Seven keys to establishing a successful research career in academia

Say you’ve just finished your Ph.D. and have been accepted to join an institution where you would like to start your academic career. Your life will soon be returning to “normal,” minus the pressure of your just-completed doctoral dissertation. Typically, the question you would be asking yourself is, what’s next? In this series of articles, we propose seven keys to help you establish a successful research career in academia, based on our own recent experiences in remarkably parallel careers. In addition to being close friends and professional collaborators, we are both reasonably successful researchers in the area of process systems engineering (PSE), each in our late thirties and each with over 70 career journal publications accomplished in the span of just a few years; and, perhaps surprisingly, we are both completely “home-grown,” having earned our undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in local institutions in our respective home countries. Based on our shared experiences, we have come up with a list of guidelines which we believe are essential to establishing a thriving research career, particularly given the unique cultural environment of Southeast Asia. We shall refer to these as the “Seven Keys” (other than the coincidental use of the number seven, these are by no means related to Stephen Covey’s more famous “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”).

The seven keys that a new Ph.D. graduate should keep in mind to establishing a successful research career are:

• Establish a separate identity

• Develop a professional network

• Recruit a talented student

• Find a research team

• Learn to prioritize

• Learn to multi-task

• Stay focused

This week, we will discuss in more detail the first, and perhaps, most important of these seven keys. First and foremost, a fresh Ph.D. at the start of his or her academic career must seek to establish a separate identity. In 2003, a former colleague, retired Prof. Mike Purvis of the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, used the memorable phrase “stepping out of your adviser’s shadow.” A couple of years later, another retired colleague, Prof. Uday Shenoy of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, strongly recommended that a fresh Ph.D. graduate publish a sole authorship article as a way of declaring his or her newfound independence from Ph.D. supervision. This is a principle we have both applied in our careers, and which we also try to instill in our Ph.D. students. The point is that the newly minted Ph.D. must establish his or her own work, along a path which may lead to a different research direction from the supervisor’s area of work. However, this step by no means precludes the possibility of continuing joint work with one’s supervisor. A good case in point is our colleague, Dr. Denny Ng, who did his Ph.D. in Malaysia under one of us (Dominic Foo). After receiving his degree, he did a brief postdoc at Texas A&M University in the US, and then came back home to start working on biorefinery synthesis and design, which is distinctly different from his Ph.D. work on industrial water conservation. Although Dr. Ng continues to collaborate closely with both of us, he has successfully established himself as a noted young researcher in his own right, and we both recognize that he should take the lead in any joint work we do on biorefineries. Clearly, by establishing his own “research territory,” Dr. Ng has successfully made the transition from Ph.D. student to one of our peers — a bright young colleague with nearly 50 journal articles to his name (all in the span of half a decade!), and who recently guided his first Ph.D. student to graduation.

We will discuss the other six keys in future Star Science columns, although not necessarily over the course of consecutive weeks. Meanwhile, if you are a fresh Ph.D. graduate about to settle into an academic career, we hope that these seven keys give you something to think about. After all, it’s likely that the reason you went for a Ph.D. degree in the first place is because you want to have a research career.

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Prof. Raymond R. Tan is a university fellow and full professor of Chemical Engineering at De La Salle University. He is also the current director of that institution’s Center for Engineering and Sustainable Development Research (CESDR). He is the author of more than 70 process systems engineering (PSE) articles that have been published in chemical, environmental and energy engineering journals. He is member of the editorial boards of the journals Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, Philippine Science Letters and Sustainable Technologies, Systems & Policies, and is co-editor of the forthcoming book Recent Advances in Sustainable Process Design and Optimization. He is also the recipient of multiple awards from the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP). He may be contacted via e-mail ([email protected]).

Dr. Dominic C. Y. Foo is a professor of Process Design and Integration at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, and is leading the Center of Excellence for Green Technologies. He is a professional engineer registered with the Board of Engineer Malaysia (BEM). He establishes international collaboration with researchers from various countries in the Asia, Europe, Americas and Africa. He is an active author, with two forthcoming books, more than 70 journal papers and made more than 120 conference presentations. He served as part of an International Scientific Committee for several important conferences (CHISA/PRES, FOCAPD, ESCAPE, PSE, etc.). He is the winner of the Innovator of the Year Award 2009 of Institution of Chemical Engineers UK (IChemE), as well as the 2010 Young Engineer Award of the Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM). He also actively conducts professional training for practicing engineers.