Up and down, but always forward

How much of an academic career is down to planning, or simply luck? Does taking risk pay off? These are recurrent questions, and it is always nice to get the perspective of a more senior colleague. Jenny Martin's latest blog post is particularly interesting, as she has just accepted the role of Director of the Eskitis Drug Discovery Institute at Griffith University. Many of us could do a lot worse than having the same career.

Jenny suggested on Twitter that I blog about the topic, so let's have a look at how I got my current Lecturer position (equivalent to Assistant Professor if you are reading from North America), which is not a bad position to be in if you consider the overall numbers. A lot has happened since my 'tightrope' analogy for postdoctoral life, but let's start even further than that.

As a kid, I was fascinated by weather and climate. I would collect and analyse my own data, read any book I could find on the topic, etc. I even spent a week as a 16 year old intern at my local weather station in 1998. Despite coming from a relatively low SES background, I was attending an excellent high school, thanks to a number of factors (family commitment, partial fee waiving, etc.). I was having good marks, so nothing seemed impossible. I looked up how to become an engineer at the French national meteorological service. Less than a handful of positions every year? No problem! Very difficult entrance exam for their school? Not afraid! After all, I was already reading the book used in the classroom I would hopefully attend 3-4 years later, so I knew I would enjoy it.

Classes préparatoires being extremely competitive (worse than some grants I am applying for these days), things did not turn out as planned. I ended up going for my second choice of "grande école", an engineering school specialising in Computer Science and Mathematics. Weather forecasts rely on computational models, so the idea was still to eventually work in that field. The French system is quite complex, but because these schools recruit after 2-3 years of classes préparatoires, you spend 3 years studying there and graduate with the equivalent of a 5-year M.Eng. degree elsewhere. In each of the last two years, students undertake a 6-month work placement, and are encouraged to consider gaining some international experience. It is not easy to convince a foreign company that having a French "stagiaire" has many benefits, so I mostly targeted universities (which seemed more likely to have interesting, short-term projects I could really take ownership of). I focused on Ireland (including Northern Ireland), as I was hoping to spend some time there at some point anyway.

Only one university replied with real interest (and some funding!), so in April 2004 I started my six-month project with Martin Crane at Dublin City University, working on computational fluid dynamics. It went very well. As expected from a previous trip, I loved the country, and research was great too. The project led to my first conference presentation, and some time later we even got a paper out of it. Becoming an academic was my new goal. The plan was to come back to this group for my second placement, work on a new project, get some preliminary results, and apply for a PhD scholarship to work with Heather Ruskin and Martin. In my head, it was fairly straight-forward. Later on, I realised it involved a fair amount of luck as well: the success rate for the scholarship I was awarded was about 20%.

As I was starting my PhD, Microsoft Research had a workshop, and later a report, called Towards 2020 Science. It highlighted the need to "produce ‘new kinds’ of scientists now urgently needed (computationally and mathematically highly literate)". I thought that being at the interface between computing and biomedical sciences would be really fitting for me. A great match for my research goals and my interests in data analysis, modelling, etc. from the early days. My career goal became a little more refined.

My PhD was fairly uneventful, with a few conferences and papers, except for one detail. At a conference in Italy, I met a Japanese researcher, Hiroyuki Ohsaki, who at the time was working at Osaka University. His focus on communication networks was quite far from my work on the immune response to HIV, but we realised there was a nice overlap in the modelling approaches we were using, and decided to keep in touch.

This, and a new project on epigenetics, brought a focus on Japan. I started to collaborate with a few labs there, and it looked like I would spend some time either there or in the USA (I even interviewed for a postdoctoral position in Chicago). At that point, just under two years after my PhD, I was awarded an IRCSET Marie Curie fellowship to spend 18 months in Hiroyuki's group in Osaka (followed by a year back in Ireland for the "return phase"). It was great news. The move was supposed to bring me one step closer to a faculty position: a competitive and well-regarded fellowship, some additional international experience, and hopefully a couple of nice papers. The Global Financial Crisis changed all that. The situation degraded fairly quickly in Ireland, and the government imposed a recruitment ban. Some positions I applied for were withdrawn before any interview took place. For the single position that came through, I was shortlisted for interview but not offered the job.

It was time to take a big risk. I applied for a 3-year fellowship to work with Hiroki Ueda at RIKEN. It was a risk on multiple levels. The success rate is typically about 10-15%, but more importantly, I would be working directly in a biology lab, rather than in collaboration with one. This could be a great career boost, or a dead end, depending on how it went.

Thankfully, it paid off. I got the fellowship, moved back to Japan, and worked on great projects. We made a brain transparent, and later even a whole mouse. We also had a nice study using CRIPSR, and a number of other projects that are not published yet but have produced some very interesting results as well.

Soon enough, it was time to prepare applications again, especially as recruitments can start months before the scheduled start date (due to visas, etc.), and because not all countries operate on the same university calendar. At that point, I had decided to only apply for faculty positions. I was not interested in being a perpetual postdoc so, with a few good results behind me, it was make-or-break time. My wife and I prepared a shortlist of countries where we could see ourselves live. In no particular order: Japan, Canada, USA, Australia, and a few European countries (not including France, ironically). I quickly began to find a few suitable positions advertised in these countries. The number of PhD graduates means that there is fierce competition for each position, though.

I received a few rejection letters, and some universities never bothered to share an outcome (isn't that annoying!), but I also got good news. Within five months of starting that process, I called the search off and accepted a position at QUT in Brisbane, Australia. New country, new challenges, but it is nice to have the ability to establish my own line of research.

Looking back to 2004-2005, it has not been a straight path, but I managed to bounce back when needed. I am a Lecturer in Data Science, and I work on biomedical systems. Of course, rather than an end goal, this is only the beginning. There are more challenges ahead (more funding please!), but I can also see a number of very exciting opportunities.

Going to Japan as a researcher (1)

[note: this is a repost, on 15/05/2015 of an article I had prepared for another version of my blog(s). It was originally posted in April 2014, so some of the information may have changed. Leave a comment below if you have a question]

There are quite a few people interested in coming to work in Japan, so I suppose some of them might be researchers looking for opportunities here [back in 2014, I was still working in Japan].

Depending on your career stage, the opportunities will be different, so I will consider three stages: student (MSc or PhD), young researcher (defined as within five years of completing your PhD) and experienced researcher (at least five years of experience post-PhD). Today, I will focus on options for young researchers.

The most obvious option, at any stage of your career, is direct hire. The main difficulty is to identify suitable positions. As always, networking is a valuable tool. If you are hoping to move to Japan, present your work at conferences in your field and try to meet Japanese attendees. They may be able to direct you to some of their contacts looking for candidates, or might even have a position in their own laboratory. My first position in Japan was the result, in part, of a discussion at a conference in Italy many years before I even considered Japan an option.

Another route to find research positions is the Internet. Websites such as Nature Jobs, Science Careers and Times Higher Education all have the options to search by geographical regions, and to create email alerts tailored to your needs. Another great resource, specific to jobs in Japan, is JREC-IN (Japan REsearch Career Information Network), maintained by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. You can filter results by region, prefecture, institution type, research field, etc., and can also save the corresponding email alerts. Very useful!

As a young researcher, another option is to find your own funding, and there are a few fellowship programs worth mentioning. The best known probably is fellowship program of the JSPS (Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science). Their website has all the information you will need. Interestingly for people who want to come to Japan long-term, the program also has a specific stream called "Pathway to University Positions in Japan". There is also a funding stream for short visits to Japan, but be careful about the impact on your eligibility if you plan to apply for a standard fellowship later on.

Many research institutes also have their own postdoctoral fellowship program for foreigners, such as RIKEN with the aptly named FPR (Foreign Postdoctoral Researcher program). If your research field has anything to do with Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine or Engineering, it is definitely worth looking into. The FPR program is funding my current position, and I can recommend it. The website has all the details you need to know more about the program, check your eligibility and prepare an application.

International programs may also be an opportunity to relocate to Japan. Two such programs come to mind. The first one is the Human Frontiers Science Program (HFSP). The program is open to applicants with a Ph.D. in a biological discipline (Long-Term Fellowships) as well as those from outside the life sciences (Cross-Disciplinary Fellowships). Interestingly, HFSP fellowships offer the option to stay the full three years of the fellowship in the host country or to use the last year of the fellowship to return to your home country or to move to another HFSPO member country. I think this "return phase" option can be really useful, and it is also a feature of the other scheme I wanted to mention, the International Outgoing Fellowships for career development (IOF) offered by the European Commission through the Marie Curie Actions.

 With that program, the return phase has to take place in Europe, but anyone can apply, irrespective of nationality and current location. Several national funding agencies across Europe have similar schemes co-funded with the European Commission. In such cases, the return phase obviously takes place in the corresponding country. My first position in Japan, mentioned earlier in this post, was funded by such a program.

As you can see, there are many options if you want to come to Japan as a young researcher, and this post is not meant to be exhaustive. These positions are generally quite competitive, but this does not mean you should not try. If you know any other funding program worth mentioning, or maybe some useful online resources, please leave a comment below.

The postdoctoral tightrope walk

(I wrote this piece for a column context a year and a half ago. It made it all the way to the final round of reviews but did not win anything, so I have decided to publish it here, unedited.)


Doing a PhD is often compared to running a marathon, perhaps rightly so. Both are lengthy efforts, and sometimes have an unexplainable aura to outsiders. For every runner who hit the invisible wall a few miles from the line, there is at least one PhD student who remained stuck at ABD (All But Dissertation) for an unhealthy length of time. Yet, even though there were occasions for deep digging and teeth gritting, the finish line has been crossed, and the PhD awarded. It was then time to get ready for something entirely different.

If a PhD is a marathon, a postdoctoral position is closer to tightrope walking, and requires a supplementary set of skills. Balance is essential.

One of the first challenges is to efficiently divide time between research and the additional tasks that are handed over. Postdoctoral researchers are for instance more directly involved in preparing proposals. If you are affiliated to a university, teaching duties and supervision of research students will also be more present than during postgraduate times. While these tasks are interesting, as well as useful in terms of career development, they can also be time consuming. Postdoctoral contracts are typically quite short, and research outcomes will obviously be an essential criteria when applying for the next position. Falling behind schedule is a clear risk, and planning well ahead is required.

Striking the right balance between old and new projects has also proved to be an important question. It is only natural that research interests evolve once the final touches have been put to the PhD project. After all, this took several years to complete, and the start of postdoc life may be time to let some fresh air in, and to get involved in some of the hot topics that have recently emerged in your field.

Turning to former supervisors and senior colleagues when I was considering these options, I received a very sound advice not to start again from scratch. Years of working on a specific project represent an expertise that should not be wasted. The key, here, was the increased emphasis on multidisciplinary research. It gave me a chance to make the most of the techniques I had learned and developed, while still enjoying the excitement of working in new areas. This is typically prevalent in my research area (computational modelling), but has also been occurring more and more frequently across all fields.

The biggest challenge, however, has to be the work-life balance. The problem is not new, of course. Being a PhD student obviously was a time-consuming, and on occasions self-absorbing, experience. The main difference is that, from the start, my then partner (and now wife) knew that my PhD would not last more than a few years. It did not make me less busy, but it certainly helped accepting times when I got the balance wrong. Would I be able to give a similar timeline now? I am currently two and a half years into my postdoctoral life, and my present funding runs for another 20 months, but I have no guarantee on what happens next.

We are in our third country (Japan following France and Ireland). Our objective was to settle somewhere, and to consider raising a family.  Unless the global economy rapidly recovers from the recent meltdown, permanent positions will likely remain sparse, and I may have to remain a postdoc a little longer. This will work only if I preserve a sanctuary for life outside research. There is no magic formula for this, but walking on a tightrope is not meant to be easy.