The seventh key to successful research career: Staying focused

In the May 10 issue of Star Science articles, we introduced seven keys to establishing a successful research career in academia. These points were drawn from our own experiences over the course of our parallel careers in Malaysia and the Philippines, and we think these keys will be useful for any freshly minted Ph.D. looking to begin a serious research-based career. Over the past months, we also discussed the first six of these keys, which we again list down here to round off the series:

• Establish a separate identity

• Recruit a talented student

• Develop a professional network

• Find a research team

• Learn to multi-task

• Learn to prioritize

This week, we take a close look at the seventh and final key: staying focused. There are undoubtedly numerous challenges that face any young researcher working in a university, such as conflicting expectations with respect to balancing teaching, research and even administrative duties; to some extent, such difficulties can be met through smart use of multi-tasking and prioritization skills. The same goes for the need to balance work and personal time. At the same time, a significant challenge remains in nurturing one’s research through networking, student recruitment and teamwork, with the primary objective of becoming an independent (although not necessarily mature) researcher. Any young researcher will also have to deal with a wide array of career obstacles, ranging from office politics (which also exists in academia!) to the disappointment resulting from the inevitable rejection of papers and proposals. How, then, should one respond to such setbacks? We have one final piece of advice: stay focused on your career goals, and be persistent.

For a young academic, the two most important elements that one should really stay focused on are teaching and research. We have some personal advice on both of these aspects. For teaching, it will often be beneficial to stay on the same subjects for at least for a couple of years. There are several reasons for this. First, for someone who is teaching a new subject for the first time, plenty of time is spent for lecture preparation.  Often, teaching for the first time entails some uncertainties. For instance, the academic is unsure on the level of difficulties in setting examination questions for the first time, or is unfamiliar with which topics are especially difficult for typical students.  In most cases, improvements are easily seen when the young academic is teaching the subject for the second and third time. Once the teaching part of one’s career is established, the young academic can then spend more time to establish his/her research works.

On the other hand, staying focused on a core research area is the advice that we would give to any young academics too.  For most people, it is common to have more than one area of interest.  However, it is also important to keep in mind that we should first establish our core research area. It is a good idea to establish one’s “territory” before venturing into new research areas. This is particularly important for young academics who just started their career at the university, are they are normally loaded with teaching and miscellaneous duties. In fact, it is a good idea to develop short-, medium- and long-term career goals for one’s research, but we will leave this as a topic for a future Star Science article.

One other item that we would like to discuss now is consultancy. Some universities require academic staff to perform consultancy service in order to raise university income (a practice prevalent in Malaysia, for example). On the other hand, many academics, particularly in the Philippines, do freelance consulting work to augment their personal income. We feel that this practice is best for established academics (with at several years of experience), and not on new academic staff, as the latter group should place their focus on research and teaching.  We have seen many young academics suffer from the workload of consultancy works for companies, often resulting in failure to maximize their research potential. In addition, with limited industrial experiences, it is hardly for young academics to perform well enough to convince the industrial players to adopt their proposed solutions, especially it is not within their area of expertise.

The benefits of this seventh and final key are not to be underestimated. In fact, we will go as far as to say that none of the previous six keys we listed makes any difference without this last (but definitely not least) piece of the puzzle. Thus ends this series, which we sincerely hope will prove useful to you, if you happen to be more than just a casual reader. If you are a researcher at the early stages of an academic career, we wish you all the best!

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Ir. 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, American and Africa. He is an active author, with two forthcoming books and more than 75 journal papers; he has made more than 120 conference presentations. He served as 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), 2010 Young Engineer Award of the Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM), as well as the 2012 Outstanding Young Malaysians Award. He has just been invited to join the editorial board of Process Safety and Environmental Protection (formerly known as Transactions of the IChemE Part B). He also actively conducts professional training for practicing engineers. 

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 80 process systems engineering (PSE) articles that have been published in chemical, environmental and energy engineering journals. He is a 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]).