The Entrepreneurial Academic

Originally Published on LinkedIn

4 am. I’m waiting to board my 5:35 am flight to Delhi from Bangalore. After pitching for funds, I’m set to fly back in a few hours catching the 5:25 pm return flight. While I’m there, after I make my case to the panel, I’m going to call into a Zoom meeting back in Bangalore. You might be imagining that ‘start-up dude’ — a jet setting young man raising funds for his start up in front of the likes of Shark Tank. In reality I’m an experimental astrophysicist, an academic, who happens to be female, and oh did I mention I’m leaving my one month old behind at home for this? Academia is lot like entrepreneurship, only not as glamorous. The hustle culture that is so venerated in modern popular culture, is well and alive, thriving in academia. Just like the ‘starter-upper’, the PI of a lab is many persons rolled into one. She is : the worker bee, the fund raiser, the project manager, the captain of the ship, the HR, the PR, the CEO, CTO, COO, the list is endless. Just like the entrepreneur, she can’t take extended holidays, she needs to be present to keep the lab running, the students motivated and publishing. Extended absence comes at the cost of being scooped! While it is painful, there is a social acceptability of failure when you run a startup, there is awareness that the odds are stacked against you, but when you succeed you make it to the presses! What is success in academia really? For an academic, what are the odds of winning, perhaps the only prize that has captured the popular imagination – the Nobel? More importantly, where is the safety net to fail, especially among peers? As a culture, can we truly take big enough risks to make breakthrough discoveries if there is no room to fail? While the ‘product’-ization of knowledge generated in a lab as a spin-off company attracts wide attention, the toils in the lab to create the prototype don’t. Perhaps it is the timeline that goes beyond several news cycles, or the smaller sums of money, like what I am looking for, compared to those Unicorns that have captured popular imagination. I don’t deny that, some of the onus also lies on the shoulders of us PhD-bearing, paper publishing folks, to make our work more accessible. To take our work, our baby, to the world in all its glory. Speaking of baby, I dearly miss my little one, my first time away from him. I hope he is sound asleep and oblivious to the fact that his Mama is away trying to do her best, to make him proud, to do her part in building a better world for him where there is even more support for other new parents and where it is as cool, popular, and important to be a physicist as it is to be an entrepreneur. I hope he has a good day with his Dada, to whom I am so thankful, and with whom I am so in love (who also happens to be that ‘start-up dude’!)

Juggling-Hustling Mother-Work-hood

Originally published on LinkedIn

My first time away from my child, was when he was just over 9 months old. I left him for 10 days in the able hands of his loving and capable father, two affectionate and hands-on grandfathers, a caring nanny who was present 10 am to 4 pm on weekdays, and a retinue of my friends and cousins who would check in occasionally. Yes, I have a lot of support, and I acknowledge the privilege. I was away on a field visit setting up and running experiments in Ladakh, with shaky internet, making video calls back home as often as I could. When I came back, my son barely took notice and continued to play with his toys as I coddled him endlessly. Interestingly enough, I received plentiful unsolicited mixed responses from different people in retrospect. Ranging from admiration to admonition, I realised that I was not raising my child in my little world, but in plain view of society. While this sounds obvious, this experience was a strong reminder of the fact that mothers are held to high standards. They need to be top performers at home, juggling the juggle and at work, hustling the hustle. When one looks at someone who is a top performer at work, they are the model professional. That is who you want to be at work. When one sees a person who is a devoted mother, father, spouse, friend, always available, diligent in their domestic life, house spic and span, cook par excellence, they become the golden standard of how one should be at home. When one sees an avid traveler, creator, maker, they set the bar on how we want to pursue our hobbies. The trouble is that we want to roll all these different people into one. It is like expecting one person to win the gold in track, gymnastics, weight lifting, and tennis. Each sphere of our lives takes different skill sets, they take time and effort. We cannot be the best chef, professional, artist, mother, spouse, and so on. Let’s stop elevating one-sided excellence and normalizing it as a lifestyle. We can bring our whole, best selves to the table. There will be parts of us, chipped, broken, scratched, dented, and we bring it all to the table. There will be days when being a good professional comes at the expense of being a good mother, being a good mother comes at the expense of being a good friend, being a good friend comes at the expense of … And that has to be okay.

I’m not a perfectionist and I’m proud of it

This is something I wrote from a very specific perspective and in a specific frame of mind. This is something I wrote as an Indian woman who has taken it upon herself to straddle two worlds, the old-world traditional role of a woman at home and the new-age progressive aspirations as a woman in society. One may ask, why make this distinction at all, or why choose to have one foot on each side. My reasoning for the above questions is writing for another time. But having made the above choice for my present life and foreseeable future, I want to say that I am unapologetic about having my own set of priorities within the choices I’ve consciously made. So with that in mind, read on…

I’m not a perfectionist. I take a lot of pride in that. I don’t obsess over things. I like to keep my mental, physical, emotional energy free for things that I choose. For the things that I do think are a priority, I give my very very best. Life is not filled with only things that I choose to do. There are also plentiful things that need to get done. Chores, responsibilities, errands, professional and personal tasks. I do all these happily, ungrudgingly. I have found the key to doing these things that I need to do but am not thrilled about. It is to hit them at 80 percent. It is for these that I apply the Pareto principle. (Wikipedia first line entry : “The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes (the “vital few”).) For me, perhaps much to the chagrin of those who are subject to the end products, this includes my cooking. I don’t think I am a bad cook. In fact I think, for the amount of effort I choose to put in, I get pretty darn good results! It’s a matter of choice that I don’t put in more time and effort into cooking, that can perhaps push the end product to 100 percent. I do ensure that I hit my self imposed target of 80 percent with the less than 50 percent effort it takes to get there. Those accustomed to eating the 100 percent tasting (including texture, visual appeal, the oomph factor, you name it) this might fall short, too bad. If you are eating out of my kitchen, you will never go hungry, you will be satiated, and you will have a decently enjoyable meal — most of the time. I ardently believe that everyone should know how to cook and regularly eat healthy, tasty, balanced meals at home. Of these, if anything at all, taste is very subjective. There are those, who love to cook, experiment with new recipes, and for whom cooking is a part of their identity and legacy. I respect that. I am not that person. I choose to put my energy elsewhere. It could be my career, it could be spending quality time with loved ones, it could be reading and writing, it could be socialising, or generating what I would like to be my legacy. Perhaps it is a reflection of Indian culture, or society at large, or my very own insecurities coming to terms with this choice, but this might not go down too well with people. There seems to be some sense of morality attached, especially for a woman, to putting all her energies into domestic chores, the ultimate of these including cooking and cleaning.  I don’t clean obsessively, I don’t cook on a slow flame to bring out the perfect flavour, nor do I keep trying to hit gastronomic perfection. I am not a domestic goddess and I never will be. But I am a goddess nonetheless. It doesn’t diminish my light, and the value I bring to my family and what I bring to the world.

I’m not a perfectionist. I take a lot of pride in that.

The value of showing up

When you are having those days when you don’t have the motivation to get out of bed, let alone be a go getter I’d like you to remember that you are not alone. That person you see who seems to have boundless motivation and energy probably has a lot going on. We all put up a brave face because we know the world around us is not going to stop for us to pause and catch our breath. This might sound like a wishy-washy self help post, maybe it is, may be not. I wanted to address some things because we exist in a world where boundaries between the personal and professional are fluid. It is futile to examine the ‘professional’ without a context of the ‘emotional’ / ‘social’ / ‘psychological’ / cultural’. Here is my context, how it affects everything else, what I have learned, what I hope to improve. Like all of us, I’m figuring this out but wanted to share this for the benefit of this being a collective experience.
The days that I have been most productive, where it feels like everything I touch produce some interesting result, or generate plots that can go in a publication or I read something that sets the foundation for the way I understand a problem, are probably the ones that keep me hooked to research. As researchers, as humans,  the thrill of being the first to know something about the physical world, and understanding something deeper than ever before, is a powerful feeling. However, I can safely say that these days are few and far between. There are days together filled with the monotony of the mundane. We push through on those days because we know that they add up. When I look back on the ‘unproductive’ phases of my career so far, aka no papers published, I am genuinely surprised that I have still achieved a lot. It is unfortunate that in academia the metric of your productivity is what / how much you publish, or the patents you have etc. I am not against this system, because it is hard to quantify productivity. Something that can be described in numbers (such as number of papers, citations) lends itself naturally for such a measure. What I do have a problem with is how we  / I naturally associate this number with some form of self-worth or success. There has to be a disengagement between that number and your ‘growth’. In those days that you have not ‘published’ you have learned, applied, tried, failed, learned some more. If all you have to show at the end is a new skill and not a publication, that should be perfectly acceptable. I am not here to fix a well oiled machine (there are arguments against that) but I am here to remind myself and you that on most days you are a winner just by showing up! 

On outreach in the sciences

Context:

There was a press-release yesterday discussing some news, that would be exciting to the general audience. This got a conversation going between a few of us colleagues and friends in the same field. Many took the opinion that the threshold of what journal paper / piece of research makes the cut for a press release is poor. The bar is low and the research itself is often-times diluted and out of context. I agree that the science journalists and the researchers who provide the text / news clipping have a great responsibility to be credible and truthful in the content, at the same time, I penned down a few more thoughts on science outreach that I shared with my colleagues. I’m pasting the same below:

“My rather long opinion on outreach in science below.. Only tangentially related to the conversation above, but here it is anyway.

I have mixed thoughts on the outreach topic. The purpose of outreach is two fold. 1. To communicate research / science in a palatable way without ‘lying’. 2. To excite people who would otherwise not be interested in science, to increase the critical mass of people who take up science as their careers / adopt a scientific attitude.
The latter does need some ‘sensationalism’. Remember that if you are trying to reach new audiences, you are competing for their attention among other things, possibly like cricket or bollywood! Sometimes I do agree that 1 and 2 above can be contradictory, and it’s a good ‘outreacher’ who is able to bridge that gap. I often times find that researchers sit on a high-horse, nose-up in the air, thinking their (sic) too good to do outreach, being puritanical about the science. Good researchers need not make good outreachers, and vice-versa, but that’s okay. But I don’t like the shaming of people who do outreach by those who do only research. They don’t realize it, but people who do outreach (like teachers) are paying it forward and possibly paving the first steps towards future researchers. So, they are contributing equally to furthering research in the long-run as people who are purely focussed on research only today.

So, when any paper (however small / incremental) makes for science news, I do think it’s a good thing. I guess we all at some point were consumers, and now are the creators of the outreach content. We have had the common sense to filter out the non-sense with time-averaging of consuming the information. But the exposure is an important factor in us being where we are today. We won’t know what news article will capture the imagination of a young future-scientist. So, more power to otherwise obscure inaccessible journal publications becoming news snippets and holding print-space competing with a lot of other nonsense that gets published and consumed..

THE END 🙂“

Engineering to Astronomy : India edition

One question I am frequently asked, especially by undergraduates studying engineering, is how I made the ‘transition’ from engineering to astronomy. While my experience is not universal, I’d like to share my story / experience for those who would like to look into exploring opportunities in astronomy with a background in engineering. Like my previous post (How to write an SOP – Indian Engineering college edition), this one too is somewhat more applicable (but not limited) to students with an engineering degree from India, because that’s been my specific experience. As promised before, I will try to include more diverse experiences from my peers and colleagues in future posts.

P.S. For the purpose of this post, I will combine all the varied fields such as astronomy, astrophysics, astro-…. (insert specialization here), cosmology, space sciences, etc.. here and just call all of it Astronomy. I know they are all different, but let’s make this easier for me!

My story:

I graduated with a bachelors in engineering in electronics and communication from CMR Institute of Technology (affiliated to Visvesvaraya Technological University). I chose engineering because I was fascinated with physics and how things work. I had no background in engineering growing up, so I was curious about what engineers do, how they build / work / think. I studied hard, did well and learned a lot. I liked my college years partly for what I learned and partly for the people I met. When I graduated I answered a call for an advertisement in the paper (yes, newspapers back in the day..) to work on an astronomy based project at the Raman Research Institute (RRI) and that opened the wonderful opportunity to work closely with astronomers. My transition into working in astronomy was gradual. I had a very nurturing environment in RRI where I started to apply engineering principles in designing antennas and think about receivers for radio telescopes, all the while my advisors encouraged me to think about the science that these instruments would be put to use for. So my entry into astronomy was somewhat serendipitous. I also got a great chance to switch things up and understand the data analysis side and work for a while in X-ray astronomy. Though a somewhat accidental start, I later consciously decided that I would like to register for a PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics while pursuing radio astronomy instrumentation for experimental cosmology. I also did a whole lot of work in understanding and separating foregrounds from cosmological signals of interest over meter to centimeter wavelengths (more on the science in the future). I registered for my PhD at the Australian National University and continued to work with my advisors and the group at RRI on my thesis project. With my degree I moved to Berkeley for my postdoc and as of this writing I am working on testing detectors and readout technologies for upcoming and future CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) telescopes.

As we say in India ‘ The moral of the story is’…. I work in astronomy (it’s a broad field that covers many different science goals, methods, over a range of wavelengths!) and I do engineering too. It’s as much an application as it is a ‘transition’. 

How to make the ‘transition’.

1.Explore all opportunities.

Most people assume what astronomy is, or what working in astronomy involves. They imagine a guy with a long beard looking through the eyepiece of a telescope, up all night. The way we do astronomy has changed (a lot) since Galileo’s days. There is a variety in astronomy across methods, wavelengths, techniques, and across many more such dimensions. So, look it up! There are also programs such as internship opportunities** at various research institutes that you can look into to get the experience / taste of what it’s like before you decide out of a whim that this is for you. You can write competitive exams such as GATE and apply to a PhD program in astronomy, for example the Joint Astronomy Program (JAP) at IISc. There are many opportunities around you, look into them all and pick what suits you best.  

2. Take up courses / classes.

The thing that most people feel is holding them back is the lack of background. There are two ways to go about this. Either you forge ahead and get a foot in the door by joining on the engineering side of things and take up courses, and read material as you go. Or you can build your background by taking up courses, registering for classes, reading up books, etc that gives you the background to apply to positions that can give you a head start with a combination of your engineering and astronomy knowledge. This brings me to my most important point: 

3. Take advantage of your skillset

Here are some topics that I learned as part of my engineering degree that I have applied as part of my work. Microwave engineering (s-parameters, Smith chart, VSWR), antenna design, mechanical drawing (i.e. cad), control systems, circuit design and analog electronics, digital electronics systems (FPGA programming, VHDL, ADCs), Digital Signal Processing and Signals and Systems (Fourier theory, filtering, ). And this is not a comprehensive list! Those things you are studying and wondering ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever use this!’, the answer is if you want to do astronomy, pay attention. All these skills are useful, if not essential. Especially if you are an engineer wanting to do astronomy then be good at your engineering skills. That’s your strength and that’s what you bring to the table. It is unique and valuable.  

4. Reach out

As an early career researcher I routinely receive emails from many undergraduates enquiring about research opportunities, and also asking me about how I got started in astronomy with an engineering background (motivating this post). Though late many times, I do my best to reply to all these emails as best as I can. Don’t be intimidated to reach out to a researcher whose work you like. You may or may not get a reply, but there’s no harm in trying. Reach out to talk to astronomers, or others in a research career, someone who might be chronologically ahead in your desired career trajectory. As busy as they might be, there are always those who do take the time out to give you some helpful advice, because we were all there where you are now. I was lucky to find mentors (especially students who were a few years ahead of me in the program) and friendly advisors early on in my journey and they were / are instrumental in setting me on this path. So, don’t hesitate to talk to people, you’ll be surprised at how they might help!

I hope this helps, and I hope you go on to pursue your interests confidently, whatever your educational background is.

** Some links here, more on the internet..

1. http://www.ncra.tifr.res.in/ncra/students/external-students/visiting-students-research-programme
2. http://www.rri.res.in/visitingstudents.html
3. https://www.iiap.res.in/?q=degree
4. https://www.facebook.com/RADatHomeIndia/

How to write an SOP : Indian engineering college edition

I have been reviewing some applications for a position of late. I have found that several of the applicants are lacking in presenting a strong statement of purpose or SOP. Though this may be good advice for any position anywhere, and might be useful for anyone, I am specifically writing this for students who are from what we usually refer to as local engineering colleges in India and are aspiring to apply to a masters programs outside India, or to research positions in India or abroad.  I am not an expert in writing SOPs, but I can do my best to give an insight into what one might be looking for in a good SOP. 

While evaluating an SOP is subjective, there are some things that make for a stronger case in general. Since I have a technical background, mostly applicable to Engineering / Physics, I will draw heavily from my experiences in writing and reading SOPs in this area. For SOPs that are of a broader scope, such as arts, literature, social sciences, etc.. I’ll try to reach out to colleagues, friends, and the internet to do a more thorough job in the future. For now however, I hope to convey the spirit of the SOP in this post. 

Here goes.

First of all an SOP is not:

1. A wordy version of your resume / CV. (Note: CV/resume are not the same, more on this on a different post. For the purpose of this post, I will use them interchangeably.)
2. A covering letter
3. A full length document of your dreams and aspirations
4. A single line stating you think you are a good candidate for the job / program (yes, I have seen such SOPs)

What goes on an SOP?

A statement of purpose is your chance to convey everything that you cannot convey in your resume, that are relevant to the application. Your marks might not reflect your true potential, this is your chance to show that you can bring a lot to the position. While your CV/resume reflects only the destination, the SOP can show your journey. 

Here are some pointers:

1.Write an SOP!

If your application calls for an SOP, and you think you might cut it to the next stage of review / screening process just on the basis of your GPA / scores / grades, you are wrong. Your application will not make the cut, if it doesn’t carry all the required materials, including your SOP. So step 1, write your SOP and turn it in with the rest of your complete application. 

2. Be Genuine

We are constantly surrounded by young overachievers. Peers or even pre-teens who have had life changing experiences and have gone on to great things, to change the world. Yes, they are an inspiration and if you are one of them, you have wonderful things to say on your SOP! But if you are a curious young person, who is just trying to figure out what’s next like most of us (I count my self as a curious young person, irrespective of when you are reading this!), that’s perfectly okay. It’s more than okay! Be genuine about what you want to say. Don’t lie, don’t embellish too much. If you are someone who has managed to get the basic education as far as you have, and aspire to take it further with YOUR life experiences (whatever they might be), you have a worthy story to tell. I am someone who did not have tremendously enlightening life changing experiences when I was applying to places. I had met with and talked to some scientists who really did inspire me, but it was a combination of luck, hard work, and personal + professional circumstances that led me to the path I am on today. So if you have not had some life altering experience before the age of say 18 or 21 like most of us, that’s okay! Be genuine about why you want to do what you want to do.

3. Pick a few important points to convey

It’s nice to read about your childhood and your aspirations. Sure, your story is unique to you and by all means you have every right to say your piece to motivate the reviewer in favour of your application. That being said, even if you are going for pulling at heart-strings make sure you focus on one or two central experiences that are relevant to the position you are applying for. Did you see or experience something that motivated you to take up the field? What excites you about the work you are seeking to do, or the subjects you want to study? What have you done in the past that reflects your keen interest in the area? Dig deep, find a couple of central points and weave your SOP around them. Bring it back home to why all this ties into what you are applying for / seeking to do next.

4. Go the extra mile

The thing that distinguishes an applicant with an SOP compared to others is that you have more to say and show than what is on your CV, which is likely very comparable to everyone else applying for the same position. Everyone who is applying, likely meets the same eligibility criteria. Has similar good scores, has studied similar courses. What goes on the SOP distinguishes you. Make sure you go the extra mile to stand out. If you are reading this even a few months in advance of the application due date, and find you have less to show on your SOP, be proactive in seeking out internship opportunities or projects with professors. They matter.

5. Do the work

Let’s say you are seeking to prepare a strong application due a few months down the line. If you have not worked on projects / internships that will make your case stronger, start now! There truly is nothing more valuable than having genuine content to write about. Do the work. Take up a project with a professor. Go get an internship in the industry. Do what it takes so you have enough to write about, genuinely. In the end, the difference between a candidate who has done the work and one who is all fluff, is evident. 

6. Focus on work experience

This is your chance to describe the projects you have worked on. On your CV/ resume you will list out a sentence bearing a title of your final year engineering project, where you worked on the project and who with (assuming engineering is your background, for others insert relevant project here). On your SOP, elaborate on this one sentence. What did you do? Where can this be applied? What software / hardware did you use? Which programming skills came in handy? Draw inspiration for your content and writing from remembering what the learning curve was like and if you had more time to continue working on the project what do you think you can do better, what new levels can you take the project to? 

7. Do your research

Look up the website of the institute / department / lab you are applying to. Read up the work they do. Customize your application for each university / institute. You are applying here because you want to learn something / work on something / do something. So look up the work and say what it is about this work that excites you. This shows that (a) you care enough to do the research (b) you know what you are talking about!

8. Proof read

I know that many students worry about their command over the English language. It’s a valid concern especially when applying to programs in English speaking countries. For positions in India, try to get in touch with the contact on the advertisement to enquire if they will accept the SOP in a vernacular language (they might say yes and surprise you, what’s the harm in trying!). Assuming you are writing your SOP in English, whether or not you are worried about the grammar, get your friends, family, teachers, and mentors to proof read your application and give you critical comments. Use this feedback to improve your application.

9. Look up for resources online

What do you do when you don’t know something? You look it up (thanks Google!). Here are a few I found just on a quick google search, and there are plenty more.. So go read more from professionals about what they have to say on the matter and use what is relevant to you.

1. https://crunchprep.com/gre/2014/powerful-statement-of-purpose
2. https://www.essayedge.com/blog/statement-of-purpose-format/
3. https://www.thehindu.com/features/education/college-and-university/How-to-write-a-successful-SOP/article13990359.ece
4. https://www.gograd.org/resources/grad-school-statement-of-purpose/

These are just some points I put together. I’ll add on more in future posts as they come to me. I hope some of these are helpful, and I hope that you are able to go on and do amazing things with your life, because you deserve it!

Astronomers may have found rogue planets… in another galaxy

No, you didn’t read the title of this article incorrectly. I can’t blame you for thinking you might have: When I first saw the press release for this story I thought it was a typo. It’s not.

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How to Reblog Articles From Pocket to WordPress

Pocket is a handy service for saving articles to read later. It has mobile apps for every platform and its own reader that makes any content easy to read on the go. Once in awhile you read an article that really inspires you.

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Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013

I’ve been loving this one. A compilation of essays and articles on diverse topics in STEM compiled by volume editor Siddhartha Mukherjee and series editor Tim Folger. The pieces are excellent and make for a great short yet illuminating read when you’re hard pressed for time.