Traditionally there were three ways that, having acquired a PhD, a researcher could continue with their scientific career:
1) Seek a faculty job at an academic institution (typically a university). University jobs are wonderful in that they allow for complete creativity. No one but the faculty member sets his or her research agenda. The downside is relatively low pay and very little chance at reasonable work-life balance. The general divestment in science and education, particularly at the state level, means that faculty members have to raise an increasingly large portion of their lab operating expenses (including salary) from an increasingly small pool of federal funds. Most new faculty members find themselves in their mid-30s, holding advanced degrees, and working very long hours for something south of $100,000 a year (except at the most prestigious and well-endowed institutions). Such is the price of freedom.
2) Find a government position. The government does, with some reluctance, support a fair amount of mission driven basic science at various agencies. Of particular note are NASA (and its quasi-government affiliates), the DOE, and NOAA. Permanent government research positions generally offer better pay than academia and better work life balance. Although the science pursued by government agencies is mission directed, there is a certain amount of flexibility. Government scientists after all, determine how a research or monitoring mission is implemented at the agency level. Despite these benefits there are some real drawbacks to conducting research at a federal agency. The bureaucracy is inflexible (and efforts to reign in spending – generally not an issue at research minded agencies, only creates more) and subject to the drift of political whims. Many federal researchers are impaired by travel restrictions, work stoppages (which even disallow work to continue for free, from a researcher’s home), and budget woes. Your salary might be guaranteed, but what’s the point if your employer prevents you from doing interesting work and doing it well?
3) Get a job in industry. In academic circles this is viewed as going over to the dark side. The pay is good, the work life balance is great, but the academic freedom is nonexistent. Gone are the days of the Bell Labs, when industry supported basic research as a means of cultivating innovation (that job now falls to the federal government, through NSF and NIH).
So what’s a young researcher to do? There is a fourth option available, that until recently was pursued by only a few researchers with either independent wealth or the discipline required to be their own administrator; the cottage research industry. Particularly ideal for researchers with low infrastructure requirements (this won’t work if you need a Level 4 biosafety lab), in the cottage industry model you incorporate your own non-profit institution and set up your research environment in the basement (or local coffee shop). So long as you can leverage a little federal funding (i.e. continue to write competitive research proposals) you can operate with a fantastic degree of flexibility. There are downsides of course, foremost among them being your long term financial security and your ability to stay connected with your peers and on the cutting edge.
What is changing now is the emergence of virtual institutions that can take on the administrative role for cottage-industry researchers, and help them maintain the kind of collaborations that really make cutting edge research possible. One of these institutions is the Blue Marble Space Institute, brainchild of Sanjoy Som, a graduate of the Astrobiology Program (via the Atmospheric Sciences PhD track) here at the University of Washington. There is a vetting process to join Blue Marble but membership is non-competitive, anyone with legitimate research credentials can join. Members of the institute can submit proposals to private and public funding sources, benefit from internal proposal peer review, and enjoy the kind of collaboration possible at a traditional academic institution. Overhead (the amount that an institution adds to the proposal budget to cover “administrative costs”) is a fraction of what it is at a university, helping Blue Marble proposals look more competitive.
Blue Marble and similar virtual institutions have the potential to dramatically alter the academic career landscape. I anticipate submitting an application to Blue Marble in the near future, membership will enable me to submit proposals in parallel with potential postdoctoral advisors (graduate students and even postdocs are typically not allowed to submit proposals to federal programs). If I’m unable to obtain a postdoctoral appointment it also lets me keep my foot in the door, refining and submitting proposals until there’s a break. I think the real advantage to Blue Marble however, is its ability to empower researchers who might opt out of the traditional track. I’m thinking specifically of researchers (male or female) who want to raise a family and have an academic career. Graduate students often romantically partner with other graduate students, a pairing which almost guarantees future family/career conflicts between two career minded individuals. Blue Marble is a new tool in the toolkit for building an academic family, providing a mechanism for taking some time away from a brick and mortar institution while staying totally in the game.
And while I’m on the subject, Sanjoy has a second goal… the adoption of a symbol of global unity for the International Space Station. The ISS is after all the most visible example of the possibilities of international space collaboration for the public good. You can learn more about that project, and vote to have the patch adopted through CASIS, here.
