the system and how business practices could potentially offer a fix.
00:02:12
Speaker
You can find Ian on LinkedIn at linkedin.com slash i-n slash i-a-n g-m-c-a-m-e-r-o-n or on Twitter under at ian underscore g-m underscore cameron. Enough background.
UX Problems and Business Solutions in Academia
00:02:29
Speaker
Let's get into it, shall we?
00:02:32
Speaker
Well, Ian, welcome to the show and for taking the time in the first place. So today the whole idea was to talk actually about UX problems with an academia and how potentially business practices might help. And I want the audience to understand why is it that I'm specifically talking to you about this.
00:02:57
Speaker
We have known each other since I think officially 2015. In officially 2014, I actually haven't met you first. I actually met your wife and your daughter.
00:03:12
Speaker
on a train going to the NCM conference, which was in 2014 in Amsterdam. And it was, I thought, was such a coincidence that they, you know, we talked just openly. And then your wife said, like, yeah, my husband is a researcher, too. I was like, oh, yeah, where does he work? Oh, he works at the Donders.
00:03:32
Speaker
Me too. Wait a minute with me too, exactly. So I was like, oh yeah, his name is Ian. And then I remembered Peter was my supervisor, excitedly telling me that you just joined the Donders and that he wanted you to come to a lab meeting of ours to present your work. It just unfortunately took much more time until that happened. But that's how I knew who you were. And yeah, that all happened in 2014.
00:04:01
Speaker
But so what I want the listeners to understand is why is it that I'm talking to you about these things? Could you tell us a little bit about your career path, how your studies started, what you then did during your PhD and how it went on from there? Sure.
Ian Cameron's Academic Journey
00:04:18
Speaker
So I am Canadian and I did my bachelor's studies in life science, which would be kind of like biomedical science in other countries. And I got introduced to a laboratory of Doug Munoz in Canada and he studied sensory motor neuroscience. And it was really fascinating to me. So I was fascinated with a topic of sensory motor neuroscience.
00:04:40
Speaker
I thought about different careers at the time. I thought about being an optometrist, a neurologist, the standard things you think of when you learn about the brain and vision and you're excited about them both. But I discovered that I really liked research and I joined the lab and then eventually did a PhD where I looked at sensory motor eye movement control in neurological disorders.
00:05:06
Speaker
And I really enjoyed my time there. And I knew that, you know, I really liked as much as research, I liked universities as an environment. I liked the creativity and I liked how they were working towards research and goals that can help society and so on.
00:05:25
Speaker
I also really enjoyed how the culture was at Queen's and in the lab and we had many different types of scientists working together and we also had structural support such as lab managers and programmers and statisticians and it was a great environment.
00:05:42
Speaker
of different people working together towards more common topic and topics and common goals. And that was something that I assumed would be the way most research would be run and it fit with the way I would want to run research myself. Makes sense. Makes sense. So then I did a postdoc at UC Berkeley with Mark Desposito doing more and more focus on neuroimaging.
00:06:08
Speaker
So FMRI related to eye movements and sensory motor control, and I really enjoyed my time there. It's a bit different being a postdoc because I was much more into my own project, less teaching and so on. But I still liked the idea of eventually being a professor because I was always interested more in a lab.
00:06:33
Speaker
and having a team of people working together towards some common goal. And of course, you know, a postdoc is a necessary part of the training. And then I came to the Netherlands to the Donders because the Donders is very well known in topics related to sensory motor neuroscience, Parkinson's disease research and the neurological disorders I've been studying, as well as of course neuroimaging and fMRI.
00:06:58
Speaker
and scientifically I knew it was a great environment and also they advertised this position called senior researcher which was a novel type of position that didn't exist in North America but it really fit with my vision for an academic environment.
00:07:15
Speaker
So what it is, is recognizing that within the whole system of a university, from professors down to bachelor students, there would be different types of people at different levels of function. So the senior research position was designed to say in a large lab,
00:07:36
Speaker
where there are many students and postdocs, of course, unified around some general topic. It is a lot of work for the senior professor to be in charge of that, plus teaching, plus supervising all these students. And at the same time, before we hand the keys to a person who's straight out of their postdoc and say, now you're a manager, now you're running a lab, we can build a kind of a layer in between.
00:08:02
Speaker
So it's a great idea, right? And it fits with my kind of attitude towards research, right? So I come in as really an assistant to a more senior professor doing my own research line, doing some of the teaching, contributing to some of the organization of the Institute, while also getting experience in supervising my own students and so on, right? And so that's the other reason why I came.
00:08:28
Speaker
And it was, it's a quite a nice idea for a position that is quite not common in academia, but I think fills a necessary place. For the people that are more familiar with the normal structure, being like, okay, you do a bachelor, then you do your master, then you do a PhD, then you do a postdoc, then you do assistant professor, then you do associate professor, then you're a full professor, and then at some point you retire. Correct.
00:08:59
Speaker
progression is the senior researcher position. It would overlap with that of an assistant professor. I see. However, it's not tenure track. So the design is not for it to directly lead to your own research mind. The design is that it can, right? So you can then
00:09:22
Speaker
reenter the tenure track system by reapplying, but it gives you more experience and it gives you the type of experience that you probably wouldn't have got in a postdoc. One that's more about supervision and more about contribution to a larger group of people as opposed to trying to, as soon as possible, be by yourself doing your own idea. So that is where it fit.
00:09:48
Speaker
Okay. All right. Now I've heard about that position before, but only in the Netherlands, I have to say. I have not seen that anywhere else. Well, I think it's a good idea. It might reflect a bit of the culture of the Netherlands, but it is
Comparison of Academic and Corporate Structures
00:10:03
Speaker
something. So from my perspective, if you were to think outside of the academic system, I mean, someone who's not in academia,
00:10:09
Speaker
Most jobs have hierarchies, of course, and there's positions that enter you into other positions. In most companies or most organizations, you're trying to find a fit for a task or something that needs to be done.
00:10:29
Speaker
So, so it's a, you know, it, it breaks from the, from saying that there's an academic model of these positions that you just described. And this is the way we do research to start to say, well, hang on a second. Sometimes research might need more supervisors. Sometimes research might need a dedicated lab engineer. Sometimes research might need.
00:10:49
Speaker
people looking after finance and management or whatever. It was more of a position related to a need within the research system. You mentioned our companies and that they try to find the right person for a specific task when performing that task becomes necessary. But I would say even when that happens,
00:11:14
Speaker
the person that gets hired still gets training for quite some time to be able to do that task or perform it very well. Well, we hope they do. We hope, we hope. And I've not seen that often in academia at all. It's just like you
00:11:29
Speaker
You go through these ranks, but I've never seen, for example, somebody that, for example, when I did my postdoc, nobody sat me down and said, okay, this is now what you need to focus on. Or these are now other things that you didn't have to deal with during your PhD that you now should think about. Didn't happen at all. It was just more of a, well, deal with it when it comes up type of.
00:11:56
Speaker
scenario. I agree. It is a standard thing and I think so. Then partly through my senior researcher position, I realized that as much as I liked the position and the way the Donders had created such a position, it was not enough. There
00:12:15
Speaker
they created something that still is not recognized in the entire academic system and wasn't truly addressing the need like you're describing. So that's why I went and did an executive MBA program. One of the reasons was to address this type of problem, right? So I still believe
00:12:36
Speaker
that research, even if it's basic science and even if it's to be creative as possible, should think more in terms of the necessary structure, the necessary culture, and the necessary organizational elements to make the research successful.
00:12:52
Speaker
So yes, it is really good to have creative ideas and independent thinkers, but that need not be the only mechanism. So the idea of saying this is the way research is done. It is done by you in this position that we've invented called a postdoc. And in this postdoc position, you have to teach yourself all the tasks and then you leave after three years. That is merely a system, but it's not
00:13:20
Speaker
built with an organizational thought. It's not built with saying, in order to do successful research, we need temporary postdocs who figure out everything on their own. That doesn't make any sense to me. And so that was one of the drivers for me to go do an MBA, not just about business, but about understanding management and organizations, and just the attitude of, if this is our mission,
00:13:49
Speaker
then how are we aligned to getting towards this mission? And that mission can be applied research, but that mission could also be creative, basic research, but it's the thought process of what are the necessary elements in order to make this good. Right, right. And so when you did your MBA and you learned about, I assume, management structures, process flows,
00:14:13
Speaker
And then when you learn these new aspects and you look back at the academic system, where were parts where you think, okay, here it's where it's going wrong? What were some core things where you thought, okay, this is easy to identify? Well, there's a couple. So first you already mentioned is at some point there should be a focus on skill training.
00:14:37
Speaker
So everybody would like to think that companies will always train their employees. It doesn't always happen. It doesn't always happen. People are busy. There's budgets
Skills Training Gap in Academia
00:14:49
Speaker
to consider and so on. But for academia, especially because we're doing something very complex and technically oriented, there should be a focus on skills training.
00:15:00
Speaker
So in other words, starting from, you know, there's a difference between saying to a PhD student, part of your training is of course to demonstrate that you're an analytical thinker. And that means that you can't rely on someone to do your analysis work or do your data collection for you. That would be inappropriate.
00:15:20
Speaker
But there still could be thought about the type of training that would be needed so that the PhD student can take their own initiative to say, I got as far as this, now I need help. I'm now outside my skills. Where can I go to be trained on these skills? And this kind of thing. And then there's a lot of, without that, there's a lot of, I wouldn't say redundancy,
00:15:45
Speaker
But there's a lot of reinvention of the wheel, right? The person next to you could have struggled with the exact same problem as you, and both of you struggled for a month. And there's not an attitude, or there often isn't an attitude towards providing the necessary training, documentation, and being able to try to speed up the process. So people are not spending their time reinventing the wheel. So that's one important thing that we talked about.
00:16:14
Speaker
The other thing that I think is really important is more attention to the people and just an understanding of what are the personalities of a researcher? How are researchers motivated? How is a PhD student motivated? What does an older person
00:16:37
Speaker
what would likely based on age makes you find you excited to get up in the morning and be more motivated when you're older than when compared to younger. These kinds of things that I think come from understanding the people and understanding the organization. There are consequences to demanding
00:16:58
Speaker
papers, for instance, research papers, when at the same time demanding high quality research, right? And there's not enough attention, I think, paid to management structures. So what I also got out of the MBA is how important it is, say, for senior members to walk the walk and talk the talk, how important communication is.
00:17:23
Speaker
how important there might be to have HR managers or something that's looking after the way people work. There needs to be more attention to what makes a good team. There needs to be things looking at the other stakeholders who are involved. These types of management tools that usually haven't been present in academia, where it's much more about just encouraging an individual to figure out everything on their own.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah. Do you think that that's just a remnant of just the historical development? I think so. So my view would be, so there are lots of good things about science. So one good thing about science is it really is
00:18:07
Speaker
Very it's always been Creative and it's always been one of the first examples of the knowledge worker, right? And so I think that There were less people in it, right originally So when there's less people in it, it could evolve into its own culture and its own structural way of doing things without actually having to
00:18:32
Speaker
to consider how other people do it, right? Right. So that's the first thing. So first, first I think is that that it just was evolving in its own way. It was effective, but it was the only mechanism, right? I can't really think of other way. Um, basic science was done. Now applied science, on the other hand, Bell labs, for instance, NASA, I mean, they, they have ways of, of
00:18:52
Speaker
creating patents and Nobel prizes and even they would of course have had, they made basic science breakthroughs in their pursuit of these kinds of things. But with the exception of these types of organizations, I think historically it's been around for a long time. The idea of a professor is a teacher, the idea of the gentleman scientist, this kind of thing.
00:19:21
Speaker
Um, and then I think what happened is, is as science, um, as more people entered the system and we started to look at different, different, um, um, structures within it, uh, the postdoc position was created, right? It never, it never always existed, but the, the idea of, especially in the medical sciences of biomedical needing more training before you can
00:19:42
Speaker
you can have the skills to run your loan lab or something. So there was some sort of evolution, but I think a lot of it has just been historical. It's been the way we've been doing things. It works in the sense that it does create Nobel prizes. It does create breakthroughs, but if you actually look at it, it is not necessarily that efficient. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a big problem. It's
00:20:07
Speaker
Because as you said, I mean, more and more people are entering the system. And so I just looked at some numbers yesterday and I was amazed to see that. So I just look at some numbers in the Netherlands and worldwide, but they resemble each other very well. It said since 2000 until now, for example, it's an insane amount of new PhD students that
00:20:29
Speaker
come in and that also graduate, which is crazy. I mean, the system, at least as far as I experienced it, universities are structures that when it comes to, I would say bachelor levels, it's well organized. You can have a certain volume that you can
00:20:49
Speaker
teach, but when it comes to PhD students, because that PhD is such a, such a personal relationship and work environment that you have to have with your supervisor, you cannot have one supervisor with 20 PhD students and expect the same type of quality. It's just time-wise that's impossible. Exactly. And now I agree with you that, I mean, something needs to shift. Also, I mean, you mentioned that the postdoc was created. I didn't know that. I just
00:21:19
Speaker
When I first heard the term assistant and associate professor and Then full professor. I only knew about the full professor. So to me it sounded like oh Okay, these two are also sort of like
00:21:35
Speaker
added on as intermediate steps to- They most certainly were. Yeah, exactly. And a postdoc would be one of them as well. Right, yeah. And then you can add senior researchers and so on. Yeah, and then I have, what did I hear? Aspiring PI at some point as well. Yes, that's another one. That's another one. And I'm just wondering how necessary is it to just cling on to this old system and just use duct tape all the time or just, you know,
00:22:05
Speaker
let it go and come up with something better because the people that are in the system, they are obviously smart. So there should be some type of way. And when you mentioned Bell Labs and NASA, and then I'm thinking, okay, these are excellent research departments, excellent. And where I would say theoretical and applied work are mixed,
00:22:29
Speaker
Is there something we can get from them? I would say yes. How did they normally, because I honestly, I don't know, how did they normally structure that type of work? Well, I admit, I don't know myself how these structure, but there are newer examples of these kinds of things.
Mission-Driven Research Models
00:22:46
Speaker
So one thing I would say is that
00:22:50
Speaker
you, these types of organizations, unlike academia, I think are better able to define their mission and their vision and their values, which is something that you really, really get from, you know, looking at it into an MBA program.
00:23:06
Speaker
So if you have, and that's something that research can think about, right? So if you think of a typical country, the country as, and this is very interesting for me, is a country wants PhDs, right?
00:23:22
Speaker
That's what the evidence shows. So we want PhDs. Why do we want PhDs? Well, for my best guess is because the country knows that in the future there's artificial intelligence coming, there's automation, labor is expensive in the Western world. So manufacturing is changing, farming is changing. So we're moving to a knowledge economy and generating PhDs seems like a really good bet for a knowledge economy.
00:23:47
Speaker
So that means that a country is interested in creating knowledgeable people. It's not so interested, as far as I can tell, in supporting an older academic model so that everybody can become assistant associate and professor because they like to.
00:24:06
Speaker
I think that's something that we as more junior scientists need to understand is that the purpose of giving us a PhD is not so that we can all have our dream jobs according to an academic model. That's not the point.
00:24:24
Speaker
Then the idea would be is that these creative people can move in different directions, right? So they can move towards industry, they can move towards startups, some can stay in academia. And hopefully, as you say, maybe these creative people will create new organizations potentially.
00:24:44
Speaker
So Bell Labs, NASA, these, these clearly are, um, places that are unified around some sort of common topic, but I would assume while certainly in the case of, of NASA, it was, you know, when I think of NASA, I think of Kennedy's mission. We're putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
00:25:04
Speaker
So academia doesn't have that, right? And one of the things you can think about is if there's a country that has a Netherlands or Canada or something, there's something, you know, there's in the tens to twenties of
00:25:19
Speaker
large academic research institutes. They each have hospitals. They each have engineering schools. They each have these kinds of things. They have to serve the country. They have to also serve the region. But they don't necessarily have to serve only an academic model. So you can, I would say, in the future, I imagine there will be, and I hope there is, more dedicated research institutes around a specific topic, for instance.
00:25:49
Speaker
more ways of saying, what does this region need? What do we need to focus on this kind of thing? And it's not a replacement of the academic system. It's an addition to the academic system.
00:26:10
Speaker
It's a separate way of doing research. And I think I could see that being the larger goal of a country, which is why they generate PhD students, which is why they have grants now to collaborate with industry, which is why they also have grants for startups. And they're moving their money into different directions besides supporting everyone to become traditional professors.
00:26:40
Speaker
And I mean, yeah, I agree with you. It's not necessarily a replacement of the system. It's maybe even an addition to provide more focus. A bit more streamlining. A bit more streamlining.
00:26:54
Speaker
Do you have the MPI here next to the Donders? And that's one, okay, I don't want to say anything wrong, but most people I know there study psycholinguistics. So that's already one Max Planck Institute saying, okay, this Max Planck Institute is focusing on psycholinguistics slash linguistics only.
00:27:14
Speaker
which I already find very streamlined. Otherwise you just have an institute, how it normally goes, you have an institute where each lab just focuses on their own stuff, completely independent of the other lab. And as a point I mentioned before, most likely each lab then needs to reinvent the wheel constantly in parallel of 10 other labs. So you lose time, you waste money, and you're not very streamlined at all.
00:27:41
Speaker
So I can see how having these more focused institutes
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah. Be, be very beneficial for the system. And then, and then what you need to do is you need to recognize that there's a bit of a difference, right? So when you create a focused Institute, then, then you would probably have a different culture. You would employ different types of people. Um, you would want to interview the types of people appropriately to work in such an Institute, right? So, so one of the difficulties is, and I think returning to one of your other questions is, is, you know,
00:28:13
Speaker
Could we change the academic system as a whole? I think that would be difficult to change, right? It's really difficult to change a culture, right? You can create a new organization that might have a new culture.
Cultural Change in Academia
00:28:29
Speaker
you can of course, as a new wave of people come in, the culture can gradually change. So one advantage of academia is I think it is difficult to abruptly change a culture, it always is. But because the cycle is fairly fluid in academia, especially at the younger age, you can see every five to 10 years, the attitude of the PhD students changes.
00:28:55
Speaker
I mean, it does change, right? Because you have a cycle of people coming through, right? So as those people come in and start changing the culture a little bit, as new managers and new more senior professors get into the system over time, I think things do gradually change.
00:29:15
Speaker
And an example, I mean, like I said, we have a senior, I had a senior researcher position, right? So somebody decided this, that this new position was needed. Exactly. And going back to, I believe in the seventies when they, when we started seeing more postdocs, somebody had that initiative as well, right? Yeah, you're right. And I mean, okay, I've been a big critic of the academic system since I've been in it and also since I left, but in the defense of the academic system, it's not just
00:29:43
Speaker
A lot of people compare it to industry and just say, I just, you know, this company changed course. Academia can change course. It's not that simple because in that company, you have a very good structure. Well, okay. You have a structure and at least one person at the top who is supposed to be able to say, this is the direction we go. We do not have that. No, we do not have that. We're very consensus driven.
00:30:11
Speaker
Yeah, and there's so many more things involved in the academic system. Even if you had this one person, I think it still wouldn't make much of a difference because governments involved, funding agencies are involved, universities, individual universities are involved, the researchers are involved, and the publishing process and the journals are also involved. So whatever you try to tweak, all of these
00:30:41
Speaker
parties will be paying very close attention. And if you change anything that goes against anyone's incentive of this list,
00:30:53
Speaker
nothing is going to change. You're absolutely right. So that's why I think this ultimately would have to come from the top. It would ultimately have to come from a national level, an agenda, someone to say, okay, we're going to change course. The levers that they have right now, more than anything, are grants.
00:31:12
Speaker
Right. So for instance, if the government or the granting agencies say, starting next year, we're now going to fund more of this and less of that. I mean, that, that is, that has been the biggest levers that I've, I've seen. Right. Yeah. So if the government agency says, well, we like these individual grants, but we're not going to add to them. We're now going to start adding more international collaboration with developing nations grant, for example, that just made up something.
00:31:39
Speaker
then people will chase that. The issue I still see there is that when they create different types of grants and different types of models, we haven't yet, although it's starting to happen, still when you apply for these grants, you're often describing the PhD student and postdoc who you're going to hire.
00:32:04
Speaker
Yeah. And sometimes I'd like to see where, where is the project manager that you're going to hire? And where is the engineer that you're going to hire? And where is the social media person that you're going to hire? Now it's starting to happen. So a few of these grants start to have.
00:32:19
Speaker
you know, who's going to look after project management, who's going to look after social, like there starts to be things like this, right? And so what I am noticing, the gradual change, is PhD students and postdocs are starting to, as an alternative, either do more of these tasks,
00:32:40
Speaker
or do some of these tasks part time. And sometimes in some cases, actually, there are some grants that might ask for, you know, a large consortium grant might have a role of a program manager. And often a former academic trainee is taking that position. So it's starting to happen.
00:32:56
Speaker
So that's the way I can kind of see it going. The other thing I think, but I think you're absolutely right, is nobody wants to, within this super large system, really take a risk and say, okay, well, we're not going to publish in these types of journals anymore. Well, then to be fair, what if their junior trainees want to still get hired in a traditional academic model? You don't want to do
00:33:24
Speaker
a disservice to them by pushing them in a different direction. But I think if you really stand at the top and you look around the world, there are certain places in the world you wouldn't want to mess with. I would say you wouldn't want to mess with Oxford and Cambridge. I mean, they're very old. They've been around. Everyone knows kind of what they represent and people
00:33:47
Speaker
people are driven towards that. But if you're starting a new university in a new region or something like this, maybe your focus shouldn't be to replicate the existing system, right? So you could be thinking more about what's good for the region or you could be thinking more about a specific type of research that you're going to do and this kind of thing. So I used to also see a bit of that too, like there are institutes of technology being built now.
00:34:17
Speaker
And there are, you know, universities now have accelerators and incubators and these kinds of, you know, when they're starting from scratch, some of them can start to think, all right, so now we're going to build it a little bit differently with kind of a different focus. Yeah. Okay. So now that you mentioned also incubators and accelerators, okay, so I want to talk about that a little bit later. One thing you mentioned is, so when you start a new university, you shouldn't
00:34:45
Speaker
maybe replicate what there is now and you mentioned, okay, you don't want to mess with Oxford or Cambridge. What I found interesting was during my PhD time at the Donders, we had a, what was this? This was some type of quality assessment, research quality assessment or Institute assessment itself that took place. And during that week, researchers or senior
00:35:16
Speaker
senior people within the academic system from Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, or also from United States. I think somebody from Johns Hopkins was there as well. They came to visit the Donders. They had lots of conversations with people to see how the process goes. They looked at the academic output and so on to basically give an assessment of the quality of research, a score, if you will, for the Donders.
00:35:41
Speaker
And I met this one person who, we had a lunch so that these people can also talk to PhD students. And I met this one person who was at Oxford at that moment. So when you are in the academic world, what you hear, Oxford is like the holy grail. They did their branding properly, I have to say. They did that well. MIT the same and Cambridge as well.
00:36:06
Speaker
So when I asked him what he thought about the Donders, he said, it's the infrastructure is amazing. Now I was confused because he was coming from Oxford. So I just assumed, well, if you think it's amazing here, it must be outstanding at Oxford. How is it there? And he literally told me it's non-existent. So I just had to pause because I didn't understand if it's non-existent, why would you want to go there in the first place?
00:36:34
Speaker
Well, and he told me because it's Oxford, so it becomes a type of a self-fulfilling prophecy, which I found a little sad because colleagues of mine, they started PhDs being blinded by this as well, by this brand image.
00:36:53
Speaker
Well, okay, I have a bit of a revolting nature anyways, but I literally, my perception of these high level universities changed drastically because I was shocked at how much is pretended or let's say shown to the outside world and how much actually takes place inside. And that discrepancy I just found so big that I was put off strongly.
00:37:20
Speaker
Well, what it would, just to qualify what I, what I would, what I would meant by not messing with Oxford and Cambridge, I'm thinking more about their traditional academic culture. Oh, that's what you mean. So for instance, the culture I like, so for it, exactly. So for instance, like, yes, universities need to, um,
00:37:38
Speaker
So these are universities that pride themselves on academic excellence and excellent research. So of course, if we're talking about magnetic resonance imaging, they should have excellent magnetic resonance imaging infrastructure. If they don't, then they're really ruining who they are. So that would be crazy.
00:37:58
Speaker
What I mean more is a culture. So for instance, if you go to these traditional universities that are built around maybe the academic model of postdocs and lecturers and all this kind of thing, have
00:38:17
Speaker
made successes in the past and it would be really difficult to change a culture there. I think it would be difficult to say starting next year, this university that everyone recognizes as operating in a certain way, what it means to be a reader at Oxford, what it means to be professor of psychology at Oxford, that kind of thing.
00:38:43
Speaker
It would be difficult to mess with that. I mean, they have, um, but, but that, that's a, that is their culture. That's their, their way of doing things. They might not need to change it. They might not need to change, but of course they need to have proper infrastructure because they still need to deliver good quality science. Right.
00:38:58
Speaker
But what I was thinking more is not every university in the world, if you think of all the universities in the world, need to say, well, we need to have a professor of this and we need to have a reader doing this. And in order to be here, it means that you do teaching and you also do research and you do it like this, right? That I don't see as necessary.
00:39:22
Speaker
No. Yeah. I think, I think when, especially when a new type of research evolves or a new type of societal goal comes when there's, when a problem that hasn't been solved yet really requires a team of people, then, then you should be focusing more on, okay, how do we, how do we, you know,
00:39:40
Speaker
What is our goal and what is our mission? Why do we exist? If we are a new university in a new place, why do we have to replicate a model that's been around for hundreds of years, if it doesn't necessarily make sense? Right. And okay, to be fully fair, the
00:39:58
Speaker
the limitations that you sometimes get at these let's say older established institutes just I mean you need to keep in mind that the campuses are very old and there is limited space and everybody is trying to flock to those places so
00:40:15
Speaker
You start running into problems soon, anyhow. Well, people should also do their research. So there are certain types of PhD students who belong at Oxford, the way they think and the way they behave and the type of questions that they're asking.
Innovative Research Approaches at UCL
00:40:29
Speaker
And there are certain types of PhD students who should not go to Oxford, right? They're asking different questions. They're doing different types of research. Their approach is different.
00:40:38
Speaker
That also is important, so don't just be blinded by a brand, also think about really, are you going to fit with where you're going and what you're trying to do there. Yeah, and when I talk to some people that work at Oxford or Cambridge, because of these limitations of infrastructure that wasn't there,
00:40:59
Speaker
they had to come up with very, I have to say, very ingenious ways of how to still do their research properly, which I was, I have to say, very, very impressed with, which went so beyond of what they actually had to research, which opened up a whole new avenue of an approach. Wow. I was, for example,
00:41:25
Speaker
There was a friend of mine that was at UCL, and it was a small lab. They didn't have lots of funding. I also assumed UCL, oh, great infrastructure. I said, no. And when I asked her, oh, how do you do your analysis? She said, oh, I run it on my laptop. And there was FMRI analysis.
00:41:41
Speaker
And I was like, wait, how, how is that possible? Because at the Donders, we have a cluster, you know, it's just so more people can actually do it properly. And she said, oh, yeah, we had to rewrite the code for some libraries to work much more efficiently so the whole thing could run without a problem on my computer.
00:42:03
Speaker
That requires programming knowledge that goes very, very deep. Which doesn't only benefit them if you think about it. It benefits everyone. It benefits the scientific community around the world. Exactly, exactly. Now, I don't want to give out the conclusion of, oh, just deprive people of stuff and they will solve things. It also doesn't work that way. You need a balance of both. But no, I agree with you.
00:42:31
Speaker
you should as a PhD student or postdoc, whenever you look for a position, it also needs to fit you. You shouldn't be just driven by, oh, this sounds like a cool project because that's not the only thing important here. That's definitely interesting. Before you mentioned other types of new avenues that are now being
00:42:55
Speaker
Well, being, how can I say, not discovered, explored. Explored, that being, for example, having accelerators or incubators within universities themselves.
00:43:07
Speaker
Now that shift also, do you think that shift came because of interest from the universities to go that route? Or because of the grants, you mentioned them being a very strong lever from the government, the grants demanding from academia or grant applications,
00:43:27
Speaker
to have more collaboration with industry? It's both, it's both. So one, an answer to the first question, not every university thinks this way, but I was in Israel last week visiting universities there about their entrepreneurial and spin-off innovation cultures.
00:43:47
Speaker
Um, one obvious thing is that universities, um, need, uh, income, they need money to function. Um, and they realize that that spinning things out and licensing things are a way to get that, that income. Right. So there's, there is a various, there is an obvious, um, reason and an obvious reason is that, is that universities know that, you know, research, especially tech and biomedical research.
00:44:15
Speaker
can lead to major innovations that can generate a lot of revenues and they shouldn't just sit on the shelf. So that's one thing. The other thing is universities also might be nudged by the government to say, listen, part of your mission
00:44:32
Speaker
is good research, good education, and to have an impact on society. So if a new product is created that benefits someone, that's good. If new jobs are created in your region or in the country that create that product and that can create, you know, employ people that contribute to the tax base, all this kind of stuff, that's also good. And if it attracts immigrants and other knowledge base, that's good, right? And then also just,
00:44:59
Speaker
even if it's not about making money, okay, one of your missions is to not just be in the ivory tower, but that what you're actually doing should lead to society. So even if it's not gonna be for profit, there's still people that should benefit from your research, right? And so we need not just incubators and accelerators to generate money,
00:45:20
Speaker
But you need this kind of culture of being able to get research out into something that is useful in society. Now then the third way is there are sometimes grants. So the grants might say,
00:45:35
Speaker
this grant requires you to mention how this is going to be used in society and you will be evaluated on the case that you can make for how this to be used in society. So then we're not exactly talking about incubators and accelerators per se, but we are talking about, and they probably would be connected to those incubators and accelerators, but some sort of technology transfer office or some sort of unit of people on the campus who are
00:46:05
Speaker
good at helping you get your research into something that society can use, right? And since you're talking about UX design, I mean, this is the kind of thing, right? So in other words, okay, so you've made this super creative, expensive thing, but no one can use this. How can you make this so someone would use this, right?
00:46:27
Speaker
And how are you going to reach the patients, for instance, that might benefit from this? Right. So now you're talking about platforms and you're talking about social media and you're talking about conferences and you're talking about all these kinds of things. Right. So, so I put that kind of also in the, in, in, in this part of the university as well. But okay. Then a bit more, okay. I have to admit this was.
00:46:52
Speaker
a philosophical clash I had with my peers because when we started, I've been often asked like, hey, do you patent things and how does it go with patents?
Patenting vs Open Access Debate
00:47:05
Speaker
And in my research, I also found out you own a patent as well. Your whole point was a co-applicant as a PhD student. Yeah. But that's pretty cool. We might talk about that in a little bit. But what I noticed was that
00:47:22
Speaker
I often heard from the tech transfer people, the argument of we need to patent what you made, and only then we can give it out. And I'm wondering, because as soon as you patent something, you as the university are the official owner. And okay, now, okay, this becomes a little bit of a catch-22, I realize this. But I see it like this.
00:47:50
Speaker
Your research is funded by taxpayer money. You as a university exist based on taxpayer money. So whatever you create should not be owned by you, it should be owned by everyone. It should be made publicly available and that's the separate part of now the publishing and the paywalls when it comes to that, but it should be made
00:48:17
Speaker
if you will open source for everyone to use if they wish to do so. And when you have a patent, you basically create another wall of
00:48:32
Speaker
well, another hurdle of getting that done. And then I heard often the argument, yeah, but you need to protect your ideas, and et cetera, et cetera. And then you need to have this into a startup to then actually bring it out. Now, I normally argue is, well, the money didn't come from you. The money wasn't generated by you. Why should you own this and make money off of it?
00:48:56
Speaker
and not give actually back to society in that sense, what you could do is give everyone the opportunity to build a startup around what you have found out.
00:49:08
Speaker
and you would still do the same thing. And maybe the tech transfer, and that's part what you said, should not focus on patenting these things, but advocating that these things exist, or maybe even fund startups that will use that without a patent involved whatsoever.
00:49:30
Speaker
They can. But one of the issues, I think the most important issue with this is, and this is something that scientists really forget a lot, is a sustainability. Oh yeah, for sure. So one of the problems about giving something away is it can often just fall flat in its face and fail. So I have a number of apps on my phone that I can't use anymore.
00:49:52
Speaker
because the iOS updated to the newest version and the person who wrote the app hasn't bothered to do it. So one of the problems with open source is it can often just end up junk, right? Because no one is going to invest the time, money, or effort to keep it going. But the same thing could happen with patents as well. Oh, yeah. So there's a lot of patents. So yeah, I agree. The point is not to say,
00:50:21
Speaker
not to push people towards making patents. Like patents should not be the next paper, right? Like we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of papers on a given topic, just thrown up into PubMed, right? Hopefully someone will find something useful. And we're starting to see that this is not always working. Yeah, definitely. Same thing is.
00:50:38
Speaker
Having a whole bunch of patents to just brag that you have a patent or to block people from innovating is a really stupid idea. But if the patent allows a startup to be created so that the startup can gain traction,
00:50:53
Speaker
so that the startup can actually make a product that people will buy so that the startup can employ people, then you need the patent, right? And if the patent is safer industry, the only way they're going to be interested in working with you at all, then you might need a patent, right? But if you look at it and you say, okay, there's no real point in patenting this because
00:51:16
Speaker
Maybe it can't be patented or just the amount of money that we'd have to put into this patent. Maybe strategically it makes no sense. Makes no sense. Maybe then what you would say instead is we are instead then interested in a partnership. We are instead interested in the university and scientists being able to, now you're saying kind of more for the good of society using taxpayer money.
00:51:45
Speaker
This is where UX design would come in to be able to say, okay, the university thinks that this research is really good. People can use it, but now we need people to be aware of it and we need to get people using it so that we can iron out all the bugs and the kinks. And we can maybe think that maybe we scientists have thought that this is useful, but society doesn't actually care about this at all.
00:52:08
Speaker
But they care about something else that we could easily tweak and make into into something. Right. And so but even that then again, never forget is and this is scientists are people they've got families to support and mortgages and whatever rents to
00:52:23
Speaker
pay. So eventually it can't just be volunteer and it can't just be for free. So somewhere there needs to be a grant or a private donation or a foundation or revenues generated from a business because otherwise how are the competent people going to make a living doing this? And that's the one difficulty with pure open source and pure volunteer good for a society that is
00:52:53
Speaker
that you can't just ignore. No, I agree with you. These things definitely need to coexist because I mean you, if you don't own a house, you need to pay rent and buy food minimum. And I find it a little unfair to expect of someone who
00:53:08
Speaker
went to normal school, and then basically spent almost 10 years of their life to then also obtain a finished PhD, and then to work for free. Yeah, it was not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Yeah. Well, it may be actually rude to assume that. So then, of course, those people will not do it. They will have no incentive. Yeah, exactly.
00:53:29
Speaker
Right. So they'll chase research grants of your researcher and do, do what's required for research grants. And they'll teach because if they're employed to teach or they will leave and get scooped up by industry anyway, right. Or something like that. Right. So, so, so then, then, um, yeah, exactly. No, like doing something for free. Um,
00:53:48
Speaker
It's dangerous. It's definitely dangerous. Usually, what I see is these free things that it's unsustainable. They're there. Yeah, exactly. They're not sustainable. They're there for a year, and then they go away. Yeah, exactly. And that's just these... I like to call them sometimes just vanity metrics. These are still just counted as, oh, look, we did this. Look, we did this. Oh, where is it now? We don't know. Well, so it doesn't really count, in my opinion. No, I agree with you. These need to be...
00:54:17
Speaker
It needs to be definitely thought about where the flow of the economic engine comes in. And I'm not saying it all needs to be 100% for profit, but there needs to be an influx of money and some type of financial compensation to pay people to just live. And that's just how currently the economy works. But then again, I've seen a lot of open source models.
00:54:45
Speaker
I was surprised about this myself. I've seen, for example, when it comes to platforms where you can organize your projects and work with other people together, I've seen, of course, paid versions. What do you have? Slack, Asana, others. That's what Trello, I think. I don't want to say anything wrong. Sorry for the ones I didn't mention. Those are paid services. And then you have the open source versions, which you can host yourself.
00:55:14
Speaker
And then it's for free, but if you don't want to host it yourself, you don't have to. And then there is a company that basically took the open source code and built a service around it. And that's very successful. And they charge for that. But basically what they charge for is they don't charge for, look, we invented this thing, which they haven't, but they say, look,
00:55:37
Speaker
we can understand that open source sometimes seems a little messy because you don't know who did what and what's happening here and then something gets pulled, something gets pushed, you merge code. You don't have to worry about all of those things. Just sign up to us. We take care of this additional step of maintenance.
00:55:54
Speaker
And that's then what they get paid for. That's fine. That's a great business model. So open source, you're right. So open source, well, there's freemium. So first off, there's freemium, right? So freemium and the example just you gave, these are possible, right? So you can, you know, for peep. Yeah, that is a good way because now,
00:56:16
Speaker
Well, there's a couple of things there's a corporate social responsibility is now a big thing. Uh, good. Um, it also fits with, with, uh, the younger generation. So people now are willing to, you know, maybe work for less money or be less driven for, for making a profit. Um, if, if they feel good about what they do and they're excited to get out and contribute and get up in the morning, contribute to society. So it does kind of work.
00:56:39
Speaker
I think it's also important. Some of these models make sense when you have two different tiers of customers, those who get it for free and those who are willing to pay for something more premium.
00:56:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's where it can work as a business model. And I think in general, pure open source that I can think of good ones, they can work in academia, again, if, say, junior people are incentivized to keep it going. So people who are, you know, I can think of examples like many of the open source tools we use for neuroimaging.
00:57:18
Speaker
They rely on a new PhD student or postdoc who wants to do research in neuroimaging, probably more on the data science and computational side. Part of their training and what they can use to build their career off of is contribution to this open source technology platform that people around the world are using. And then it can be maintained. And these are examples. The Donders has a great one, Field Trip analysis for EEG. That's an example.
00:57:47
Speaker
Oh, it's perfect. Um, but still field trip could not exist if there was not a few scientists who the, uh, Robert Ostenfeld and, and Jan Matias Schoflin, sorry, I'm saying, saying these names wrong as a Canadian who didn't take the lead to, to, to, you know, keep it going. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, so this is, this is, um,
00:58:06
Speaker
These are examples where it can't work. And then you can, so I don't actually know if this, I've never attended a toolkit, I have to admit, but the donors offers toolkits. You can charge some money and you can charge for the toolkit and that helps sustain it. And that's the key thing is sometimes these, most of, in a pure, well, in a nonprofit organization,
00:58:34
Speaker
you still have to pay for it. And what you're really paying for is to keep it going, which means the infrastructure and the personnel. Yeah, exactly. It's not meant that you pay for that company to then grow. That would be then the profit part that needs to come in. It's literally just, well, just pay us a little bit so that we can keep on offering it. Shareholders are not making money. Exactly.
00:58:57
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there are no shareholders. There's no shareholders. That's not the idea. Yeah. You're not, there's not yet. You're not doing this for the shareholder. You're, you're doing this to keep it going. And people are, people who are keeping it going are, are, um, making it, um, they're, it's just part of their living. Yeah. Yeah.
00:59:14
Speaker
I find this interesting because I mean, I've met a few people within academia where like Robert with field trip where I so I heard of field trip before I was exposed to it before then I was at the Donders and I didn't even know that it originated from the Donders and then I met Robert and we talked a little bit and I saw the drive or the his his
00:59:38
Speaker
Well, maybe I should just say vision that he had for this was his strong drive to keep this going forward. And I think this goes back to what we mentioned before, that you need just one person at the top that just says, that's the way we go. We go that direction. And then the people around that get attracted to this type of vision, they come on board and help out. And that's then maybe also in line with the corporate social responsibility aspect of
01:00:04
Speaker
Okay, in that vision it becomes very clear of how society, or in this case maybe just academia, still part of society I might say, can benefit from this.
01:00:14
Speaker
But that, this part, I find very entrepreneurial as well. And it is often not something that within the academic system is, personally, maybe it's just a personal thing for me, is reflected upon
Entrepreneurial and Non-Academic Skills
01:00:31
Speaker
a lot. Because you are, in essence, in most of your trajectory, at least in the current way it's been done.
01:00:37
Speaker
a solitary worker. You work on your project, you work with your professor together, but you are working on your project. You are supposed to be calling the shots. You're giving the direction and so on. But it sounds to me
01:00:57
Speaker
like an entrepreneur. Just, okay, one thing is research, entrepreneur might be more industry, but philosophically sounds very similar to me. Do you think PhD students, or also later on within the post-doc period, would benefit from entrepreneurial training? Absolutely.
01:01:21
Speaker
So, so I think it's, and in some places are, so I mentioned I was in Israel last week. Um, all the universities we went to there, um, are starting to do this. So they're starting to say, you know, in the last few years, anyway, um, we're going to have courses where we're going to train PhD students specifically and postdocs as well. So some of the, the, the more transient non trend, um, academic trajectory, um,
01:01:47
Speaker
non-permanent faculty kind of thing in entrepreneurial thinking. Right now, again, the hope with this is towards things like startups and spin-offs and being able to license technology and so on. But as you say, it also has a societal benefit to it, is that they can start thinking about how to make something
01:02:09
Speaker
for society out of their research. There's a couple of things that I find interesting about entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial thinking, and also the concept of the intrapreneur that some people talk about. So one difficulty with entrepreneurship is whether you see it as, you know, the creative finding
01:02:33
Speaker
creating something that doesn't exist with kind of the end user or the market in mind, finding a niche, finding something new, being able to innovate and that kind of stuff. Or if you see it as the economic side of the entrepreneur that creates a business model out of nothing and takes personal risk, right? And sometimes, you know, that an entrepreneur can mean different things to people, right?
01:03:00
Speaker
So I think what you're talking about is more the entrepreneurial thinking, which could also be an intrapreneur. So it could also just be that the organization has a culture or people working within the organization, at least maybe in some division of that organization, who are a bit more market focused and a bit more really scouting needs. And at the same time also thinking about, you know, hey, what solution can I come up with that fills a need in a void?
01:03:30
Speaker
Where there's nothing yet right and and that that I think we definitely need need more of right I think I think if you if you train people in the thinking then then you You you can also get the type that are going to go off and take the risk and create their own business, right? right, right now I think and this this actually leads me to to another and
01:03:51
Speaker
Well, another listener asked me if I could ask you this question, but you basically already answered it. Postdocs and PhDs are often not trained to also consider non-academic skills. But basically, if they were to get this entrepreneurship training, they would. It doesn't necessarily have to be the economic aspect of creating a new business model. They could go down that route, but they don't have to.
01:04:21
Speaker
I think not only is this good for learning, well, maybe just some basics about management and process structure and so on, but also about how you convince people, how you need to communicate. Sale or selling is such a, well, I have to say dirty term in the academic environment. I don't see it that way at all.
01:04:50
Speaker
I just see it as you need to learn how to communicate. If you communicate badly, nobody is going to get behind your ideas. Doesn't necessarily make your ideas bad, but what you say and how you say it is important. And when you're doing entrepreneurship, you learn this very quickly. It's that often what you know, especially when you come from academia, is not normal
01:05:14
Speaker
to know about. And in your little bubble, and I have to admit that this happened for me as well,
01:05:23
Speaker
is that all my colleagues, they obviously knew all these complicated concepts, went to university forever. So this was just normal to say one word, which was a concept, but to understand this concept, you need to go to university for just two years. And then just going outside in the world and just assuming, oh, everybody knows this because at work I can normally talk about this. And only then it becomes clear, oh, I'm in this bubble.
01:05:47
Speaker
And I think this is very critical to understand this. I'm not saying to understand that you are in a bubble, but to be able to have a reference point of where you fit in to society when it comes to different levels. When it comes to education, when it comes to concepts, when it comes to understanding, when it comes to your skills.
01:06:09
Speaker
which while you are in the academic system don't seem that great because everyone has them. And you only get a reality check when you talk to someone else only then. And I found that learning about entrepreneurship, I was forced to do so. I was forced to be confronted with these things, which then also helped me to actually just as in that question to learn non-academic skills, which
01:06:39
Speaker
are super important, I think, if you want to continue down the academic career path. But also if you don't, I think that's even more important then, because when you are at a company, you are at a job interview, and they ask you about your skills, what you think you're good at, what you're bad at, now you know, because you got the reality check. Because otherwise, I mean,
01:07:07
Speaker
everybody is constantly making their own projects in charge of the timeline of research design, data collection, data analysis, paper writing, publishing, et cetera, et cetera. That requires a lot of time management skills, especially when you start to collaborate with multiple universities in it. But because there is not so much focus in the academic system on the skill of time management, they all say you need it, but nobody ever says, oh, I'm very good at time management.
01:07:37
Speaker
But in industry, they would want to hear that. But in academia, you would never say that. And that's, I think, where this entrepreneurial training can come in so handy and be very important, actually, for the development. Well, I think it and other types of training, too. So what other types of training? Well, for instance, so one of the things that I would find, I don't have an answer to this yet. So should every PhD student get trained in entrepreneurship
01:08:05
Speaker
and in project management and in communication and in organizational management. You know, you could start thinking of things that they could be trained in and exposed to coordination, this kind of thing in their PhD. Or maybe what it should be, at least at the start, is that there's an attitude saying, okay,
01:08:27
Speaker
you should, for your own benefit, build up your non-academic skills. You probably won't have time to do all of these things in addition to your research, in addition to the things that you do have to do still to get a PhD degree. But we're really going to make sure that we, as the Institute or the Department or wherever you're working, value these non-academic skills. You will get some time to do them. You can maybe have some sort of, I don't know,
01:08:56
Speaker
a few weeks when you come here to shop around and see what's out there. And then if you want to learn about some of them, like entrepreneurship, then, then yes, this is, this is for you, right? But not, maybe not every TPHE student gets a course in entrepreneurship. No, I know. But, but, but the alternative would be is, is that they, that they know it exists and some of them do. And some of them also get, get training in, in something else, right? Right. Right. So, so that's, that's also also, um,
01:09:24
Speaker
But I do see your point that there are certain universal things that generally are not covered in the academic world, but seem to be covered outside of academia, such as time management, being able to talk to a customer, being able to give a good elevator pitch, like these kinds of things. So there are some very general things that probably would benefit everybody.
01:09:49
Speaker
I know I agree with you. It should be like a buffet of possibilities of courses that you can follow. And if you look around, they do exist, right? They do. University does have these courses, but it just may be that every student, because of what they're told by their supervisor, their daily supervisor, their department or whatever, if they're told, you know,
01:10:11
Speaker
Well, actually, don't worry about courses. You're here to do research. Then that particular person is lost from that. So it really also has to be a faculty-wide culture. This is important. We value it. Everybody gets to do this. And then, you know, it's not that your supervisor overrides this, or it's not that your daily supervisor tells you is not important or something like this, right?
01:10:35
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Now that you talk about the supervisor, what I notice is that I don't want to name any names. It's just something that I notice in general, not only in the Netherlands, just
01:10:49
Speaker
with anyone I interact with in the academic community is that I've noticed that a lot of PIs, so principal investigators, the professors that start to have their own lab, they are so used to doing their own research
01:11:07
Speaker
that now they would actually have to let go because now their PhD students and postdocs should actually do it. They are actually more in a manager position, but they don't let go and they turn into micromanagers, which, well, basically to the detriment of their PhD students and postdocs.
01:11:29
Speaker
Not always, though. Not all of them do. Many are very the opposite, hands off completely. And that's good. Well, I think it can go multiple ways. If you are a micromanager, you need the type of people in your lab that are okay with that. You're correct. That are okay with that. But I've not seen often in the hiring process that being considered at all.
01:11:53
Speaker
It's more of a, oh, this is a smart person, great resume, hire as a PhD student. Not so much, or do they get along with people in a lab? Yes, yes, great, hired. Not so much about, hey, how do you approach your work? Do you work like that? No, I've rarely seen that happening. Or with a hands off approach,
01:12:15
Speaker
then you need the people that can work very independently and can come to you or where you know they will come to me if they have questions because some also don't.
01:12:28
Speaker
And I was wondering, do you think that maybe PIs need some, or well, maybe this actually solves it when they are getting some entrepreneurship training already early on, that later on they realize, okay, now I'm a bit more senior. I'm now more of a manager. I need to get the grants in. I'm not sitting in the lab anymore. I need to let go a little bit. I need to think of a structure. Do you think there could be a solution to that problem? Well, I think, so if you're asking, yeah, do I think the,
01:12:57
Speaker
people who are becoming PI should have management training or should have entrepreneurship training. Yes, they absolutely do. I think it's partly because again, it comes down to an individual situation. So when I've been interviewed by people, it has been clear that they've thought about this.
01:13:12
Speaker
They've thought, okay, look, this is how big my lab is. This is how I tend to run things. Are you okay doing it like this? Because I'm trying to find a fit for both of us. And I do the same thing. If we bring in a PhD student or master student, I'm definitely asking these questions myself. I want to know how they work and are we going to get like, it's going to work and this kind of thing.
01:13:37
Speaker
I think though, for people who are not so reflective. So I realized when I did the MBA that not everybody is like this, even in the MBA program. So I was very interested in organizational behavior.
01:13:53
Speaker
some people in the program less so. So I think if you're naturally the type who finds this stuff valuable and is really thinking about how am I going to work with these people? What's the team going to be like? Is this going to work? Then you might naturally do it anyway. If this is a blind spot for you,
01:14:12
Speaker
that you, this is where some management training would be beneficial. At least that you say, ah, you know, I never thought this would be important. Okay. Now I'm going to pay attention to this, especially if I've been shown what the consequences of this are. And now people eventually figure it out. So it's probably, you know, for the older professor that's already on their seventh or eighth PhD student or something like this, they've probably figured it out.
01:14:36
Speaker
But yeah, for the person having their very first PhD student, if they haven't yet thought about this and this is a blind spot for them, then it is good for them to have the training to be able to know this is important.
Importance of PhD Supervision
01:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I think it would be beneficial to everyone involved. Well, it's always good to find a match. It's always more important. And I thought this was very interesting. When I was about to start my PhD, I almost finished the master's and was thinking about starting it.
01:15:12
Speaker
I asked my former supervisor about his career path and if he has some tips that I should take into consideration doing a PhD or where to do a PhD in general. And he basically said, okay, there are three important things, the three most important things. And I was like, okay. So I took my notepad out and I was ready to write. And he said, okay, number one,
01:15:40
Speaker
Do you get along with your supervisor? Number two, do you get along with your supervisor? And number three, do you get along with your supervisor? And I was confused because like, well, I can see why that's nice, but isn't the project more important? And he said, no, it's not. Because if you get along with your supervisor, it almost doesn't matter what was written in the grant proposal. You can almost do whatever you want.
01:16:10
Speaker
But if you don't get along with your supervisor, he basically said, I can tell you for sure. It doesn't matter what was written in the grand proposal. You won't be able to do any of it just because you won't be able to do any type of work. And this was a big eye opener for me, because when you're about to finish your master's,
01:16:33
Speaker
at least that's how it was for me, it was all about where you're going to do your PhD. Oh, I'm going to go to Oxford. I'm going to go to Cambridge. I'm going to work in this lab. I'm going to work in that. It was basically name dropping, which
01:16:46
Speaker
if you are in that state, is basically all you can rely on because you're so early on, you barely know anyone. So that's, you can just go based on the advertisements. So that he told me this really was okay, I need to dig a little deeper than just what's written on a website.
01:17:04
Speaker
And it also helped me to figure out if I go to an interview, what types of questions I need to ask and not just what types of questions I need to be prepared to answer. It's not at all. At the same time, it's also, that was at least my experience, is that when you come prepared with questions for the counterparty,
01:17:27
Speaker
95% of the time, they don't expect you to ask anything. And they do all the talking. And they do all the talking. Exactly. And you get all the information, which is so much more important to help you make a good decision. Because I think that's, in the end, to find that fit. Because nobody is happy. Also, your supervisor, who likes to work in a different way, isn't happy when the relationship isn't good.
01:17:54
Speaker
Because often we hear from the PhDs, you know, my supervisor, I can tell you your supervisor isn't pleased about that either. So it's a, it's a two-way street. And I also understand that you're on a shorter end of the stick, unfortunately, at the end at the, sorry. Yeah. Do you say it like that? Short end of the stick. You got the short end of the stick because you are hierarchically seen lower, but I, from my perception, that's only in your head.
01:18:24
Speaker
at least in the Netherlands, I have a flat culture. Yeah, I have seen, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying be rude or anything, but when you open up about difficulties, you have in a lab and ask for your supervisor's time to talk about this in private.
01:18:43
Speaker
they are willing to listen, just like any other human being would be. And that solved for a lot of my friends a lot of problems by just doing that and not walking in there with a battle plan or something, just be open and respectful. Because otherwise, as soon as you accuse people, they get defensive immediately, no matter if you have a good point or not. But yeah, no, that's, I agree with you, management,
01:19:10
Speaker
skills are important at that higher stage. Not only to manage your own lab, I would say, but now you're at such a high level, you have now a political game to play as well. And if you don't know about these things, again, without the training, you just have to deal with it while it presents itself to you. But that might not be the most efficient way to go about it. I think one thing, this previous, what we're talking about right now, brings us back to kind of
01:19:38
Speaker
Um, an important one. And that is if, if, if, if someone outside of academia was listening to this conversation now, I imagine this is my guess is they would be asking the question one, what is the point of the PhD? Right. So, so in other words, this person is getting a PhD. Are they getting a PhD just to get the degree? Are they getting a PhD to do research for society? Is that why they're doing it?
01:20:02
Speaker
Are they getting a PhD to launch their career, right? And why is this person, you know, in a program at a university getting a degree, but ultimately the relationship with one person matters the most? I mean, it's a kind of an interesting question.
01:20:21
Speaker
So it's an interesting question that gets us back to kind of the academic system as being the system. So one of the difficulties of course would be is if you take the take the view that the point of having PhDs is to create people to go into the
01:20:39
Speaker
knowledgeable people to contribute to society who have analytical skills and are proactive and creative and so on, then what should matter the most would be the program and the department and what we're training you to do and what we're exposing you so you can be this person. And then in that case,
01:21:00
Speaker
the supervisor becomes kind of the secondary thing. So the supervisor is the person who's going to guide you scientifically and is going to be kind of like your mentor. If you look at it like, well, no, the point of a scientist
01:21:21
Speaker
is to, is to, you know, um, scientists being the, the term scientists that's that, that is the academic job is to build a lab and train future scientists. Then, then you're talking about this supervisor student relationship that's almost completely independent of, of society as the goal or independent of the, the, you know, program.
01:21:50
Speaker
That's one of the things that's always difficult is because the supervisor in his or her position has their goals for research as well as climbing the academic ladder. They can
01:22:07
Speaker
if they don't ultimately share in the vision about what the PhD is for, they can see this as, you know, why does this matter, right? What matters is I'm taking this person, I'm ultimately in charge of what I consider good science and a good student and all this kind of stuff, right? And so when I hear about entrepreneurial training and I hear about soft skills and all this kind of stuff, you know, this person could say,
01:22:36
Speaker
want this. It's not their focus. I want them in the lab or something like this. My personal opinion is that what society wants from the PhD is now in the modern times what needs to be focused on.
01:22:52
Speaker
Right. So, so even if there's an excellent supervisor and a good relationship, there still needs to be something bigger than that too. Cause, cause you could have a great relationship of PhD and supervisor, but in the end, you know, it could actually not be beneficial for that person's career. Sure. Right. They could have a, they could love their time and it could be excellent, but they could completely not learn the skills that are going to be useful to them later. Right. So it has no output or have no output.
01:23:20
Speaker
or something like this, right? So it's always a difficult topic, right?
Purpose and Value of PhDs
01:23:26
Speaker
But as I mentioned, someone outside of academia, it'd be really interesting if what they would think, they would probably, you know, it's a foreign structure to them that
01:23:38
Speaker
In a way, they'd probably be wondering why does this exist and what's the ultimate purpose of some of this. And I also find it funny, whenever I hear people from industry coming and talking to scientists about how to come from science into industry, I find it quite funny to see how they say and insist the PhD counts for nothing. So I don't necessarily, and I often hear now,
01:24:07
Speaker
I've heard this so often that I also hear scientists now believing that. That's going to be discouraging. You don't want that. No, you don't want that at all. And I started to then debate friends and former colleagues
01:24:23
Speaker
on this, not because I wanted to be right, but because I just thought that was horrendous. You developed so many skills during your PhD and not seeing or counting that as a type of work experience is
01:24:38
Speaker
Yeah. I find that incredibly unfair. I think, I think, I think PhD students should, um, ultimately, um, from, from this, they start, they should almost start writing a non-academic resume right from their start. And in that top section where you list in general, your skills or what you're good at, start putting them down as you've given your excellent presentation, as you've solved the first data science problem, as you
01:25:03
Speaker
you've completed a complete data set as you've gotten good teaching reviews or whatever, start adding this, right? Keep track of all the things that you are doing that are not directly related to the document at the end, right? Because I also, so not that I want to blame industry now on this only, I very often saw friends of mine or other PhDs that finished that PhD walk
01:25:28
Speaker
into certain meetings very entitled. That doesn't only hold for PhDs. I find personally an entitled attitude is 99% of the time counterproductive because you, well, basically you just assume you deserve this without having shown why. And when you sit in a job interview like this,
01:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, no one is going to hire you with that type of attitude. You're not going to make for a good team player. You're not going to develop any further because you think you just deserve it. And by writing these things down, as you mentioned, I think you then also train automatically
01:26:12
Speaker
in that meeting that you then have or in that interview to communicate what you actually learned and did during your PhD because these other entities, they have no idea. Honestly, I was at the donors when I was doing my master's. I had no idea what a PhD entailed until I actually did it.
01:26:32
Speaker
And yeah, I think it's upon the person who did it to communicate this properly. They have the experience, the knowledge. The other people, they say, this doesn't count at all.
01:26:47
Speaker
They obviously don't have that knowledge, otherwise they wouldn't make that claim. So now it's up to you to convince them that it does count. And often there, I see the cut happening. They're just like, oh my God, they said this, and then they just stop talking. Then I ask them, what did you say then? Nothing.
01:27:07
Speaker
No, this was an invitation for you to not defend yourself, but to explain. At the very least, you can treat your PhD as a portfolio that you're building up. Yes. So that you're able to say, okay, yeah, you know, like, this is what my PhD entitled me, or not entitled. So this is what my PhD entailed. This is what it entailed. This is what I was doing.
01:27:29
Speaker
And I think that ultimately is where you're going with a PhD if you're thinking in terms of the benefit of society and so on. Because you could say, maybe we don't need PhDs really. Why do we have all these new PhD programs? Why are we encouraging people to get PhDs and stuff?
01:27:49
Speaker
And I ultimately, I think it's because it is one of many valuable degrees, apprenticeships, trainings, these kinds of things to create something for the new knowledge-based economy. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. So I have a few more questions for you. Let's see how far we go because I don't want to take too much more of your time. I would like your opinion on this.
PhD Contract and Funding Issues
01:28:15
Speaker
So the duration of a PhD.
01:28:18
Speaker
is on average across sectors about five years. So this number is about roughly constant in the Netherlands since 2001. Now I am wondering if this is so well known
01:28:33
Speaker
Since 2018 years, how come still only four-year contracts are given out? Oh, yeah. No, that's an issue. That is something unique to a funding model of a country. So there are advantages and disadvantages. So in North America, it's not a set.
01:28:55
Speaker
No, okay. It is not a four-year job. It is not a four-year job with a profile set by the organization, the national organization with different salary steps. It's not as much like that. It is much more variable. It is more when your committee determined that you've done enough.
01:29:15
Speaker
Right. And a disadvantage of that way is that people can, can go around for many, many years in, in kind of loops where something's not working and, and there's not really an incentive to just say, Hey, you're coming up on this deadline. We need it. We need to get this done. Right. So there is a disadvantage of that. Right. Um,
01:29:36
Speaker
But one advantage of that is it's more flexible. If every PhD project takes about four or five years or longer and you're only funding them for four, you need to then adjust the expectations.
01:29:56
Speaker
One reason that hasn't happened is, again, I think the PhD students themselves and their supervisor may be convinced that that extra amount of time is necessary for the project or for their own career goals. So it may not always be that a supervisor or a
01:30:19
Speaker
Um, um, a supervisory team is saying to the PhD student, you're not done. Right. And maybe that the PhD student themselves, um, is, is still wanting to continue in the traditional academic path, meaning that they want to do a postdoc at a good place, meaning that they need more papers and all this kind of stuff. So it might be voluntary that they're, that they're working longer than the four years. Right.
01:30:41
Speaker
If it's, if, but what you, but you, you definitely want to make sure. And I can, I'm happy to say that, yeah, but the Donders is concerned about this. Okay. And they are, and they are really making sure now that, that this is not the, the, the, the, we're not, this isn't some default thing. Like it's not, it's not, people are not to be walking around saying,
01:31:00
Speaker
Oh, I've got it prepared for this final year of unemployment because I know it's going to take five years, but they're only going to pay me for four. So I'm just going to be prepared for this final year of unemployment. And especially in the Netherlands, my understanding is it's technically that's illegal, right? It actually is illegal. Yeah. Right. And if I was, and, and, and, and, you know, as you know, if you're, if you're a taxpayer, um, you shouldn't want this. No, you shouldn't want this at all. You shouldn't want the, the, um, social support system.
01:31:27
Speaker
paying for a PhD student to take extra time. So there is a concern about this. And I think the balance is you want it to be made sure that the expectation is not that this is going to last longer than four years, but at the same time for the benefit of the individual student, plus the professor and everybody else involved in the science team, you don't want to say,
01:31:51
Speaker
You don't want to like force someone to retire before they're ready to go. Of course. Right. I mean, that also makes no sense. That also makes no sense. So, so, so at the very least, um, there is a tension here to say, no, we're going to make sure that this, that we're, we're not, the goal is not to have people work for free in this fifth year.
01:32:09
Speaker
So there should be more planning, should be more discussions with the supervisor and the daily supervisor all along with the thesis committee to be able to say, is this actually feasible in four years? So this illegal part that you just mentioned, I've seen this being, unfortunately, a widespread common practice of, oh, well, your contract's finished.
01:32:35
Speaker
Well, you do have four months anyway, right? Well, what do you mean four months? Well, you get four months of unemployment benefits, one month for each year you got paid during your PhD. So basically just work through then. But having that planned in already, so that didn't happen to me. So to anyone listening,
01:32:59
Speaker
you need to remember that when you do your PhD, that you're in charge. And you need to make clear that that is not what you are going to do. Because this is still, when you do it, you also need to, you cannot just point somewhere else saying, oh, they made me do it. You are complicit in this. So just don't, I don't want to blame just the supervisors here on this. It's part of the discussion. It's part of saying, so we do this with my own students, right? It's just more,
01:33:27
Speaker
It's important to discuss it. If we're collecting data at this rate, then this is not going to be completed in four years. So that means we cannot expect the PhD student to analyze the full data set, perhaps.
01:33:43
Speaker
Yeah. Or the PhD student will do a different question on the data set, something like this. Or we need to think about how we can hire the person as a postdoc afterwards. Something like this. Something like this. But so that dialogue has to happen. Exactly. And I find it important that you say dialogue. It's a dialogue. It's a dialogue. And your PhD student or postdoc, it's still a dialogue. Don't think you are.
01:34:13
Speaker
You have to follow someone blindly. And very often I noticed supervisors actually appreciate it when you take charge. They like that a lot because it takes work off their plate. It's great. Okay. How much more time do you have?
01:34:29
Speaker
You have just a few more questions. I have a few more questions, but I just want to focus on two more. OK. And one, OK, let's see if I can.
Academic Freedom vs Replication Crisis
01:34:38
Speaker
I think they are intertwined, but let's see if we can spread them out, which is the one part where I think academia has a problem because they say you have very flexible, you are very free, almost sounds like there is no bottom line, yet you have the publish or perish. Yeah.
01:35:00
Speaker
motivator or let's say force. And at the same time on the other end of the spectrum, so I don't know if this problem holds in other areas as well, but in social sciences, psychology, neuroscience as well, we are going through a big replication crisis, which I mean, that's very bad for science in general. And I'm wondering, how do you think these two things
01:35:30
Speaker
work together or maybe, maybe create each other in an answer. They don't, they don't. So I actually did a lot of my MBA projects on this type of thing. Okay. Tell me. So, so one of the, one of the difficulties, uh, um, in, in for, for an organization is the idea of there's, there's competing values, right? So if you're an, if you are a very fly by the seat of your pants,
01:35:53
Speaker
entrepreneurial organization, you want to be constantly moving, doing new things that comes out of as a consequence of say, being a controlled place, a place with procedures or price with policies and this kind of things, right? Yeah. So likewise, if you're very, very competitive and market focused, if you, if you want to say, listen, we Institute X, we care about papers. This is, this is what we're about.
01:36:19
Speaker
Okay. We are about papers and if it's not likely to have an impact above eight, this impact factor score, we're not doing it, right? If the Institute wanted to run like that, then what you should see is a very competitive culture where you pilot some things, you look at your data and you say, this data is garbage, I'm not continuing, right? And you're just very competitive focused, right? You can't have that culture, but at the same time, worry about a replication crisis.
01:36:46
Speaker
Oh yeah, of course. We're at the same time worry about the file drawer effect. That's another one where, where people all around the world spend their time trying to answer the same question. It doesn't look sexy enough. So they bury it. Right. So at the very least you, you, you, you have to recognize that, that your organization cannot
01:37:03
Speaker
exist in all of those places at once. And if it tries to, then it's just going to be a disaster. And everybody's going to be really frustrated because they're told one thing by their boss one day, one thing by their boss the other day, they never know what the priority is. And it can be a real disaster. Now, there are kinds of ways that you could have different divisions within the organization. Of course, like an accounting department should behave culturally different than the entrepreneurial spinoff department.
01:37:33
Speaker
Sure. So industry recognizes this. There are different departments, right? And some industries can have all of these things going on at once. But the important thing is that you, the employee, and your manager, and what the culture has to fit, right? And it can't be trying to be many places at once. You can't say one thing and do another, right? So I would say that, like,
01:37:56
Speaker
the universities need to say, if they really value and they care about a replication crisis, then they need to reward people for doing replication studies, right? They need to have meetings and dialogues where they say, we're pre-registering what we're doing. We're going to see this project through to this point where this is the analysis we're committing to do and this is what we're going to do. And the people who do that, then
01:38:25
Speaker
cannot, in say, their performance evaluation, be asked about impact of the paper. Yeah, impossible. Now, if you want to be really competitive and you want to be very focused, then you have to live with the file drawer effect. You have to live with pilots that are just going to be shelved if it doesn't look nice.
01:38:45
Speaker
And you just have to say, this is what we're about. We're going to, and to be honest, like in entrepreneurship, like if you're doing the lean startup, nobody's continuing the thing that's failing. And nobody's sharing that. Nobody's saying, I tried this, there was no market. No, that's the point. The point is to just, you are gonna make a competitive business out of this. And you're gonna go on the only thing that's proved to be working. And the other stuff you just ignore and it's just garbage, right? But there I would say that is though,
01:39:14
Speaker
to avoid a replication crisis in the startup, because you want to get to a point where this is going to work each and every single time, by no matter who does it. By no matter who does it. And that's when it comes to an experimental design. But then you have to live with what's known as the file drawer effect. People will waste time on stuff that's known not to work, but they didn't know that it wasn't going to work ahead of time. Right. That's right. So yeah, that's the thing.
01:39:42
Speaker
Right. So there is a slight difference between. Yeah. So, so there, so a, a, um, one advantage, and again, thinking of these different cultural conflicts is, um, if you want to, um, innovate and get to something that will work every time and every time, um, then you, you can't have metric kind of events because otherwise it just becomes box
Innovative Research and Performance Metrics
01:40:04
Speaker
ticking.
01:40:04
Speaker
So you have to be comfortable with keeping going until it's good and not try to have the goal be, how many X did I do? How many patents did I file? How many whatever, you have to be a bit more patient with getting it right. Right. So this is something that was common practice in the lab where I work was you come up with an experimental design, you pilot it,
01:40:32
Speaker
you have a look at the data and not to see, oh, we already see an effect, great, go ahead. It was more of, is there potentially something? And if there is, let's try to see which aspect of the experimental design we can streamline more to improve data quality or
01:40:54
Speaker
improve instructions for the participants because it became clear, okay, things like that. That's okay. I think you need to pilot that. Yeah, but when you keep doing that, from my perspective, you are already
01:41:09
Speaker
It's a failsafe against a replication problem you might have later on because what you actually start to do is you start pilot and then you pilot again and then you have the next iteration of your design. You actually are already replicating for yourself and seeing the consistency of that effect. And when you see that,
01:41:29
Speaker
And let's say that were to become in practice. I don't think we would have any type of crisis. No, but, but I think one, one issue, right. So, so again, this would, would, um, this means that, that, that no one can say not no one, but, but you, you, you can't be evaluated at a certain time. That's true. You need to be at this benchmark by this time. Because if you need to be at this benchmark by this time and you're still iterating, then, then what you will do is you will, you will, you will try to force it to fit this benchmark.
01:41:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's a known problem. Likewise, then you can't have something like an ethical rule that limits the amount of iterations you can do. You shouldn't have to ask approval every time you need new pilots or something like this because now you're introducing boundaries, which now pull you away from being able to iterate as many times as possible till you get it right.
01:42:25
Speaker
Yeah. Right. So again, this is this, all this kind of stuff that like, this is, this is the kind of things that, that, you know, you, you, um, part of management training should, should give you to recognize this, this space where these things conflict and just, and not to just pretend that it doesn't exist. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. My final question. Almost is.
01:42:48
Speaker
Now we see a lot of, so this is tied into the publish and perish and the grant structure in the academic system is to know, okay, you normally have to apply for grants, you have to write these insanely long grant proposals that are then evaluated. It takes a lot of time, normally writing one of those, what's that? Six months, then you apply, then you maybe get it, and then when you get it, what has passed? One year maybe?
01:43:14
Speaker
And then you are still bound to, you cannot hire always IT people to help you out. You can only do this and then, et cetera, et cetera.
01:43:24
Speaker
When it comes to, when I look now in industry-wise, entrepreneurship, and I try to look at where can I see this similar pattern, if you think of venture capital, you have to do something very similar. You have to say, okay, this is the direction we want to go, please give me money so we can do it, but they don't just give you money. No, of course not. Of course not. They want to see that you're good, they want to see exactly. Exactly.
01:43:52
Speaker
Now, I've been wondering, do you think when it comes to academic research, how do you think other types of funding opportunities for it can play a role? And to give you a concrete example,
01:44:08
Speaker
I read about this one researcher. He was a chemist. He was working at a company and at some point he decided, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. He basically started his own lab. He was working by himself, for himself, and he got his funding from crowdfunding platforms. Now this is a
01:44:31
Speaker
like an insanely unorthodox way if you think about the traditional academic system.
Exploring Unconventional Research Funding
01:44:36
Speaker
This would be, I don't know, maybe seen as crazy or something. But it also could be tolerated. Exactly, exactly. So do you think this is a potential way of how things can develop?
01:44:49
Speaker
I would hope this type of alternative sources of models would be. For instance, so a university then would need to just be okay with it. Some are more than this. Or no more university. Or no more. Let me say, with FMRI, you cannot just buy a machine like that. There's the infrastructure and then there's also, I think where it gets a little bit gray, is suppose you are working with patients or human subjects. There are laws against
01:45:16
Speaker
me starting a lab in my garage through crown funding and inviting patients with some neurological disorder to come. So you often do have to be associated with some sort of institute. Or you can collaborate.
01:45:31
Speaker
I think it seems to me this is not that difficult because, for instance, you could set yourself up as a baby, a limited liability company. You could charge for your services to run lab tests. And those lab tests could be experiments. And you could maybe qualify as a partner in some of these industry academia grants.
01:45:58
Speaker
You also, it is not like there are grants. Um, I can't name them, but, but certainly I know there's grants in Canada and there's, and I'm sure there's EU, I know there's EU grants too, for SMEs to do research and innovation. Yeah, exactly. So, so they are, so that society is ready for non-academic institutes to be doing research activities based on public money.
01:46:18
Speaker
Public funding. Yeah, yeah, I agree. No, I think this is something that this is an option that's so new, like almost on the horizon that I think a few researchers should really consider this because they want to continue.
Science Outside Traditional Academia
01:46:33
Speaker
I know they want to go down the academic work, but not the academic career. So what I mean is
01:46:42
Speaker
They want to stay, they want to stay in science, but they don't want to stay in academia. So, and often people, I personally don't think these are the same thing. Academia is a system implemented to do science. Yes. I agree with you. Right. And you can also do this in a different way, potentially.
01:47:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. So I think it's already starting to happen. So it would require, like I say, you need some sort of mechanism where you can get money to do it. So crowdfunding would work. Or these grants. But these grants would probably require you then to specify your structure. So what are you? If you're not affiliated with university, then are you a baby?
01:47:25
Speaker
Or are you trying to start a startup? What are you? There is always going to be something like that. So you will have to fit yourself to the specific criteria of the funding. That kind of thing. No, I agree.
01:47:40
Speaker
Yeah. And, and so what can happen is, is the U is on the university side. Um, often I think this is, there are professors of course, who also have businesses, right? Um, then you're talking about, um, IP issues maybe, or your division of time and labor and all this kind of stuff, but assuming you can reach some sort of agreement, which, which are possible depending on a particular policy, then you yourself and your Bay Bay could be going,
01:48:09
Speaker
no reason, not that you couldn't be going to VC for money. Exactly. I totally agree. And there are a lot of R&D types of startups that exist and get a lot of- So that already exists. That already exists. And I think that should not be- But maybe people aren't encouraged to do it. I think they don't know about it. Yeah, that's right. The student who knows about PhD and becoming a professor is less likely to know about, well, this, that.
01:48:36
Speaker
And as in all honesty, I had no idea about the academic career path at all. I just wanted to do a PhD because at that time I thought, well, I like what I did during my master's might as well get paid for it. That was my motivation. That was, that was, that was all. And, and only later on I understood like.
01:48:53
Speaker
Oh, this is how this is working. And so I'm not saying anybody who doesn't know this is at any fault, or anybody that they're not being trained on this. These are things that are just developing, but should be considered. It could be considered as something very valuable. Now my final question for you, and this is an easy one, is so for anybody who is listening now,
Recommended Reads for Academics
01:49:20
Speaker
Do you have any sources or resources or books that you would recommend? Maybe specific because you are also at the intersection of business, industry and academia. Do you have maybe specific books you would recommend academics to read and maybe other specific books you would suggest industry people to read that listen now?
01:49:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So for academics, I mean, it would be good to read, uh, the, the lean startup, right? So Eric Reese, Eric Reese, lean startup. Um, it is, is my impression. It is kind of the, the, um, default way. Most people I've seen in the world now are thinking about entrepreneurship. It's starting to be challenged. I know. Cause when you read it, you start to say, okay, it's not like, it's not the only way of doing things, but it is probably the, the, at least about the iterations.
01:50:11
Speaker
It's a good framework and especially as a scientist to think about, you know, one, not being so nerdy and actually getting out and talking to people. And two, also thinking as an experiment or like AB testing. So let's try this, try this. So that's a good one.
01:50:27
Speaker
Um, on the management side, uh, looking into this thing called the competing values framework, um, by Cameron and Quinn, not related to me. Um, but that's a, that's a great book to really understand these kinds of cultural conflicts that I think really reflects, um, this, this issue and, you know, publishing versus motivating people versus, you know, uh, impact factors versus doing proper science. I think this, this is an excellent framework and that's a management management, um, book. Okay.
01:50:56
Speaker
Um, on the, the industry side, um, one thing that's kind of encouraging is, is I remember reading, it's a book by, I think it's Eric Schmidt from Google. So it's called How Google Works. Oh yeah. That's a good book. That's a good book. And I think that's a good book because as if your is, is it can remind you about where academia has actually helped industry.
01:51:19
Speaker
Yeah. So, so this book came out in the 90s when maybe as far as I can tell industry was a bit more, um, you know, what's good for the shareholder. That's what we do. Yeah. Right. So if it's not good for the shareholder, we're not doing it something like this. Right. And, and so, and, and pushing towards just yet without whatever, whereas this, this book, um, was, uh, I mean, I mean, of course Google has this
01:51:43
Speaker
famous, although I mean, I've never seen it in practice, but the idea of allowing your employees one day a week to do something that's creative, right? I think they were inspired by academia in terms of how academia is pretty good at interviewing people, kind of asking people to come in, you know, what have you done? What are you planning to do? Like this kind of thing, I think, the book, I haven't read it in a while, but it was inspired
01:52:11
Speaker
by the committee search type thing of academic and where academia is good at training people to be independent thinkers and to be problem solvers. And you're hiring a person for their ability to be creative and inventive and not just say, what's my job? How much do I get paid? What are my performance metrics, right? So that's what I think is a good book kind of in a way going the other way.
01:52:38
Speaker
Yeah, what I found interesting is what the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, right? That they took what they learned during their PhDs at Stanford, which they didn't finish in the end. They basically took that system and started it at Google and treating a lot of their employees basically like PhD students. There you go. Yes, that's right. And that's, I think, very interesting.
01:53:02
Speaker
And what I also found very interesting, I don't know if that's the more recent change in management, was that they basically told their managers, you can have as many people working for you as you want, but you have to convince them to work for you for this project that you want to do. You don't just get 10 assigned and then they will
01:53:24
Speaker
will code away for you. No, no, no. You can have as many as you want, but you need to convince these people to get on board and behind your project. Right. So it's more, it is, right. It's more person focused. It's much more about like the right person. Yeah. Higher, higher. I think the, like the summary of how Google works is higher good people. Yeah. Higher good people. Right. Like I think that's kind of the main summary, which is something that academia has tried to focus on for years. Yeah. Right. And, and, and, and, and in, in a good, in a good way. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah.
01:53:54
Speaker
That was basically my last question. Ian, I want to thank you so much for the time you took.
Contact Information and Conclusion
01:53:59
Speaker
If people want to find you online or just reach out to you, where can they find you? LinkedIn would be good. LinkedIn would be good.
01:54:09
Speaker
Ian GM Cameron. All right. Ian GM Cameron. Nobody has to write this down. All of this will be in the show notes as well. Also, all the books and other types of content we mentioned. Well, yeah, thanks again, Ian. I had a great time and thank you for taking the time. Not a problem. I was happy to do it. Yeah. And well, to everyone listening, you have a great day.
01:54:34
Speaker
Hey everyone, just one more thing before you go. I hope you enjoyed the show and to stay up to date with future episodes and extra content, you can sign up to the blog and you'll get an email every Friday that provides some fun before you head off for the weekend. Don't worry, it'll be a short email where I share cool things that I have found or what I've been up to. If you want to receive that, just go to ajmal.com. A-D-J-M-A-L dot com. And you can sign up right there. I hope you enjoyed.