Beyond a PhD

[jsmoke]

Anyone here gone to the next level, I think a reseach associate or something like that. Take Physics or Maths for example, what kind of intelligence would you need to actually come up with any new ideas. Considering how utterly complicated it gets, how could anyone be of any use.

Would you largely still be under the guidance and instruction of a senior guru where you would be essentially testing and writing up already thought out ideas. I guess it's largely about funding, equipment and collective ideas being researched between Universities. So does the average post doc actually earn their wage?

I am intrigued as to how researchers minds work at this level, we can't all be Einsteins or Michael Faradays after all.

 

[doodah]

Typically post-doc or RAs from my experience (don't have a PhD but worked in two research labs for the last 6 1/2 years). There is still the continued danger of how long the post is safe for, contract extensions come through my desk quite often. They do continue under the guidance of the PI/group leader, and I have seen RAs take on more responsibilities such as teaching and mentoring of visiting or rotation students.

I love working in science but boy I don't envy being a scientist, the constant pressure of churning out papers and grant applications is quite hard.

 

[datalol-jack]

I am intrigued as to how researchers minds work at this level, we can't all be Einsteins or Michael Faradays after all.

And there are still more problems in the universe of varying difficulty which cannot be solved by only a group consisting of Einsteins and Faradays over their lifetime. Or as my maths acquaintance used to say: giants stand on the shoulders of generations of hobbits... Likewise unoriginal researchers and academics do exist in plenitude, successfully hopping between academia and industry. It takes all kinds, even if in more established fields there's more to get through before you get to try your hand at anything particularly exciting due to all the low-hanging fruit having been pilfered a century ago.

So don't fix your mindset before you've even begun in earnest. As above, the greatest barrier to new researchers is not intelligence per se, but the types of contracts you get and the publish or perish (and often publish and perish) churn that you have to do alongside teaching in the UK/US. Funding for fundamental research is limited and competition is fierce for that reason, but you still stand a better chance of being an active professor than winning the lottery, say; so why not give it a try?

A lot of modern 'research' is admin, gaming, schmoozing and dumb luck. The latter part never went away, to begin with. As an example: Einstein would've struggled in the current climate of measuring citable output; his key papers went straight into textbooks, and unlike in the humanities, these are much less cited. Imagine that! The grant culture also discourages working on hard problems over many years in favour of complex problems which can find short-term applications, generate said grants in incremental steps and be included in RAEs and similar managerial frameworks (Riemann hypothesis vs computer vision algos, as an example).

On the other hand, what you're in effect asking at a deeper level is to define creativity, and whether that is equivalent to high intelligence -- in itself an open research problem (highly contingent on your definition of intelligence).

How hierarchical the situation actually is, and how much mentoring you get, depends on the field and the department you're in. One rule of thumb is to try a few post-docs, some abroad if you can, and if you still can't settle and progress, go into industry (perhaps returning later in life with that experience to teach and research again).

 

[Dr Delphi]

I have a PhD in theoretical quantum physics from a top 25 university in the world, but unfortunately I could not find a RA post or postdoctoral, interviewed around the world but found it was dead mans shoes. The people you meet and network with are so important and getting your name out there will allow you to further your career. I know that now but I now teach the (hopefully) next generation of scientists.

 

[NMBlack]

After my PhD I did two post-doctoral positions (one in America, the other in London). The number of positions available in research decreases as you go up the levels (the job pyramid) and I found that the higher you got, the more likely the institutes would want to replace you with a younger (i.e. cheaper to employ) researcher. This is fine if you're the young up-and-coming, but if you're the older post-doc who likely has a family and a mortgage to support then the lack of job security is worrying. I had superb colleagues in their late 30s with families who were replaced with 20-somethings who didn't even know how to turn a centrifuge on. I jumped before I was pushed and now teach medicine in London.

 

[w11tho]

I don't think it's possible for any individual to fully describe the creative process when developing new ideas in mathematics, or physics. In my experience, working on problem A often makes you think about problem B, which in turn makes you think about a different problem C. So you might write several papers about each of these problems, but in reality the papers on problem C wouldn't have come about if it weren't for the ideas used in A and B.

If you're employed as a Post Doc in some subject area, then the PI will (should!) have a good idea of all the tasks that need to be done, and how to go about doing them. So you get a lot of guidance. If you're good, you'll also come up with new ideas for the project.

Competition is pretty fierce in the more theoretical areas and getting positions can be tough. I think the pyramid description mentioned earlier was very apt, since at each stage there really are fewer and fewer positions available. It takes a fair amount of courage early on in an academic career -- it's perfectly possible, in fact quite probable, that after 10-15yrs you still wont have a permanent position and will have to abandon research for something else. You also have to remember that you might have to move around every 3 or so years!

I'm a mathematician and I think I've been fairly lucky. I secured two research fellowships post PhD, after which I was offered a permanent position. Had I not been offered a permanent position at that stage (early 30s), I would have probably started applying to hedge funds.

 

[w11tho]

I have a PhD in theoretical quantum physics from a top 25 university in the world, but unfortunately I could not find a RA post or postdoctoral, interviewed around the world but found it was dead mans shoes. The people you meet and network with are so important and getting your name out there will allow you to further your career. I know that now but I now teach the (hopefully) next generation of scientists.

What was your area - ***(Q.F.T??) type stuff, or quantum information? The sexy things like strings/modern field theories tend to attract the very best people and can be exceptionally competitive. Soft matter type things tend to be slightly easier to get into. There seems to be a big boom in quantum information stuff lately, probably because of all the funding being pumped into "big data" -- which is very broad.

Things that tend to help on applications are: a string of good papers (obviously!) and letters of recommendation from well known people. I'd prefer to see a letter from 't Hooft which said person X was in the top 15 post docs he's dealt with, rather than a letter from Prof. Unknown who says person X is the next Lord Kelvin!

 

[aardvark]

yeah its tricky finding post docs as there aren't that many.
Much harder now than it was - i did 15 years of post docs (chemistry) and never got offered a permanent position, then worked for a university spin-out in the uni, then another when that company went bust. We are out of the uni now and selling/developing products.
it looks like we will do really well but i would never recommend doing science to anyone that wants to actually earn money.
As for the academic side you just have to get lucky - there are people i taught who are thick as mince who are now professors in permanent positions - they just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

 

[Scotty123]

I decided after my PostDoc at Leeds University, I liked programming too much and would rather focus on that. Did some time in mobile and web development. Now doing game development. Feel I've learnt more the past couple of years than in a niche computational astrophysics field .

I don't know if I will go back. I like programming far too much . Rather that be the focus. Easier too and much better money.

I do miss the science at times. Went to see a friend this year after his graduation. Saw some of the people I used to work with and was refreshing to talk science. Hadn't had some conversations like that in a while.