When I was a postdoc at NIH, I was one of thousands of research fellows, all of us in the rather interesting nether world that is neither quite student nor independent investigator. When my lab chief would explain my role to one of his colleagues as “something like an assistant professor” I would be happy for a week! But in truth of course, no postdoc is like an assistant professor–because assistant professors are independent investigators.

From an institutional perspective, postdocs are indicative (actually they are in fact a bio-marker for) research activity. The larger the cadre of postdocs at an institution, the greater the level of sponsored research, particularly in the biomedical research areas, but also in other areas of science. Thus, from an institute’s point of view, having lots of postdocs is a good thing.

Unfortunately, for many individual postdocs, it ain’t such a good deal. Salaries are low. Prestige is hard to come by, unless one is lucky enough to be the “anointed one” for a boss who is at the top of their field. And of course, the future is anything but certain.

Thus, one of the great unsolved challenges in science administration is to improve the lot of the postdoc, while at the same time producing lots of the same. One of my colleagues here at Mason, created an office of postdoctoral affairs at his last institution. And certainly there are some postdoctoral fellow associations and organizations which can subserve a somewhat similar role to that of graduate student governments and the like.

But ultimately the problem lies in the fact that a postdoc is a trainee, but often treated as an employee. These are often mutually contradictory.

Jim

We had a kick-off meeting with the construction folks this afternoon. It looks like the Krasnow Expansion Project (distinct from the MRI installation) will get underway at a practical level (equipment etc.) sometime during February. We’ll keep you up to date.

Jim

We have some preliminary dates now for the demolition phase of the MRI installation:
Mon 2/13/06 – Friday 2/24/06

Exact details and hours will be developed as we go.

Jim

I had breakfast at the Cosmos Club this morning with two friends
(I’ll identify them in a future blog entry with their permission) and
the topic revolved around two very interesting ideas. The first was
the notion that how the human body reacts to trauma or surprise might
be a very useful metaphor for understanding the reaction of of social
networks to the same. This echoes some of the ideas put forward by
Stephanie Forrest (http://www.cs.unm.edu/~forrest/) with regards to
the immune system and defense of computer networks, but goes beyond
it to include other reactions such as fight/flight. The second idea
was that of social ecological systems (think Hollywood or Boston’s Rt
128) and how such systems might be manipulated, both from the bottom
up and the top down. I was interested to learn of the idea that a
nation’s defense might in fact be designed to be such a social ecology.

It’s not surprising that the breakfast extended for 2 hrs. It was a
lot more interesting than the scrambled eggs.

Jim

Here’s the latest information based on this morning’s teleconference
with the Siemens team. The installation is most likely to begin in
the first week in February. We’re looking at ten weeks. And the
magnet delivery date is right now scheduled as April 24/25.

Joining me on the director’s blog over the next months will be Mike Herman who is our project engineer/coordinator at GMU Facilities Planning and Dr. Layne Kalbfleisch (who has been a guest commentator before)–Layne co-heads up our Neuroimaging Core with Dr. Kevin McCabe. This will be the location for all information regarding construction/installation projects.

Welcome Mike and welcome back Layne…

Jim

Of course this practically means Linux or OS X these days. But why? I think there are several good reasons. First, understanding how to make things happen in a command line driven environment gives an insight into how a computer actually works. If you understand how to go from source code to compiled executable it gives you some notion of what is really going on under the hood. Second, flavors of Unix explicitly deal with security and permissions in a way that Windows doesn’t (or at least in a way that I can understand). Thus understanding how to change ownership and/or the permission status of a file practically makes you a more secure computer user. Third, there is a lot of free opensource software out there in the Unix world, both explicitly scientific (think octave or genesis) but also office oriented (open office for example). Finally, your chances of getting infected by a virus or worm is greatly reduced, since the folks who write these malevolent programs are writing them to the masses (read Windows machines).

For me there are strategic goals of the institute: overarching objectives that are necessary to fulfill the ideas and goals set by the founders of Krasnow, some fifteen years ago.

These type of goals stand in stark contrast to the tactical demands of the moment.

And it’s for these strategic goals that, in science administration, as in life, it’s worth going to the mat.

If one recognizes one’s strategic goals clearly, then it’s relatively easy to tease out those times to stay in the round of poker.

Jim

Eventually there are battles you can’t win–in science administration as in life. Knowing when to fold your hand (in the poker sense of those words) helps minimize losses and at the same time preserves political capital for another day.

But it’s a fine line–because there are many important issues that are worth the fight and it’s often one’s apparent single-mindedness, stubborn refusal to give in that carries the day in the end.

So when to fold? I think the general answer to that is on two occaisions: first, you fold when your argument is clearly positioned by your opposition as counter to the best interests of the larger institution or company. Second you fold when continuing to push is overtly against the best interests of your direct report. In the former case, you fold because it’s good policy, in the latter because it’s good politics.

Jim

The Phase I Krasnow Expansion Projects are of course getting under way and I thought this might be a good time to give a picture of what institute life will be like approximately 18 months from now when we’re moved in.

First, Krasnow will be larger in terms of research groups. I’m anticipating that there will be at least one new PI in place (with his or her laboratory group) and we’ll be in the process of recruiting for the second of six. This new PI will be a cognitive neuroscientist and I expect his/her research area to complement our existing cognitive neuroscience strengths. Obviously this new group will be a heavy user of NIKI (NeuroImaging at the Krasnow Institute) where I hope we’ll be looking at several instrumentation upgrades to our existing 3T Allegra system.

Second, Krasnow will once again become, if briefly, a place with ample space to spread out although we intend the research usage of the new space to be far greater than that of the old space. But there certainly will be a welcome break in the relentless up-tick in our population density.

Third, our academic connections will be on order of magnitude more intense than they have been. We’ll be seeing Krasnow involvement in everything from undergraduate research experiences to of course doctoral programs but also including post-graduate medical education opportunities. That will be a reflection of the growth of the University, especially in the life sciences.

Of course our woods will be intact (mostly) outside the east-facing windows and we’ll probably be facing the same issues with parking that we always have.

And…

we’ll be beginning the intense push for the Phase II expansion project, which will add an additional 12,500 square feet of research space to our facility. This will be an opportunity once again for input from our entire community of scholars and staff.

Will all of this be worth the various inconveniences along the way? I certainly think so. It will allow us to build scientifically upon our current strengths and to achieve critical mass across all of the fields (Computer Sciences, Behavioral Biology and Neuroscience) that our founders envisaged over 15 years ago.

Jim

One way to facilitate research collaboration between research groups at an institute is to view each new PI hire as an opportunity to bring the existing complement of scientists together.

As an example: one might hope that by hiring a new cognitive neuroscientist who uses fused data from say fMRI, dtMRI, MEG and Near Infrared Imaging one might succeed in bringing together existing groups where one group operates pretty much exclusively in the domain of brain nuclei or cortical regions and another group that operates pretty much in the domain of neurophysiology and perhaps aspects of cytoarchitecture.

This is of course strategic hiring and is often thought to be at odds with the traditional search committee approach of academia, but I don’t think it has to be. You just need search committees with a strategic focus on the future of your institute.

Jim