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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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!

5. … 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

6. 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– , 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. Network
Have a personal website that you can refer people to, be known as a good 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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!