I've been in academia now for over a month. Its been a bit of a culture shock for a number of reasons, that include the difference between academic freedom and industrial security, access to journals and a number of other things - mostly all postive things, just takes a little time to adjust. But the most concerning thing, which surprised me with its intensity, was just how much of a rat race it is. It's very much everyone for themself. I was expecting more of a team ethos, but I think the only way you get that is by proving you can attract money and people gravitate towards you. This surprised me because you could never get that to work in industry. If you are not a team player you wont last long unless people absolutely need what you do.
I recently bumped into a Prof from another university and informed him of my change of circumstances. His advice was to be aware of the 3 P's. Pounds, papers and PhD's - in that order. Money is the most important priority. It seems that academia is running itself with the priorities of the commercial world. Is this what we want of our academic institutions. They are desperate to make money, desperate to generate intellectual property that they can sell. If you really want to generate economic impact with your research then the only way to do this is to give it away to commercial enitites that can do something with it. After all research is (generally) paid for by the tax payer - all of which originates from commercial enterprise in the form of income tax, corporation tax. So in a sense you make commercial entities buy back the work they have already paid for. Universities dont sell much and the process is time consuming and costly, which is exactly what you dont need if you want to commercialise and have impact.
So if I am going to make my way in academia I need to attract some money, and seeing as how I have little academic track record that is not likekly to come from research councils. So I am in the position that academia is keen to pursue , which is getting money from industry and other non academic bodies. For this at least I ought to have an advantage. Time will tell.
Sunday 23 March 2014
Wednesday 5 February 2014
Through the looking glass
Having blogged a little about industrial research and its relationship with industry, I am now going through the looking glass and am about to move to research in academia. I have mentioned before how difficult it has been to be considered for an academic position when you have been working in industry for so long and don’t have the academic record of and academic working in academia. I was then fortunate that a position intended to pursue research with a view to forging connections with industry became available. A position actually putting academics at a disadvantage as it required industrial research experience.
So I am soon to start and I shall be bringing to the role plenty of opinions about the problems that academics have with trying to collaborate with industry. Much of this will be the substance of future posts, so I don’t want to waste it all now, but there is certainly a big misalignment between what academia wants to do and what industry expects. Aligning these two views will take quite some effort and I dare say it will be academia that needs to budge.
Some universities are better than others at connecting with, talking to and working with industry. With a new emphasis by funding bodies on impact and exploitation , the industrial relationship is becoming more important to getting funding through traditional routes. An industrial colleague of mine recently visited a department at Cambridge University. He said that slowly it was beginning to dawn on them that they need to start seriously working out how they are actually going to get involved with industry. There was an innate arrogance about the place which had taken a bit of a hit when they did not get a grant renewed because another university had some commercial funding that had swayed the assessors to go with a university that was trying harder. Cambridge had assumed they would get funding because they were Cambridge. There needs to be a change of culture in academia and there will be some aspect of Darwinian competition that's going to upset some people.
Now I happen to think that the EPSRC (the funding body for UK science research) has got some things badly wrong of late – such as concentrating all PhD’ s in doctoral training centres, and not allowing grant proposals to fund PhD students. These have dried up the lifeblood of research around UK institutions and seriously reduced the base of creative innovation. But we are where we are and there is no denying that academic institutions need to grasp the nettle of culture change required to successfully integrate with industry and compete successfully for funded research.
So I am soon to start and I shall be bringing to the role plenty of opinions about the problems that academics have with trying to collaborate with industry. Much of this will be the substance of future posts, so I don’t want to waste it all now, but there is certainly a big misalignment between what academia wants to do and what industry expects. Aligning these two views will take quite some effort and I dare say it will be academia that needs to budge.
Some universities are better than others at connecting with, talking to and working with industry. With a new emphasis by funding bodies on impact and exploitation , the industrial relationship is becoming more important to getting funding through traditional routes. An industrial colleague of mine recently visited a department at Cambridge University. He said that slowly it was beginning to dawn on them that they need to start seriously working out how they are actually going to get involved with industry. There was an innate arrogance about the place which had taken a bit of a hit when they did not get a grant renewed because another university had some commercial funding that had swayed the assessors to go with a university that was trying harder. Cambridge had assumed they would get funding because they were Cambridge. There needs to be a change of culture in academia and there will be some aspect of Darwinian competition that's going to upset some people.
Now I happen to think that the EPSRC (the funding body for UK science research) has got some things badly wrong of late – such as concentrating all PhD’ s in doctoral training centres, and not allowing grant proposals to fund PhD students. These have dried up the lifeblood of research around UK institutions and seriously reduced the base of creative innovation. But we are where we are and there is no denying that academic institutions need to grasp the nettle of culture change required to successfully integrate with industry and compete successfully for funded research.
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