Preparing for a research career Daniel J. Jacob, Harvard University

A research career is a privilege – very high job satisfaction! Exert your creativity- contribute to human knowledge, search for truth Science is fun; euphoria of understanding something new Achieve success by objective measures of merit Don’t deal with human suffering or with stupid or mean people Enjoy mutual respect with your peers in a relatively non-competitive atmosphere See the world and get to know the people who live there Enjoy a guaranteed upper-middle-class income, little financial pressure Gain professional and social acceptance as a nerd Enjoy independence, stay a kid your whole life …but it doesn’t have to be for you. There are other options after the Ph.D. Good reasons not to choose a career in research: “Research is too narrow– I want more big-picture, more variety, more obvious impact” “Outcomes of research are too long-term, too much time is wasted in blind alleys” “I want to become filthy rich” Bad reasons not to choose a career in research: “I’m not creative enough” – you don’t know this, and the creativity bar is not high “I don’t want to have to publish or perish” – some jobs don’t require publishing “It’s too hard to get a good job” – it really isn’t, there are tons of jobs out there “I want to have a personal life” – you certainly can

Many different types of research career See Life after the Ph.D. Professor in research university Focus on personal accomplishment through publications Write a lot of proposals Professor in primarily undergraduate institution Some research (and publications) expected, engaging undergraduates Government scientist Focus on agency mission, typically working in teams Often involves publishing but may not be the top priority Industry scientist Focus on company mission, limited publishing if at all Consulting Work with diversity of clients, applied short-term research, technical reports, limited publishing if at all Program management and administration - Enable the research of others

The importance of publishing as a graduate student See How to write an effective paper First-author publications are important for three reasons: They establish your ownership of ideas, show that you are making a difference, they define your personal brand They show that you will be able to publish when on your own Only through those will you get your Ph.D.! Co-authorships are far less important but still of some value: show that you can work as part of a team show that your work is influencing others build your H-index I’m not good at writing. What should I do? Try to improve Choose career where you won’t have to write (plenty of options) View it as necessary for your PhD, with the reward that you will never need to write again!

… but there are other aspects of training for a research career. Becoming a “T-shaped individual”: breadth in your research discipline T depth in your research topic Advertising your work Learning how to interact with scientists Seeking funding Teaching and mentoring …but be aware that none of that matters if you don’t have the publications

Achieving depth in your research topic Own your research project – it’s not your adviser’s anymore Take initiative Use your adviser as a sounding board rather than a task driver Don’t hesitate to push back Don’t do work unless you feel it’s important Be aware of and understand others’ work on the topic Keep up with what others in your team are doing Know the literature Interact with the outside– email, visits, meetings, collaborations Be uncompromising with yourself about knowing the necessary fundamentals Read textbooks, take a class, browse the web Understand everything that there is to understand Teach

Achieving breadth in your primary and departmental disciplines That is the main purpose of your PhD courses Stay current by attending seminars and meetings Interact with departmental community, visitors in your primary discipline Read textbooks, community reports… Example: atmospheric chemistry is your primary discipline, Earth science is your departmental discipline 100% Level of understanding Your research topic 50% Atmospheric chemistry Climate Dynamics Biogeochemistry Computational/data science

Learn to give presentations See How to give an effective presentation Presentation tips and other topics Excellent presentations will greatly increase the impact of your work Know your audience Show pedagogical skills in the fundamentals Show mastery of big picture, exude technical competence Use clear and attractive graphics Use precise language Make audience comfortable: be engaged, relaxed, funny Answer questions with ease – by having previously asked yourself these questions Preparing a presentation is a lot of work but it’s time well spent It’s critical to your visibility – people get to know you It drills you in the fundamentals, in how to communicate It makes you better understand your work, generates research ideas

Learn to ask questions during presentations Asking questions shows that you’re engaged, it increases your visibility – you’re just a wallflower if you don’t ask questions It’s also the polite thing to do – nothing pleases a speaker more than to see many hands shooting up after their talk. Not asking questions is rude. Thinking about questions to ask is an excellent discipline to confront what has been presented to what you know – it makes you focus more intensely on the presentation and its connection to your work

Network Have a personal website that you can refer people to, be known as a good email correspondent. Engage with your group, with other groups, with visitors - Exposes you to different ways of thinking, different experiences Make it a two-way exchange of information and pushback Learn to give an elevator speech on what you do Go to meetings – and make sure you get noticed! Give a memorable presentation Ask questions, on-line and off-line Develop collaboration opportunities Small meetings can be more effective than the AGU zoo. Develop external collaborations Make a special effort to share data, methods etc. with other groups Consider a project with external collaborators as part of your PhD

Seeking funding See How to write a successful proposal Applying for fellowships or research funding is important; it identifies you as a go-getter and it teaches you how to write proposals. Helping your adviser with proposals is a valuable learning exercise Writing proposals is not the most exciting thing. But it’s not totally thankless: Formulate your work in terms of big questions/hypotheses Define tasks to answer these Force you to get up to speed on literature

Teaching Teaching is obviously good for mastering the fundamentals and learning to communicate, and can provide a lot of satisfaction from educating others, but… Be careful about what you teach – it should contribute to your depth or breadth It can be tempting to spend too much time of teaching because it’s a safe zone away from the difficulty of research. Don’t let yourself be abused by the professor in spending more time teaching than you should Teaching experience is important for getting a job at a primarily undergraduate institution but otherwise does not add a lot to your resume

Mentoring Mentoring of younger graduate students is very valuable It feels good to give back and to have skills to share, but it also shows team spirit and leadership Mentoring of undergraduates is something you should do for your own personal satisfaction because actual benefit is a crapshoot Undergraduates take time and their interests can be fickle You would generally do the work faster yourself The big exception is the undergraduate who can publish – this is worth gold

Reviewing papers and proposals Being asked to review your first paper or proposal can be thrilling. But young scientists spend way too much time on this. Reviewing is a useful exercise in forcing you to think through others’ work, but it is not something that will give you any credit As a grad student you can just say no to requests for reviews by just saying that you don’t have your PhD – senior scientists may indeed not be too happy about their papers/proposals being reviewed by anonymous graduate students!