A happy Jill of all Trades

Welcome to WiDSDOM, a wee blog that comes out every Wednesday-ish. Topics will vary from WiDS to careers, from math to the weather, from things I know about to things I think I know about. And you can help decide topics: ask a question and I will write about it.

And two quick disclaimers: All thoughts are my own, and I don't spend much time beautifying my prose or optimizing flow.

This week: #research, #studentlife, #stem, #womenindatascience

Dear all,

A fun question this week from one of you: "What advice would you offer someone interested in various academic mathy topics (computational/applied/theoretical) simultaneously, aiming to avoid being perceived as a "Jack of all trades, master of none" in academia?"

I love this question because I'm certainly a Jill. I'm sure some in my work environment added "mistress of none" to this definition, but they did not seem to have been the majority on my promotions committees!

I will answer this question after a bit of a ramble about my own Jill experiences. Hang on...

I got to be a bit of a Jill for two reasons, which may resonate with you: 1. I never fell deeply in love with any one research direction but instead gave my heart to many areas that fascinated me, and 2. I could move between lovers relatively smoothly because of their shared foundations in math and physics.

As a kid and then a teenager, I had many different ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up. In elementary school, I flirted for some time with working in shops and wrapping presents, which seemed utterly delightful to me then. In middle and high school, I became interested in flight, ornithology, geophysics, civil engineering, sustainability, and other STEM areas. The one consistent passion throughout was math. I also learned that most STEM areas use a heavy dose of math, so a math degree (with some physics and computing) seemed the right choice for me: doors to the whole STEM world might remain open. Now, math in itself is a very broad field, and I loved nearly all directions, apart from abstract algebra and topology (funnily enough, I now regret not having studied topology because of the fascinating field of Topological Data Analysis). So, I took a bunch of courses without any seemingly clear direction.

At the end of my MSc degree, I felt like a Jill and no mistress. I was not on top of anything, so it seemed, and I could not see the forest through the trees. I knew a little about a lot, and all these little bits seemed unconnected and disjointed. Although it felt a tad uncomfortable, I remained interested in learning more. Life took me to the US, and once there, I decided to pursue a PhD, which allowed me to take more courses. In other words, I happily plunged myself further into the trees, expecting to get completely and utterly lost, never to be found again.

And then, I started seeing connections. As I took more courses, I realized many of the course subjects shared common approaches and foundations. I could start bringing ideas from one area of math or engineering into another. Rather than seeing every subfield of math as a stand-alone tree, I realized that the roots of all these trees in the forest were intertwined and that the whole forest was connected beneath the surface. Wow, that's almost too poetic :-)

In any case, this was a wonderful stage to be in. I was a Jill of many trades, but the trades were part of a bigger whole, and the doors to application areas in STEM opened a bit, as I had hoped.

During my PhD, my chosen application area was compressible gas flow. I then ventured into sail design and coastal ocean modeling while in New Zealand, and after my return to Stanford as a faculty member, I added subsurface flow modeling, pterosaur flight design, and renewable energy, and then found my way to search engines and recommender systems.

This Jill became an Interdisciplinary Jill, applying (fairly similar) computational approaches to a range of applications. The computational approaches did not vary all that much: it was the physics, chemistry, or engineering that did, and through collaborations with domain experts, I could gain some understanding quickly (or relatively quickly).

I'm certainly not the only one. I have a wonderful colleague on campus who specializes in multi-phase and multi-scale phenomena. These occur in many areas of physics and engineering. She has built a versatile suite of skills and approaches that allow her to work in multiple domains while synthesizing and cross-fertilizing.

So, where's this advice then that you were asking for? My first bit of advice is that if you feel you are a Jack or a Jill and all seems disjointed, give it a bit of time. As you continue to grow as a mathematician, you will start seeing these connections more and more, and your broad interests may very well help you become a better mathematician in any of the subfields. My second bit of advice is to, as an academic researcher, focus on these commonalities that I talked about. That provides a strong theme for your research, which is easier to communicate to others and easier for others to understand and value.

Now, were Jills like us seen as mistresses of none, or did people recognize these common underlying foundations that we contributed to? That was up to us to some extent: to make this clear, communicate well, and show evidence. And to some extent, that was up to our disciplinary colleagues: to acknowledge that it is possible to work cross-disciplinary and that you can make valuable contributions as broad(er) researchers who are not necessarily singularly focused on a narrow(er) subfield.

In our case, our work is now really recognized as belonging to the new discipline of Computational Mathematics. That certainly made our academic life easier: we found a home on campus in ICME, the Institute of Computational & Mathematical Engineering, that celebrates this intersection.

I know that there are inter or cross-disciplinary colleagues who have to build a home in one of the disciplinary areas they touch, as there is yet to be an academic unit that represents the intersection they represent. That can be tough; again, strong communication and open minds are necessary for success.

I hope this helps a bit. Would love your comments and further questions about Jills, Jacks or entirely different issues. Reply to this post, or DM me.

Cheers! Margot