The difference between a scientist and an engineer.

What is the difference between and engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician?
An engineer believes equations approximate the world.
A physicist believes the world approximates equations.
A mathematician sees no connection between the two.

 
In my latest job I was thrust into the midst of engineers. I gave this no thought, as I just assumed we were all scientists and that was that. I had always been previously surrounded by physicists and was a little unprepared for the culture shock. It wasn't just a cultural difference between engineers and physicists, but a difference between research and development. I will of course be using sweeping generalisations, but they apply well enough. As a scientific researcher I am comfortable with not knowing, after all seeking after knowledge requires an initial absence of knowledge. I am used to things not working out as I expected, and I thrive on trying new things to see what happens. Engineering development is not like that. There is a structured plan, a project, with temporal and financial paths to be trodden. There is a way of doing things  and a list of instructions. Development is cooking from a recipe. From what I have seen engineers tend to think in straight lines, to get from point A to point B. From where I am, if point B is your end point you dont necessarily need to start from point A, and that is a creative, cultural difference. In the commercial industrial world , you the scientist are not in charge, it is the project managers and the fund holders who control things and if they dont want you investigating new areas, then it wont happen, because they have their journey mapped out. Looking at science for science sake is different. It is also an appropriate difference between industry and academia.
Engineers it seems are pre-prepared for this approach, after all that is what engineers do, they control scientific processes and use scientific tools, with a view to making things work better. I have heard the stereotypes  before but  I have witnessed them for myself. As a physicist I want to know why something happens, engineers want to know what it does. The engineers have a much more efficient approach - they will tend to find the module that does what they want and plug it in. As long as they know what the inputs and outputs are they are happy. That doesn't work for me, I want to know how its doing it, and it slows me down.  It is the job of the scientist to hypothesise and then seek prove or disprove the hypothesis. In doing so this provides scientific tools that can be used. Engineers have the task of adding to the toolbox and building something better. The two disciplines are essential and I have seen how conbining the different disciplines within teams provides useful insight into problems. If you want someonje to think differently about a problem you wouldn't necessarily call upon an engineer, If you want something  done well, in a known way dont as a research scientist.

Doing research in industry

When I was in academia, I didn't really know much about industry. However  I didn't really have much interest in it, I confess I somewhat looked down on industry. Then I moved to industry and since then I have tried to conduct research from within industry. I remember looking at some of the work undertaken and thinking 'my university could do this better'. I now know this is not the full story. When the work needs to be done now, often universities are not able to respond, because it takes time to recruit a postdoc. The work might only last a few months and a university wont have the spare resource to do it. Sometimes the work needs to be performed securely and universities don't have the required level of security. At these times industrial research is required and they are usually happy to take the money. Thus it is important to have competent researchers who are not in academia. This is however an opportunity for academia to widen its scope and broaden its opportunities, but it requires a culture change in expectations of how work can be resourced. Change may come but it will be slow.
So the obvious outcome is that there is some research available to people not in academia, but it is not easy to come by. I have heard a lot about the difficulties involved in acquiring funding for research, but consider this. As an academic you have dedicated funding councils whose job it is to provide hundreds of millions in research funding, based on the quality of the idea, and they will provide all the funding necessary. There are few such prospects for industrial researchers. It is expected that industry will fund its own research and that they will throw money towards universities to do some as well. Unless you  are a major company research money is very scarce and positive results will be expected. There are international pots of funding such as from the EU, but these require a significant amount of stability within the organisation to guarantee commitment of people and funding for years down the line. Universities can do this, some small companies cannot. In some cases international collaboration may also not be possible for security reasons.
Doing physics research in industry is not the easiest way to go about it, especially where there are inherent security policies within your organisation, irrespective of the nature of the research. No access to journals, no access to external data storage such as dropbox, lack of diverse facilities or high spec equipment and a project management culture that places profit (and sometimes additional profit) ahead of results are just some of the difficulties that face an industrial researcher. I have worked with some truly gifted physicists within industry and learned much about a variety of different topics, probably moreso than if I had remained in academia. I have seen many of my ideas  lie fallow and remain unpublished due to misguided pretensions about intellectual property or a diminution of profit caused by paper writing, then some years later see other researchers have the same ideas.
Then you hear that academia needs to be more industrially relevant, more focused on economic impact. But if you , as an industrial researcher apply for an academic position you can get nowhere because you have been in industry so long that your publications list is not long enough and you have not been lecturing to undergraduates. There is a 'this the way its always been' attitude within academia. Physics in particular can be prone to waxing lyrical about potential applications to get funding whilst not considering how to practically implement those applications. I remember the feeling that outside involvement can  contaminate the purity of the research. Give us your money but dont get involved. Well times have changed, and the structure of academic funding has changed and some academics, particularly in engineering have woken up to this.
The structure of academic science and research in the UK has changed, and not for the better in my opinion and whilst it persists there  will be no lack of well qualified overseas applicants for academic positions and no obvious incentive to change.
So would I recommend industrial research to the newly graduated doctoral student? Well it depends on the student. It can be very rewarding, sometimes even financially, but if its the science that drives you more often than not business gets in the way. I know that academia has its issues with administration, but at least you are in a community where research in its own right is its own justification. The likemindedness of your peers and colleagues is very valuable. You can get that in industry, and you can get many other rewarding pursuits, but don't take the essence of inquiring research  as an invariant.

There is value in different ways of doing things

There are different ways of improving and innovating.
When I think up new ways of doing things or different approaches, it isn't always about  making more precise measurements, or faster measurements. It is often how to do something that can already be done, just how to do it differently. There is a tendency  in the world of physics to only consider the importance of a scientific innovation in terms of how it enables us to do things better than we already can. After all what would be the point of making a new way to measure something that is worse than the best we can already do? Well often there is value in being able to measure something with 10 times less acurracy if you can do 50 times cheaper. This is something engineers have to think about when they are designing a product. Often small changes in cost can have a big impact. So my plea to the wider physics world is not to dismiss as irrelevant different approaches just becasue we can already do something.
For instance I have developed a method for measuring the refractive index of a liquid inside a bottle, without opening the bottle. It is not the most accurate method ever invented , it is nowhere near as accurate as sampling the liquid and measuring the refractive index with a refractometer. But it could monitor coarse changes such as temperature dependence, or it could give you an idea  as to the contents of the bottle, even if the liquid is opaque. The technique is extremely cheap, but because it is not challenging very accurate methods no one quite sees the point. This is applied science, discovered by accident, but it perhaps a solution looking for a problem. Its not the sort of science thats taken seriously, because its not sexy, or particularly deep. Its also not expensive  and it seems that unless there is a big grant in it, then its not worth thinking about.

Where are the British engineers?

Throughout my career I have had the dubious pleasure of being surrounded by physicists. Some semi geniuses, some not so. Most fitting one of the character stereo types, with beards or jumpers or socks and sandals or body odour issues - some with all of them. But they all thought like physicists. So when I moved on and became surrounded by engineers, I was unfamiliar with scientists who thought differently, after all I was in agreement with Lord Rutherford  who said "All science is either physics or stamp collecting". The different mindset of physicists and engineers is something I will return to, but one difference in the scientific education of engineers has surprised me. On my degree course there were about 130  students, about 5 of them females and even fewer were overseas students. As I have visited engineering departments around the UK I have been struck by the large number of overseas students. Some engineering courses have had 90% of their students being from overseas. Dont get me wrong, I have nothing against overseas students, and universities love them because of the higher fees they pay. My concern is "where are all the British engineers?" What is it about engineering that makes British students want to do something else? And why is there seemingly no problem getting British students to study physics?
So I did what all modern people do and I googled it. There is a site that provides a breakdown of international students in UK academic institutions
 http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/about/statistics_he.php
 International students made up 14% of all first degree courses and 48% of all full time research degrees. This is not the 90% I had been told but this is across all subject areas.The breakdown with subject area is given below. It may be different for specific subjects and specific universities.

Subject of study	No of international students	% in subject who are international
Business & administrative studies	130,505	36%
Engineering & technology	51,775	32%
Social studies	38,790	17%
Creative arts & design	25,250	14%
Languages	23,270	17%
Subjects allied to medicine	23,035	8%
Computer science	21,300	22%
Law	20,810	22%
Biological sciences	19,570	10%
Physical sciences	13,025	14%
Education	11,725	6%
Architecture, building & planning	11,415	20%
Medicine & dentistry	10,605	16%
Mass communications & documentation	10,400	19%
Historical & philosophical studies	9,250	9%
Mathematical sciences	8,160	19%
Combined	2,890	3%
Agriculture & related subjects	2,415	11%
Veterinary sciences	1,025	18%
Total	435,235	17%

There is certainly concern about the number of British students getting into engineering, and rightly so. What is it about the British education system that has people heading for courses like media studies and golf course management. Well there is of course the perception that science is hard, and its not just a perception, it is hard, but it's also personally rewarding. However not so financially rewarding - unless you want to go into medicine. I do believe that governments have recognised that a lack of  UK engineers has serious consequences for a would be high tech economy, but what can they do about it? It seems to me that much of the problem is deep rooted in the British class system.  You mention an engineer and you think of someone in a boiler suit and oil covered hands. Engineering is not refined. An engineer is someone who fixes your washing machine. These stereotypes are both wrong and damaging. Engineers are highly trained, highly skilled and competent individuals. Engineers are the people who make the iphones that the golf course managers take for granted. This cultural gulf in the UK is something that will take a generation to put right once we actually start trying.
We can of course take our cue from the Germans who have engineers who understand technology running technology companies, not accountants. But that is the British way, the toffs are in charge.    

Humble beginings

I was the first person in my family ever to go to university, and hence I had no template to work with. I didn't really do it right and it could have gone better, but really I was a bit too young to cope in a mature fashion with the change of lifestyle. l came from a very poor family and at university I was surrounded by many people of privilege. It took a few years for me to realise that what other people thought of me didn'matter as I deserved to be there, but that feeling of inferiority has never really left me.
I discovered in secondary school that I was good at physics. This was somewhat of a surprise as I had always planned to go to art college. It was also a surprise for the smartest kid in the school who was mocked because some kid with absolutely nothing special to make him stand out was suddenly scoring more highly than him. So physics was my topic, and actually it was my only science. With that direction established I went as far as I could go, getting degrees and a PhD, and I loved it, it defined me - it still does. I had a couple of spells as a postdoc and then decided that I could no longer live with the insecurity of one year contracts, especially as I had a wife to consider, so I took a permanent job in the defence industry. So far I have been out of academia for 15 years.
In 2009 I took voluntary redundancy and did a lot of thinking about what I wanted to be doing with my life. The answer was research, because I thought I had something useful to offer, this was certainly the conclusion I came to when I looked back on the variety of topics that I had been involved with. I took another industrial research position but this time I had thought to build academic connections and perhaps get some ideas into academia. since then I have been trying to develop some of my creativity. Its not as easy as I would have liked.