1. On life in academia Serge Abiteboul INRIA-Futurs and Univ. Paris 11
Serge - Life in academia

2. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
Organization
Introduction
Some questions you always wanted to ask
Performance evaluation
Success optimization
Result: Life is great in academia
Conclusion
Serge - Life in academia

3. Introduction

4. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
What is academia?
Academia is a collective term for the scientific and cultural community engaged in higher education and research, taken as a whole.
The word comes from the akademeia just outside ancient Athens, where the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning Wikipedia
Also on the Web (Google define:academia)
Hypothetical or theoretical and not expected to produce an immediate or practical result.
Marked by a narrow focus on or display of learning especially its trivial aspects
Serge - Life in academia

5. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
Why go to academia?
To manage people
To be rich
To not work
To be famous
To have power
To be useful
try the army
try start-ups
try a rich spouse
try show business or serial killer
try politics
try NGO
Serge - Life in academia

6. Some reasonable reasons
Why???
Tough question
Because you cannot do anything else
Because you don’t have any better idea
We will come back to that
Serge - Life in academia

7. How do they spend their time? Conflicting demands
The tasks
Teaching
Research
Including system development/experimentation
Advising (PhD students, etc.)
Grants
Reviewing
Industry and consulting
And the normal life: family, friends, hobbies, sports…
Time management is the big issue
Serge - Life in academia

8. May vary depending on institutions – where ?
Teaching load varies from 0 to hundreds of hours per year
Industry academic research centers: IBM, MS, Lucent… (rare)
Pure research institutes such as INRIA (rare)
I teach hours a year but I don’t have to
University
Depends on the university: much less at Stanford U. than at San Jose State
Depends on the country: less in UK than in France than in Germany
In China?
Implication in software development also varies a lot
Serge - Life in academia

9. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
How do I spend my time
Not the way you would expect 
And not improving with time 
other activities
real research
education
100% 0%
Time spent
doing research
PhD junior senior
social
Serge - Life in academia

10. How do you spend your time in academia?
Some university in the US
Source: private + Jennifer Widom (expert in time management)
Travel – too varied to quantify
Conferences, visiting colleagues, grant-related meetings, etc.
Light (each <1 hour/week)
Coffee and lunch breaks
Prospective & think of new topics
Read research papers you don’t have to review
Serge - Life in academia

11. How do you spend your time in academia?
Medium (each 1-5 hours/week)
Deliver lectures
Department duties: committees, faculty meetings, etc.
Write research papers
Reviewing
Grant-related work (proposals, reports, etc.)
Read drafts of student
Heavy (each >5 hours/week)
Handle of all sorts
Prepare class lectures, handouts, assignments, exams
Research meetings including meetings with PhD students
Serge - Life in academia

12. Spending time in front of a dull machine
Reading/writing code & documentation
Reading/writing papers
Reading/writing s
Blogging about life in academia
Serge - Life in academia

13. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
Work-Life balance
There is no limit to the number of papers/lines of code you can write
There is little limit to working hours
If you don’t think you can balance, choose another job
Rumor: job-related stress is the main cause for leaving academia
[Opposite rumor: people join academia because of less stress]
Serge - Life in academia

14. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
The ancient rituals
When the season comes, the researchers gather in some fancy place for bizarre rituals with weird names that make sense only to the initiated, such as SIGMOD, PODS, VLDB…
The main point is networking
Not for favors
Perhaps to be part of the crowd
To meet the colleagues you want to work with
Hitting bars is more important than attending talks (don’t repeat this to your advisors – they know)
Sponsored link
Serge - Life in academia

15. Warning: You came too late
The time of these gatherings is counted because of their ecologically disastrous effect
Thank you for attending
the first virtual SIGMOD
Serge - Life in academia

16. Tough life – Think about it
Academia is a very competitive environment
Do you know many places with such a high percentage of PhDs?
Academia is loaded with smart people who are perhaps
faster
more knowledgeable
better at writing code or proving theorems
than you
Sponsored link
Serge - Life in academia

17. Performance evaluation

18. Evaluation is essential in academic life
You will be evaluated all the time
For papers to conferences and journals
For grants, awards
By ranking in GoogleScholar, Citeseer, h-index…
For promotion also
People sometimes get reviews such as “this is stupid” or “no real contribution”
Don’t worry
This is life and life is tough
This is the price to pay for having one of the greatest jobs on earth
This is not going to improve with time
Serge - Life in academia

19. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
Evaluation: pitfalls
It is not because your work was rejected that it is trash
Reviewers are sometimes wrong
May be you are ahead of your time
(2) It is not because your work was accepted that you are a star
May be you just did some timely increment
I have seen colleagues (including myself) indulging in both
 Both are negative and lead to psychological disorders
 Both are positive and lead to breakthroughs
You become modest and work harder
You are driven to push further your works & dare wild ideas
Serge - Life in academia

20. Evaluation: the two sides of the coin
The reviewers and reviewee are the same people
They are too busy and they sometimes do a poor job at it
Remember! you are both reviewer and reviewee
As a reviewer, do reviews seriously as a service to the community
As a reviewee, try to understand the point of the reviewer
There is always the chance that she is smarter than you
Even if he is not so smart, he is the one deciding!
And this is the best known system,
arguably better than a random function (not proven though)
Serge - Life in academia

21. Evaluation: what you should try to remember
Peer reviewing is arguably the best known system
Serge - Life in academia

22. Success optimization

23. Optimizing your chances of success
Learn to manage your time
Try to focus your time/energy on the essential
Work hard
Most successful people I have met in academia are hard workers
Kiss! = keep it simple stupid!
This is true for systems but also for theory
Human quality matters
Most of the successful works I have seen are teamwork
The quality of relationships in the workplace is a key ingredient to success
In particular, the weird alchemy between colleagues (e.g., between advisor and advisee)
Serge - Life in academia

24. Optimizing your chances of success
Choose carefully your research topic
Is it new? Elegant? Technically Challenging? Useful?
Is it fun?
Quotes (apocryphal )
I had this idea of a topic. I got drunk. It still sounded like a topic. Then I decided it was one.
Italian researcher who asked to remain anonymous
This idea is crazy and will probably not work. It is so much unlike everything I have seen before. Who cares! Let’s try it for the fun.
French researcher who is declining any responsibility
Serge - Life in academia

25. Result: life is great in academia

26. Why it is such a great job
Intellectually exciting and challenging
I don’t know of any job that is as much fun
(perhaps writing novels but that’s too competitive)
Less repetitive than other jobs
When you get tired of a topic, you change
Freedom and independence
No real boss
Freedom to choose what you want to work on
Rich human interactions with smart and international people
Socially positive
People think it is a cool job
Clearly useful (for teaching and perhaps research)
I am free!!!!
Serge - Life in academia

27. 10 highlights of life in academia
Some light of understanding in the eyes of the audience
The excitement of the arrival of a new PhD student
The deliverance of the departure of a PhD student (aka defense)
The success of your ex-students in their career
The orgasm of proving a theorem that resisted for months
The delight of having your system finally do something real
The ecstasy of having a paper accepted at a top conference
The happiness of seeing your paper cited and (with God’s help) even read
The joy of seeing a book that you wrote on the desk of a colleague
There are only 9!
Just to check whether you are listening carefully
[AbiteboulHullVianu]
Serge - Life in academia

28. Conclusion

29. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
Don’t be overwhelmed by your responsibility in the progress of science
Anyway, most of the time you will be too busy to think about it
I wont let my very high philosophical expectations of research interfere with my main goal that is to get:
A PhD
A job
Tenure
This grant
Other (indicate what) ……………….
Do not freak out!
Serge - Life in academia

30. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
And the most important
Enjoy your time as PhD student
If you choose academia, enjoy it!
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INRIA INRIA proposes postdocs in many areas. Tell your friends
Gemo, Paris INRIA’s database group. The best environment for database research
Serge - Life in academia

31. Some interesting questions I was asked when presenting this talk
Aren’t there too few women in academia?
There are for sure too few in computer science
We should do efforts to have more women in general in science and in engineering
What is the value of a PhD if you don’t stay in academia?
A PhD is a great personal experience even no matter what you do after
The training of engineers via research yields better engineers
So, it is worth it even if it is not clear whether it pays salary-wise
What should you do immediately after your PhD?
It is a very good idea to go away for one or two years, e.g., post-docs
It is a very bad idea to be hired in the department where you graduated
Serge - Life in academia

32. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
Merci
Merci
Sigmod/Pods, Beijing 2007
Serge - Life in academia

33. Serge - Life in academia - 2007
Bibliography
David Lodge: Going places & other novels
Batya Gur: Literary murder
a list of blogs about life in academia – I did not find the time to read them
ACM Sigmod record interviews by Marianne Winslett
Serge - Life in academia