My extremely weird pre-PhD career
So I’ve finally started my PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology in the University of Texas at Austin, and wanted to reflect on bits of my journey here.
The standard practice for getting in a PhD program is to get a good undergrad GPA in a relevant subject, then accrue some research experience in the subject, and then apply. Getting good letters of recommendation, standardized test scores, and publications are definite pluses. That’s the standard pre-PhD career. The rest of my cohort all tick these boxes. The rest of my cohort ticks all of these boxes.
And then you have me.
The vast majority of my research experience is quite far removed from my actual major. Job opportunities for a fresh microbiology graduate are exceedingly rare in Bangladesh. By almost unanimous consensus, the best research institute in the country is the icddr,b. It started out as a hospital for cholera patients back in the fifties and soon doubled as a full-blooded international research institute. I managed to secure a job in the institute some three months after my graduation- Research Officer in the Environmental Microbiology Laboratory. So far so good.
Here’s where the problem starts though. To an overwhelmingly large extent, the nature of scientific research is constrained by the funding available. This can have some rather ironic consequences- if you’re interested in researching a particular virus, for example, you’d be better off until its vaccine hits the market. Funds would dry out pretty quickly after people stop getting sick from it. In a country like Bangladesh, the vast majority of the money earmarked for scientific research goes to public health. That includes things like epidemiology, vaccine trials, trying to find socio-demographic correlates of particular diseases, water, sanitation and hygiene concerns, and so forth. Pretty far removed from stem cell research, if you were wondering. So on account of being the best and most talked about research institute in Bangladesh, icddr,b as an institute, by its structure, overwhelmingly favors public health research. That doesn’t mean cutting-edge research doesn’t occasionally take place (I’ve previously reviewed just such a publication), but the structural bias is geared to accommodate more public health stuff.
Public health research often has a lab component, but that’s usually secondary to the project’s goals. So for example, a water, sanitation and hygiene project might want to investigate the correlates of bad water quality. This would usually involve collecting a lot of socio-demographic data from the study population (age, sex, health status, water use practices, all that jazz), testing the water they use at their homes for microbiological and chemical parameters, and then reporting the correlations based on statistical analysis. The only “lab” component in this research is the routine screening of water samples for bacteria. The research officer involved with this project would probably be more concerned with designing the survey questionnaires, managing logistics for field trips, cleaning and collating data, statistical analysis, and the like, preferring to delegate the relatively less complex and more ‘routine’ laboratory screening component to someone else. In public health research, laboratory analysis is an instrument to generate one population parameter among many- that could be blood antibody levels after a vaccine trial, presence of pathogen in patient stool, or whatever else- but it’s always done in the format of ‘routine screening’.
That, however, is only the beginning. The vast majority of my responsibilities in the ‘lab’ involved the office desk, not the lab bench. This would include writing to potential donors and collaborators for funding, communicating with existing donors, managing project expenses and invoicing, preparing reports on laboratory activities and work progress, and so forth. As an example, the project that I was most involved with was a nationwide survey of water quality (the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey). My key activities with this project included preparing the project documents, making and revising the budget as and when the need arose, invoicing for every quarter, attending meetings with other collaborators and stakeholders, making and revising the water quality questionnaire, providing training to the field workers, writing and translating the fieldwork protocol, stressing over sample shipment and fieldwork logistics, and so much other paperwork…
In short, almost no actual science.
The more ‘scientific’ activities during my stint with icddr,b included study design, writing grant applications and project conceptual notes, data analysis, and the occasional manuscript preparation. I like to say I wasn’t doing science so much as I was giving birth to science- a process that’s very reminiscent of making sausages.
I wouldn’t say this journey is without benefit- I’ll hopefully have occasion to talk about that as well- but there are clearly some problems with this. For one, it was something of a short-circuit. There’s a process the aspiring scientist would ideally want to follow. The journey begins with learning and developing the fundamentals of his subject during undergrad years, working in a laboratory to practically implement some of that knowledge, and then doing their own research, under supervision of a mentor, in the context of a PhD. It is only after this period that the scientist starts writing grants to secure funding, and becomes more involved with things like project management and logistics.
For me, the last part came right after my graduation. Not only were the vast majority of the projects my institute was involved in on public health- not quite what one pictures when thinking about laboratory science- but I was essentially posted in the capacity of management and administration. Again, that’s not without benefit, but that left me without adequate training in many of the skills other scientists in this part of their career would have. When I was in the interview for my PhD candidacy, after hearing the work that I’ve been doing in this institute- Professor Taylor said, “That sounds like a PI (principal investigator)”.
Let me end with another tiny anecdote, one that prompted this post, in fact. In my orientation to this program, Dr. Po-Tsan Ku gave a wonderful presentation on career options for a PhD student, and the importance of starting to think and prepare for it early. At one point in the presentation, Dr. Ku said- at the beginning of your career as a scientist, technical skills are far more important than soft skills. But the further you go up, the ratio starts reversing- soft skills start becoming more important, technical skills less so. When I heard this, I realized that for me the hierarchy has been the opposite. As the lead researcher in my work group (right after my boss, of course), soft skills like writing, communicating, conflict management and the like have been of paramount importance, at the expense of technical skill.
I’m now entering the part of my career where the ratio is reversed again, to become what they should’ve been in the first place.
So…yeah!
