is the academic and industrial research link working

The relationship between industry and academia is a varied and interesting one. I've seen it work well but I have also seen it go the other way. In a sort of ideal scenario then an academic would have a bright idea which would be investigated with grant funding. After a suitable period of investigation where the concept is proven it should be picked up by industry who will develop it into a practical realisation that can ultimately be sold. Everyones happy, the academic got funding to do some interesting work, the industry acquired something useful that they can sell. The industry didn't have to invest lots of its own money in a range of ideas that mostly did not work, but was able to pick the winner and put its resources behind it with confidence. The grant funding body is happy because it has successfully used tax payers money to good effect so that a commercial gain will boost the economy. Consumers are happy as they have something new to buy. The university may well have filed some intellectual property and will have some successful publications. All is well then, except it rarely works like that. Almost every grant proposal now must explain the impact of the work. How the results will be exploited so as to provide some economic benefit. Apparently every piece of research is going to do something significant. I wonder if anyone has correlated the pay offs against the promises. Does the country get value for money from its investment in research? I know that science should be done for the sake of knowledge, but exploitation is now part ot the exam question so is it working or not? Exploitation requires a proper relationship with industry, not just a cursory letter of support  with the grant proposal, but on going involvement. Small leverage of the project direction at the beginning can make a big difference at the end of the project to how easy to develop the idea is. Industry also has to be willing and able to get involved and stay involved. That can sometimes mean that industry needs some funding stream. This is an often neglected aspect. There is an assumption that industry is awash with money that it can throw around . There can be several reasons why this is not the case. Firstly small companies may not have any spare cash to risk. Larger companies may have more money, but for the industrial researchers they will have to make a business case to get internal funding to pursue academic relations. This is competed money and therefore the results have to be worth it. My experience is that timescales can be problem. Academia will offer a 3 year PhD whereas industry might want the product in 2 years. Timescales are the big disparity. Academia just does not have the people on tap to rapidly switch on a project. This is where the value of the researh organistions, such as the Faunhofer institutes should really start to showas you can get the best of both worlds. With industry and academia seemingly competing for the same funding streams it is ever more important that we collaborate to get the best out of everyone.

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.

Applied science

One of the new perspectives that arises from a child being in hospital is one of the application of science. Actual application is another planet to many people who just want to pursue some science. To me application is what its all about. But when I look at the usefulness of what I actually do witnessing the science in action is inspirational. I saw an echo cardiogram machine which was one of the most amazing bits of scientific technology I have ever seen. I understood what I was seeing, the slice through the heart seen by the fan of ultrasound reflecting of various tissue type. A view from under the ribs, from the middle of the chest, from the side . Video at 70 frames per second of the heart valves pumping. Doppler measurements of the 2MHz ultrasound beam showing the direction of blood flow, measurements of the size of arteries. All this because my son had a low resting heart rate and the doctors wanted just to have a look and see what was there. He was fine by the way, at least his heart was. It made me realise that there is so much genuine advantage that can be wrought from the well directed use of science. I can achieve so much more than I currently do tinkering and toying with small amounts of defence funding. I must achieve more.

The onset of perspective

For three days now I  have been sat in a childrens hospital by my sons bedside. The fragility of the things that really matter to you will of course lead to achange of current perspective. Not much else matters other than my sons condition and the state of the rest of my family, not work, not academia or its lack. Physics matters a bit as I talk to the doctors and explain that I am science conversant and I understand the science behind nuclear medicine and i understand cause and effect. There is no intellectual competition going on,  I just want to understand whats happening. I suppose the powerlessness and lack of control have the effect of making you try to have some influence. scientifically speaking we tend to call the shots on what we do in the lab. So many times do we assume mastery over nature, its all a bit different when there is nothing we can do.

Wait for me, I want to do research too.

If it is a love of your subject that drives you, a desire to 'do research' then there are some things that you need to consider regarding how you undertake that research. In the modern age there are certain things that are taken for granted, so how would you cope witout those things. Let me explain. Research in industry or in government labs doesn't have the same freedom as is generally available to academia. This is most often to do with security ;- be that national security or commercial security - but it is also about cost. Here are a list of things that I cant do:

Due to concerns over network and information security I cannot make use of external sharing and storage sites. Now this may not seem all that serious, and its not, its just inconvenient. In a collaborative proposal with a university I was sent a link to a dropbox folder where all the documentation and proposal information was being kept. The idea being of course that with several of us providing input we could keep an up to date current version that was accessible to all parties. Except me. I needed to do all communication via email which is somewhat slower and less efficient for all concerned.   I could of course access dropbox from home, however I am not allowed to send company related information or documents to our home via email or any other means, due to concerns about the security of our home computers. So no working at home then.

Email is one of those troublesome issues. I cant access my email if I am not at my desk. This is partially my fault. I cannot log in to my company email acccount from any of my own devices. I would need a dedicated device supplied by the company, just for the purposes of email. So I would have to carry this around as well as all my own devices. Also I need to complete a business case to say why I need it. I am not keen . Although I have contributed to this situation the net result is that I am often out of touch. A number of times I have been visiting people who have emailed some instructions which I simply could not use because I could not pick up the email.
All personal electronic devices are banned from the work place. This can discomfort some visitors who are suddenly separated from their mobile phones for  number of hours. You can almost feel their sense of loss as they itch to check their messages. This reduces the methods of communication, which is part of the security but does not help in keeping in touch with colleagues outside of the organisation.

 The internet is the lifeblood of civilisation it seems, so of course we have internet access, but the firewalls and protection that is in place can often block access to potentially useful information - like blogs. Bad luck if you want information thats on a social network. But the biggest problem is access to scientific information. Most scientific literature is behind a paywall and there are no subscriptions to learned journals. It is basically impossible to get to the bottom of a subject by viewing all the scientific literature or even a good chunk of it. Google scholar is essential as it can point you to freely available sources. Open access publications are a godsend. If you have taken your institutional subscription to various publishing houses for granted them imagine having no access to any of those interesting looking papers, or being able to look at the forward citation chain. It is hugely restricting in terms of understanding a subject and for trying to get a substantive set of references for a publication. Open access publication can have an economic impact by speeding up research and for preventing reinvention.

One of my colleagues went to check up on a paper he has submitted to a journal. He found he could not get access to the site because the web browser we have to use (for security purposes) is so wildly out of date that the site wont deal with it. There is no chance of getting it upgraded because there is always a security person who knows better than you do! .. and as he is not supposed to work from home he is rather hamstrung about how to get his paper published. 

It is as if he last decade has not happened  - and yes I am still using XP. The capability to communicate freely and find any piece of information in the digital world has lead to a backlash in security that clamps down on that freedom. It's getting worse and going backwards.
So why might I be interested in moving to academia? - because I want to actually do some research and do it efficiently. This is why the cost of doing business is so expensive. Security kills freedom and process kills creativity. It's a different world out there and the grass might look greener because it is painted.

plus ca change, plus cést la meme chose

For many years I have not understood economics. To a physicist the idea that, overnight the value of the country or even the planet can change suddenly, where no physical change has occurred, is somewhat of an anathema. The amount of stuff can remain the same so how can the value change. Its all related to confidence. A bit wishy washy to a scientist.
But now I have had my own version of that peculiar scenario.Yesterday I received a rejection after applying for an academic position. It seems that everything I have done and achieved counts for nought. It wasn't that I expected to get the job, I didn't. But I did think i'd done enough to get an interview.
So now the following day nothing has changed, except that everything has changed. I now realise that no matter what my particular individual talents, I cant see me ever getting into academia, because I have spent so many years doing something else -whilst being a professional physicist. My confidence has taken a big hit and I have to reconsider how I might direct my career.

How to appeal to academia?

It is now clear that the appetite for research within my company is diminished. Funding is evaporating and the team membership is below critical mass. This makes it harder to build up again and does not bode well. When times get hard research is always the easy target as I guess it is the least likely to produce quick results. I've seen this coming for some time, in fact as soon as I started. So today I completed an application for an academic position. This is not the first one I have done and so far the statistics are not in my favour. I am hopeful the latest attempt will be treated with more of an open mind than previous ones. The thing about working in industry is that, well, its not academia. Hence there is no teaching of undergraduates, fewer publications  and less interaction with the academic system. So when it comes to assessing suitability to work in academia its easy to find someone whose experience is more familiar to academics. I would like to hope that eventually someone in academia will see the benefit that could arise from a different approach to the world, but I understand that competition for positions is very strong and there is no shortage of the young and talented  to choose from.
How then can I make what I have to offer stand out? Well in these times of restricted funding and a seemingly crazy elitist approach that seeks to cull off the little guys, it seems that an understanding of how industry thinks might be quite useful, especially when economic impact is king. That is my  feeble hope. Often though it comes down to publications and that is always going to be an issue. Journal publications are not a priority in industry. Their value is not obvious, quite the reverse, they eat into your profit. I have been denied the chance to publish work quite a few times on the grounds of lack of funds to support the writing. There have also been some things I am not allowed to publish. How can you make that work count for something with academic establishments?
I am a little more hopeful of this application than pevious ones, but I am not holding my breath.

The utility of physics

In a recent blog post about  the utility of physics the case was made that we physicists should not be shy about making it known to the world how physics research has been turned into really useful technology that we like to use without realising where it has come from. I'm all for an honest appraisal about how pertinent physics is. Unfortunately I dont think it is as straightforward as might appear. You see its all tarnished by the politics of funding. You coat the history of technology with a varnish of being physics and it gives funding reviewers a warmer feeling that physics research will lead to something. Its all part of the game that plays at spending billions on fundamental research that has a follow through into wider society where the research has applications for....(enter whatever topic is currently in vogue). Particle physics is particularly suscepticle to this. Particle physics has been spending billions for decades on fundamental research that is frankly only understood by those physicists working in the field. Yes the research looks at the most fundamental properties of nature, but so far the LHC has been extremely successful at finding a particle we have been expecting to find for over 20 years and comfimed that the "standard model" (the most inappropiate name for a theory of 'everything')  is correct - except that it isn't! The justification for spending huge amounts of resource  is generally given in terms of the trickledown tecnology  with such things as medical scanners and the internet being claimed as resulting from the particle physics research. But this is a little disingenuous. It's certainly true that the germ of the idea originated as a consequence of fundamental research - particularly for  medical scanners - but both the particle physics and nuclear physics communities claim credit for this and use it as part of their justifcation to carry on fundamental research. It has to be trickle down technology because paticle physics is now at such a universal extreme that there are few places in the universe where it might actually be useful, so the results of the research itself will probably never be widely used (but what we really want to  know is will it lead to the development of warp drive!).  Turnng the concept into something useful is generally done through a tremendous amount of hard work on the part of development engineers , not physicists - and that in itself is a very important point. Often it is the physicists who are the concievers or the catalysts that can spark off new ideas.

All technology operates on fundamental physical principles. Just because and iphone uses a chip that uses a transistor, or a camera that makes use of optics, or a MEMS based accelerometer doesn't mean that physics lead to the iphone.  Everything uses physics somewhere.    The economics and politics of scientific research now mean that every grant application has to state that there will be technological and economic impact that results from this work, and sensibly, this cannot be so. Every month I read dozens of articles on sites like  physorg   where the culmination of piece is to say this could find application in ..., usually a quantum computer. Its clear that this cant be true in every case   and yet is every funding body expecting this? How long should we expect to wait?  Superconductivity was going to transform power distribution when relatively high temperature opration was discovered in the late 1980's, but this has proved to be an impractical dream so far. In fact the best use of supeconductivity so far is to provide the magenetic field for the LHC (and that use liquid He so is not high temperature). Nuclear fusion has been sold as the dream for supplying cheap energy but it is always 30 years away, and has been for 50 years.
I am a firm believer that physics is everywhere and an understanding of physics is a creative technological source.  So lets have a better understanding of the place of physics within technology, not an uncomfortable cherry picking of certain high profile scientific technologies. We should of course grasp the concept that knowledge is important for its own sake. If we want to impress upon people why physics in general is a worthwhile activity then we should compose a magnificent list of the places where physics is used in the things we find in modern society. I may start this list for myself but I expect it to be very long.





  

of quantum chickens and interdimensional insects

My chickens always find a way to escape their enclosure, despite there being no obvious aperture large enough for them to fit through. No matter how long I watch the chickens I have never caught them in the act of escaping. And yet if I stop  watching them for 30 seconds they can be on the other side of the fence. Clearly they must be quantum chickens able to tunnel from inside to outside the enclosure and the quantum zeno effect occurs when I constantly observe the spatial coordinate of said chicken relative to a high gravitational barrier. Ridiculous I know but not the first time the animal world has behaved peculiarly.
Have you ever found an insect in an odd location and wondered how on earth it got there. There are always plenty of dead insects inside fluorescent light fittings. But how do flys get in between the panes of double glazing? I expect they must travel through an additional dimension and materialize in a confined space they cannot then get out of - due to some velocity dependent effect that cannot be replicated inside the glazing.
No I am not seriously suggesting that there is new physics in this. This is not an example of inadequate knowledge, meerly of inadequate observations. But sometimes... 

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.