Academia vs Industry: Where to?Work? - Part I

Academia vs Industry: Where to?Work?

Story of My?Career

I have had a storied career. It started off with me joining a FPGA hardware design center in 2007, one of a very few such design centers in Pakistan, let alone Karachi.?

I then moved to Sweden to join Link?ping University to pursue M.Sc. in System-on-chip design. All through out my undergraduate and graduate years, I always wanted to work in the industry and doing PhD was never on the radar.

However, I eventually went for a PhD (for all the wrong reasons, documented in my ‘Reluctant Researcher’ blog series) from Link?ping University. I continued my academic career as I moved to Pakistan to join Namal University (then Namal College) Mianwali as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering.

Things did not turn out as I hoped for in Namal and my efforts to move back to my city of Karachi did not bear fruit. I came across an excellent post-doctoral research fellowship opportunity in Ireland and after going through the research proposal and interview, I joined Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin in the department of Computer Science under the supervision of Prof. David Gregg.

The post-doctoral experience was great, something I documented here, although it was partly tainted by the pandemic, forcing every one to work from here. I also started enjoying research a bit, details mentioned in my blog:

However, I really wanted to move to the industry and the search for a job led me to a Design Engineer job in Arm Norway.?

So after spending a good 12 years in the academia (starting off from 2010), I went back to where it all started, as a design engineer, even if it meant taking a step backwards in my career.

Although my time in either of these two disciplines haven’t been super long, I will share my take on what it takes to succeed in either of them, specially in research and academia. May be with time, my opinions change depending on how it goes for me in the industry, I guess my opinions on research and academia may not change unless there is a major change in that discipline.

This blog outlines the requirements, challenges, benefits and drawbacks of an academic career. In a later blog, I will try to do the same with an industrial career.

Requirements for an Academic?Career

Or specifically, being a researcher. It takes a lot to be a good researcher, like being always curious to learn new things, perseverence, patience, ingenuity etc., but the key element of a good researcher is to be an entrepreneur.

Being an Entrepreneur

Google defines en entrpreneur as follows:

a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.

To me, key thing in being an entrepreneur is not just taking risk for a business idea, but the creation of idea itself. And not only creating one idea, but constantly evolving the idea, coming up with new ideas, being curious about exploring new things and being one step ahead.

These are all the key things that a researcher needs to succeed, in my opinion. The risk involved with being a researcher is that one needs to come up with an idea and explore it enough to know whether it is tangible enough to convince the funding agencies. This is the same as an entrepreneur where one needs to convince investors about the feasbility of the idea.?

In the business world, the investor wants to know whether his investment will result in profit. In research, the funding agency wants to know whether the research idea is novel and will result in discovering new and interesting things.?

Typically, the funding agencies are looking for concrete ideas and initial results showing the viability of the idea is key. The risk is always there that initial time spent in exploring the idea might go to waste if one is not able to acquire research funds. And research funds are key to succeed in academia for those who are on the tenure track.?

This type of risk always spooked me, not knowing whether what ever I am working at the moment will be wasted or not. One needs to be a risk taker, which I felt I lacked inherently.

Research Publications

The second key thing in being a successful researcher is just not coming up with something novel but also present it to the wider world. This is typically in the form of a research publication. Even though what one has discovered or invented or created, just doing that is not enough.

Research publication, be it in a conference, workshop or journal is a corner stone for a successful research career, so much so that it has become a goal for many researchers itself rather than just an outcome of the actual research and innovation one has done (more on in later).

Research publication involves a peer review process. This brings in new challenges and risks. Sometimes a review can take a long time and unless one is working on the same kind of projects, going back to work on something that one has worked 6-months ago is not easy and was hugely demotivating for me. Furthermore, there is always the risk of rejection which is real terms may mean your months of research meant nothing.

Now, one can argue that what is more important the work one has done and whether it has an actual impact or not and I completely agree with this point of view, but research without publication means nothing in the real world.

Teaching

Another key requirement of an academic career is the ability to teach. In a way that inspires students, inspires them to be curious, to learn new things, to explore and then to inspire others.

A student should look up to his teacher not just as an educator but as a mentor, a friend, a father, an elder brother. A lecture should be an avenue for critical thinking, for being challenged, for being educated.

Teaching should not be seen as a burden, as a side-show to one’s research. Teaching should not be about one-way communication to just go through some slides. Teaching should not be done for the sake of it.

I always saw my role as a teacher to help students appreciate not only the course itself but its place in the wider world. To make them see that what they are learning is relevant, as I myself have found them.?

As a teacher, it is always important to invest one’s time and energy into teaching, evolving and improving courses over time. It is important to make the course delivery more interactive rather than just going through slides. Engagement of students is key to student satisfaction.

It is easy to fall into the comfort zone of repeating the same contents time and again. It is also easy to appease students for the sake of positive feedback. A fine balance need to be struck between fullfilling students’ requirements and that of the course.

Tough Initial?Years

I often heard in my family that probably doing an MBBS (A medical doctor’s first degree) is the hardest of all and yet was minimally rewarding unless you do post-graduation. The same can be said about PhD. It is the bare minimum to establish an academic career and the first few years are tough and highly important.

To establish a strong career, one must go for a Post-Doc, often multiple before trying to go for a tenured position. But a tenured position at a university is typically a time limited one and one has to really shine through by winning multiple research fundings, doing self as well as supervised research and publishing research at leading impactful venues.

Thus, the initial 5–8 years can be really stressful and tough but equally important to establish a strong career. Add to that teaching, and things only get tougher.

Balancing Research and?Teaching

I personally do not have a lot of personal experience in how to best balance research and teaching. During my three years in Namal, I could not figure out how best to do it. I increasingly found myself getting more and more engaged in teaching which in itself was very rewarding:

I was not only delivering lectures but also planning, delivering and grading labs, marking all quizzes and assignments and counselling students for two courses. Although two courses do not sound much, all of associated activities took a lot of time.

However, during my PhD and Post-Doc, I did realize that in order to balance teaching and research, there needs to be a well structured infrastructure of PhD students, lab and teaching assistants. This allows one to focus on improving his teaching, delivery, content as well as research.?

Unfortunately in Pakistan, very seldom does this infrastructure exist bar a few exceptions. And yet, faculty members are expected to furnish research paper after research paper which has led to a situation where bogus collaborations are made up just to increase the paper count. Faculty at undergrad only universities are expected to meet Pakistan Higher Education Commission’s (HEC) criteria for promotions pertaining to research publications without any institutional support. Furthermore, excellent teaching is seldom rewarded. Content created to support teaching are not appreciated, no matter how impactful it is towards enabling a healthy learning and teaching experience for students.

Reward of Being An Academician

Reward of any job are of two types, personal and financial and being an academician is immensely personally rewardig. You get to shape the future generations, not only technically but also morally. Developing curriculum to keep up with the latest technological trends, acting as a mentor to young students, not only solving their educational problems but also personal (although this may not be relevant to western academic institutes) and seeing your students excel in life is so much rewarding that no amount of money can replace it. And the respect one gets from students, parents and other people is just the icing on the cake.

Excelling in research also adds greatly to personal prestige. Doing original and impactful research enables you to shape the future of your field in particular and science in general. It enables you to work on novel ideas and bring forward the research front. Other aspects that can be rewarding is applying and getting research funding, supervising masters PhD students, Post-Doctoral researchers, collaboration with other researchers, doing Post-Doc to diversify your own expertise:

However, there is a downside to an academic career and that is financial. As said earlier, an academic career can be richly rewarding but the financial rewards that come with or rather a lack of dampens that enjoyment and motivation. I may appear as being too avaricious, but if one is not inately interested in a field of work, it is hard to push oneself if the amount of hard work is not compensated financially in an adequate manner, specially if looking at it relative to financial rewards of working in industry.

As an example, I once came across an advertisement in the Electronics Engineering Department of a leading Irish University in Dublin. The requirement was not only just PhD but Post-Doc as well and an excellent research publication record. As part of application, it required various documents like a research statement, a teaching statement, CV, research funding program for the next two years etc. However, the financial renumeration was only around €50k per year, which is around €3.7k per month without medical insurance in a city where renting a 2-bedroom apartment at that time can easily go above €1.5k per month (it has increased significantly since 2020, when this post was advertised).

Path to a Successful Career in?Academia

To summarize the above discussion, in order to achieve a successful career in academia, one should have passion for teaching and research and develop an entrepreneurial mindset. It goes without saying that PhD is necessary but it is very important to embark on at least one or two post-doctoral fellowships before trying for a tenured position at a university. As applying for research funding is imperative, it will be beneficial to getting involved with your PhD or Post-Doc supervisor in his/her funding applications to get an idea about what it takes to get such funding.

Only after going through tenure and securing a permanent position can one possibly relax. This is not an easy task, so passion and ambition are critical driving forces towards a successful career in academia.

Shortcuts to Avoid Being Successful

As a footnote, just to add this. One should not focus on the quantity of research publication just for the sake of it. Quantity is good if it comes with quality. Do not ask favour from friends to add names to research publications if you haven’t actually contributed anything. Focus on the impact of the work as against the impact factor of the research journal.

Once I applied for a research funding and the application guidelines were very clear not to mention the impact factor of research journals and instead asked me to write what impact I have had towards scholarship in general than research in particular. And I believe I did that during my stay in Namal University, albeit only as a teacher.