Reflections of a Post-Industrial Physicist
Physics in the real world and the relationship between the twin cultures of science and engineering.
Tuesday 9 June 2015
The Real World
We met at a workshop I was giving to introduce people and businesses to photonic technology. It was this that led them to think if photonic approaches could offer a new way of tackling some of the problems they come across. Generally these problems involved metrology of some sort. Avoiding costly errors of production is crucial as small mistakes in a few items can have big consequences to their customers and end up costing them significant sums in compensation and wastage. Yet much of the checking is still done by people who will tend to make mistakes.
This company needs people to help with innovation but they cant recruit anywhere near the number of graduates they need, becasue as I said earlier its not sexy. In this manufacturing engineering they estimated there were 100 jobs for every 10 graduates, and a massive skill shortage. Having spent time there and walked around the factory, and observed the daily grind, I left thinking that all academics should be made to experience this. Firstly it would make them realise how lucky they are to work in an academic environment. Second it might help them to realise what is needed to translate their work done in a lab into a working product that someone else might use. Currently there is an enormous gulf between someones concept of how an idea could be used and what is required to make it happen.
Monday 1 June 2015
The Dowling Review
... help researchers to understand better the interests of industry and to facilitate the development of trusting relationships that will deliver broad-based benefits to the UK through linking the long-term strategic needs of business with the UK’s research capabilities. The review will consider the implications for the full spectrum of research disciplines and businesses of different sizes, types and sectors.As someone who has been in both camps I thought I had something to offer to this, so I submitted my opinions on the matter in the form of evidence to the review. I include it here.
Building long term relationships.
Barriers for Business.
Barriers for Academia
Effectiveness of incentives
Stimulating collaboration with strategy
In Conclusion
Monday 18 May 2015
Impact and elitism
Academia has proven to be an unstable place. Often it feels very unreal. There is a great murmuring about the importance of impact in the real world, but when it comes down to it, academics are not really interested in making it happen. Impact is a duty, one of those things that you ought to do rather than want to do. Publishing an important paper is something you can keep with you and use as collateral to take to another job. Impact is something that the institution benefits from, so the incentives are not really there. There is talk about changing the way performance reviews are carried out so that real impact can aid in promotion. Actually there is a more deep seated problem of cultural prejudice in academia. It's not just that impact is less interesting than research, it's that there is a scientific elitism.
Frances Saunders, the previous president of the Institute of Physics laid it out last year at the Photon14 conference in London. She explained how her career, which has been similar to my own, has been in the area of applied science. It has been to use the science to actually do something rather than postulate about what it could do before moving on to the next research topic. She described how This approach is looked down upon by the majority of the scientific community. Have you looked at the impact factors of journals that might take applied sciece, in fact have you looked at the number of journals that actually publish applied physical science. Science is touted as the driving force behind our economy, yet transition science that takes concepts and makes them practical, implementable and real is like the embarassing relative that no one wants to talk about. There is definitely an elitist attitude that blue sky, cutting edge science is the only science that matters.
Until we align the culture of scientific progress with real world impact, and recognise and reward it accordingly, there will always be this tension and true impact will creep rather than leap forward. I have now seen for myself how academics are like ferrets in a sack, squabbling and trying to get to the top. In my local environment at least there is very little interest in team work and the system does nothing to bolster the problem, it is everyone for themself and it is tax payers money that being treated as it is is academics by right. This is a big ship to steer and I cant see things changing much. The only way is for people like me to become established and try and change the culture form the inside.
Sunday 23 March 2014
The 3 P's
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.
Wednesday 5 February 2014
Through the looking glass
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.
Saturday 23 November 2013
is the academic and industrial research link working
Saturday 26 October 2013
Industrial uniform
I recently attended a technical fayre and mini exhibition. As i walked around it was obvious who the business people were -they were the ones wearing suits. Technical types (such as me) and academics rarely wear suits. So why do so many others ? The suit is a business uniform. The abence of a suit is also a kind of uniform. It is a kind of statement that says 'I'm more interested in the science than the business' and that actually is the case. There is nothing wrong with that. You need people who are focussed on the science just as much as you need people who are focussed on the business, in order to provide a proper balance. But the odd thing is this; the suit is a visible credential , its almost as if in business you wouldn't trust someone who wasn't wearing a suit. And yet I distrust people more if they are wearing a suit.
Recently in hospital whilst looking after my injured child, I visited a cafe to get a drink. In the cafe was a person wearing a pinstripe suit and waistcoat. It was obvious they were in the hospital to sell stuff. It felt really inappropriate that someone was there is full view with the purpose of making a profit whilst the rest of us were only concerned about our sick children. I know that is irrational because everything that is used in the hospital results in profit for someone, and there is so much waste that selling to hospitals must be very profitable. But it just seemed a bit too in your face. Do business people feel they have a better chance of a sale if they are in a suit? Do they think that it is being disrespectful to the purchaser if they dont wear a suit? Do they think the customer wont buy from them without the suit?
In my company none of the technical people wear suits. Most of the commercial people do however. Even those that rarely leave the office or meet people outside of the company. Perhaps they are trying to instill into their colleagues the impression that they are a professional, perhaps they are trying to instill into themselves the very same opinion.
I think that in the technical community at least there is the opinion that the way I look does not affect the way I think. Obviously I have a lot of sympathy with point of view, but I also think that if the way you dress makes you feel more confident it will show through in what you do and how you interact. Equally so if wearing a suit makes you feel uncomfortable.