Julie Gould: 0:09
Hello, I'm Julie Gould and this is Working scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. Welcome to the series, Beyond Academia, where we explore the movement of people between academia and other sectors.
Joan Cordiner’s career in chemical engineering started in 1987. But she's a relative newcomer to academia. She was always in two minds about what she wanted to do. As a young woman, she had received sponsorship from the chemical company ICI, now known as Syngenta, to continue her research and do a PhD.
But they turned around to her and said that, actually, they'd prefer to train her up and that she comes to work for them. So that is what she did.
But after that, the question of “What would it be like to work as an academic?” stayed with her for the rest of her career in industry. And as a result, she's kept close ties with the academic world.
Joan Cordiner 1:07
You gravitate to what you like, I think, and what you enjoy. So I gravitated to roles that allowed me to do that industry/academic collaboration. And I always really enjoyed that. So it was always on my mind. And as long as the company was giving me stuff that was stretching me and I was enjoying, there was no real incentive to move.
Julie Gould 1:31
Joan also enjoyed working with the young people who came through her departments. Students coming in for placements, or young recruits that she'd found at a university.
Joan Cordiner 1:39
Training and coaching and developing and encouraging young people. And the company let me play at being a researcher, because I got to do this industry/academic collaboration. And then I was managing the technical departments or technology departments. So I got to do lots of stuff I really enjoyed.
Julie Gould 2:02
Towards the end of her time in industry, the company wanted to know what Joan was going to do in the future. Where did she see herself working within the company?
Now at the time, Joan was based in Houston, in Texas, and she had learned that they were going to close up the office there in a few years time.
This gave Joan the opportunity to reflect on her career and herself. So she decided to take one of those aptitude tests, one that she'd actually been asking her trainees to do as well.
Joan Cordiner 2:30
And it suddenly occurred to me, I mean, this is really crazy. But it just kind of, you know, sometimes you have these “aha” moments.
And I read the top five strengths. And you know, first one was learner, second one was strategic. And the next three were all about people: relator, communications and individualization. And that last one is all about understanding individuals’ needs and their development needs.
And I thought, “That's why I like all the stuff. It fits. And there isn't a job in the company that's any more senior that really lets me do that. That still lets me be technical.”
Because you could go into human resources, but I really enjoy the technical and the research side. And this kind of thing about “Do I want to be an academic?” has always sort of been there.
And that kind of said, “Well, actually, that sounds like a perfect job. And I should just go for it. And I should have the confidence to go for it.”
And that's when I started making the plans of, well, “How am I going to derisk it?”
Julie Gould 3:36
De-risking the move means to make a move easier from two perspectives: make the move less of a learning curve for yourself, but also make it easier for the new employer.
Joan Cordiner 3:47
You kinda need to convince the employer that you're going to build, you know that you've derisked that move, because they're taking a risk on you, just like the university took a risk on me.
What can you do to derisk it for whoever's going to hire you?
And, you know, part of the derisking for me was I had a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
So (and I don't have a PhD, right) so it's really unusual to become a professor without a PhD.
But part of the derisking was I'd already been recognized by a fraternity as it were, being a Fellow of the Royal Academy.
Now I didn't go seeking that. But I did start to, you know, five or six years before I made the jump, I started making time to go to conferences and meeting academic friends. And part of getting my head back into where's the state of the art, who's working on what? You know, how have things changed in the UK? Because I wasn't even in the UK. I was in the US. And I think you know, that's, that helps the rescue for whoever's hiring you
Julie Gould 5:00
Joan joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Sheffield University in the UK at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020, as a professor of process engineering and external engagement.
This meant that she was hired to develop the academic-company relationship, a perfect role for her.
Other than immersing herself in the current UK based research, environment and networking, part of Joan's derisking strategy was to highlight her time spent working on funding panels, creating relationships and collaborations with academia.
She'd seen academic laboratories. She'd done teaching.
Joan Cordiner 5:36
So that bit it was less of a risk. The bit that was a risk for me was the research part. If, you know, if you're in industry and your work is research, then it's easy to jump back into straight research. Because you're used to working in a very specific field, and you've developed expertise in a specific field.
So early on in my career, you know, I developed very specific research in a narrow field. And at that point, it probably (from a research point of view), might have been better to go back to academia then.
But now I've managed technology departments.
I know a lot about…I know a little about lots of things. But my depth in anything isn't there anymore. And where it did exist, it's out of date, largely. So getting kind of up to speed on all that, again, I've had to put a lot of effort into.
Julie Gould 6:35
The next step was to consider what her research was going to be about.
Joan Cordiner 6:40
Because typically academics focus in an area, and my interests are quite wide, because I've had a wide and varied career. And I managed, you know, a wide area.
So that's been the biggest, probably the biggest hurdle for me.
And the biggest fear, you know. Especially when people say, “What's your field?” Like, “I don't know yet.”
And I still don't know, but I'm playing in a whole load of fields. And I soon came to realize, actually, “Let's just go and do some stuff and see what works, and collaborate.”
Julie Gould 7:19
But the role worked because Joan and the department could collaborate to fill in any gaps.
Joan Cordiner 7:25
The bits I'm missing, they have. They have lots of experience of doing research recently.
And they seem to appreciate and benefit my broader perspective. And the sort of impact perspective. And, you know, I've probably got an example that I can kind of tell them about, that, you know, can help. Or I know somebody who knows, who might have data. So, you know, it's, I think, moving back for me was easier because I was working in a collaborative department.
Julie Gould 8:02
Joan also had a very specific skillset that she could offer to the department.
Joan Cordiner 8:07
What I offered them was, was useful. They have a process safety, leadership, process safety loss prevention Master's course.
And as part of being a manager I had to manage process safety. I was responsible legally for process safety, you know, in a large site in the US, and other jobs before that.
And so I had a very specific skill that was really helpful for them, because teaching that with real industry experience is a real sell for the university.
So I think finding something that's really useful and transferable, I think, helps. And it gives you confidence.
Julie Gould 8:52
Having that confidence comes with experience. Having built up skills in something that the other person or company needs. And this is easier to come by when you've spent considerable time in a role or a company developing those skills.
But for somebody at the very beginning of their career, this is a little bit harder.
Jorge Abreu-Vincente left academia in 2017, after finishing his PhD, for a more stable role in industry so that he could support his young family.
But when I spoke with him towards the end of 2021, just four and a half years after moving through the barrier between the two sectors, Jorge was telling me that it was time for him to go back through it again. But the other way, this time. He wants to go back to academia.
Jorge Abreu-Vincente 9:37
I do not feel like industry is my place. And that would be for me the main topic to go back. This fast pace. This, you need to care about the returns and you need to be very productive. And you don’t need to find the best solution. But you need to find the most efficient way of doing things. Which sometimes is something that you know is completely suboptimal for what you could do with these technologies. And for me doing this suboptimal solutions when we are speaking about something that can completely change the world, as is the case of AI, for me is not the way I say it. The way I really like to do things is to look for progress. To look for, in this case, new ways of applying AI to problems, but to really get a proper solution.
That is the kind of the scientist in me. And I really want to do something meaningful.
And for me, something meaningful needs to come from somewhere else than just, you know, return revenue for a company.
And that's why I really want to go back to the science. Not that much about maybe academic itself, but even just helping science to thrive using machine learning on AI tools.
Julie Gould 10:51
For more than a year, he was looking for a role. The first one he tried was at the institution that he did his PhD at, The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, in the Heidelberg area in Germany.
They were looking to hire people for a data science department. He was excited. He did the interview. But…
Jorge Abreu-Vincente 11:09
…coming from the outside, coming from the industry makes things difficult.
So I really don't know the reason why this decision was made. But it did not work.
Then in August, I had another opportunity again, with Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. They contacted me. It was to become, for a position on calibration scientist.
So it was more of a technical position, not that much postdoc or academic position.
And the topic there was, I did not make it to the interviews in this case. They needed someone that was much more experienced on the real topics, on the reducing telescope data, and all these kind of things. Which I was, but of course four years ago.
Julie Gould 11:59
As time went by Jorge heard more no. And I asked him what that felt like.
Jorge Abreu-Vincente 12:05
It doesn’t feel good. I don't know if I say terrible. I mean, obviously, anytime you get a no, it is like, time is passing it’s going to get even more difficult. So it really feels bad at that point.
But at the same time, you know the situation, and you know that not many people have done this way back. So it's just, well, another try…
Julie Gould 12:33
But instead of focusing on the negative, Jorge has turned his job hunt into a learning experience.
Jorge Abreu 12:39
At the beginning, it was hard to hear no.
But now, the things change from the point of view. I’m enjoying the process. Maybe because now it changed from astronomy to biology, what I'm trying to get into.
And it implies like learning new things, and learning new ways of seeing the science and also see how, with AI, we can change things.
And so for this kind of topics, I am kind of learning a bit every time I have an an interview, every time I have a new option.
And I'm trying to enjoy the process on that way. So that's, yep, that's what I'm trying to do.
Julie Gould 13:20
Since I spoke to Jorge, he has actually found a job at an academic institution which he will start in the spring of 2022.
And so we can see that careers aren't as simple as “Get a job and stay in it for life.” People change directions all the time crossing the porous barrier between sectors, sometimes even more than once.
And making the move back into academia, as Jorge said, is not one you see very often.
So if you've made this move back into academia after some time away, for whatever reason, we would really love to hear from you.
Please send the team at Nature Careers an email with the address, naturecareerseditor@nature.com. And put “Academia” in the subject line.
In the next episode of this series, Beyond Academia, we will hear about some collaborations between academia and industry, where the porous barrier between the sectors seems to have completely disappeared. Thanks for listening. I’m Julie Gould.