5% Done...

It's scary that time is already passing by so quickly at my new job. While two-years seems like a long time for a post-doc, I am repeatedly reminded that two years will pass by in a flash. It seems ridiculous, although when I look back at graduate school, I can't disagree. There were times where I wasn't sure if I was a third or fourth year graduate student when research is the only thing you focus on and you topic or findings don't change significantly from one month to the next.

So far the new job has gone from intimidating to nostalgic and finally a little bit of fun. The intimidation comes from starting a completely new research project, where my first few days and weeks were completely focused on reviewing the current literature (to which I am still doing). Starting a new topic has made me feel like a graduate student again even though I just completed my PhD a few months ago. I just finished being an expert in one topic and then I'm thrown into something completely new again. While it is refreshing to change topics, it is also intimidating as everyone else expects you to become the expert. However, this is where everyone is correct on the PhD:

Getting your PhD is a sign that you know how to learn the important information in a new field, design the relevant experiments to test new ideas, and evaluate those findings to continue moving on.

The nostalgia, as I've already hinted at, is feeling like a new graduate student again with a new topic. Similarly I have a new "advisor" again as well as a research group (although with far more independence here). Although in the past few weeks I've had to taught how to using the mechanical testing frames, how to spray-paint for digital image correlation, and how to properly use the wet chemical fume hood for metal etching, all under the constant supervision of my sponsor. This reminded me of my undergraduate years, where each of my steps were carefully monitored. However instead of being tested for whether I was competent or not, it was just being taught for safe operating procedures. But nonetheless, to top it all off, I was told to wash beakers and cylinders.

The fun has been coming from the start of our mechanical testing of a TWIP steel sheet from a major supplier to better understand its forming limits. However, at the moment the material has not been been behaving as we expected. But I'm breaking a lot of stuff! And for an engineering, there's nothing better than that.

7.5x7.5 in. square sheets (1mm) of TWIP steel subjected to balanced bi-axial testing in a Marciniak set-up. Failure is occurring on the lip or bend, rather than the center as desired.

The Exit Interview

Overall I had an enjoyable graduate school experience in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. There were things I enjoyed a lot, although other things which I had some grievances too. That being said, no program is perfect and every one is unique.

Last Friday I had my "exit interview" with the department head. Having not been in any other programs, I don't know if this exclusively unique to our department alone or happens for many others. For every graduating PhD student, the department head tries to make a one hour appointment to before they permanently leave to cover a variety of topics. The generally cover the following:

• What class was most useful to you?
• What has provided you with the most professional development?
• What was your overall opinion of the program and structure?
• What do you feel was lacking or your least favorite thing in the program?

I've had an exit interview with my advisor. A mix of awkwardness of these are things that you did really well, there are the things that you can still continue improving, what are the things that I (the advisor) can do better, and then these are papers I (the advisor) want you to consider working on still. (The question that never goes away!)

For a department head to ask the similar set of questions shows a desire to improve the program based on a statistical collection of students opinion, rather that just hiring a professor with lots of potential and encouraging the department to increase the number of high impact journal publications. This is a department that will continue to strive to be better not based on research alone, but how it trains the next generation of scientists. Obviously, if you ask the opinion of my classmates, it's not perfect. And it never will be.

In retrospect, I wish I did a similar sort of thing with each and every undergraduate who worked under me as well as all the graduate students with whom I have collaborated with. I won't be the best scientist at the end of the day, but I'll be a better one than I was before.

The Gordon Research Conference

My first "encounter" with the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) series was from Professor Michael Plewa. In my undergraduate research with virucidal materials for water purification, we started a collaboration with Professor Plewa for testing the cytotoxicity of our metal-oxide materials on mammalian cells. During that summer, we were rushing for results in one particular week as he was going to absent the next week for this Gordon Conference. (As we were working in his lab and his equipment, we needed to be under his supervision).

One of those days, Professor Plewa exclaimed his excitement for the upcoming conference. Of course, I had to ask what it was as I had neither heard of it nor thought anyone could get that excited over a single conference. The discussion was short, but memorable as he gave a brief summary that a GRC was one of the best things ever.

In pure delight, he told us that you had the best scientific talks in the morning,  then open scientific discussion in the afternoon, then more talks in the evening, and then you drink the rest of the evening.

To make it better, you repeat all of this over the next few days.

The way he spoke of this made it seem to be the holy land of the scientific community. (Where as the holy grail would be publishing in Science or Nature I suppose). Not only was he going to be attending, but two of his students would be presenting posters as well. Professor Plewa was excited about attending, but also for his two students attending!

The last words he told us on this topic was, "If you ever have the chance, make sure you attend one."




So last week I attended my first Gordon Research Conference in Physical Metallurgy, and hopefully not my last one.

Done... and not done...

I successfully defended the oral part of my dissertation yesterday (albeit a little bit rough again). My committee members signed their names down on the form to verify their approval (although they never checked the box for "pass"...) And then this question from a committee member/advisor came up:

"So what is your timeline for the papers after your thesis?"

It never ends. The dissertation accounts for a large part for completing a PhD, although ultimately only a small part in the academic community. Needless to say, even after defending, I have a lot of work to be done in transforming my chapters to papers now.

The other amusing question, from colleagues, was, "How do you feel?"

To which my response is, "the same."

After completing such a large milestone, I don't feel any different amusingly. In fact the post-doc who asked me this question said this seemed to be the same response always. Your friend's start calling you, "Doctor" for fun (or sometimes "Philosopher"). However, there is research that still needs to be done. There are still questions that I cannot answer. There are always papers to be written.

Maybe in a few more days I'll feel different, but for now, back to fun questions =)

Graduation (but not mine)

While I wish I were graduating, it is coming soon enough.  (Although maybe this whole arrangement of not defending until this summer and walking next May may work out better anyways for my family travel arrangements).

I went to my department's graduation again to see students that I've TAed as juniors (now graduating seniors obviously), PhD candidates who officially received their Master's degree, and my graduate classmates who are now officially Doctors (of Philosophy). While I'm envious of the gigantic diploma they receive (it's twice the size of my undergraduate one), I think I'm more envious of the next stages of their life that are moving onto. Not everyone knows what path they're going on or yet, but that too is part of life. The more important thing is moving forward with time.

If we stagnate, we become dull. I took a year off (voluntarily or involuntarily, I don't really know) between graduating from UIUC and starting graduate school. I didn't have an amazing reason too, like traveling the world, working (in fact the job market in 2010 was very tough and hence why I was unemployed), or conducting some breakthrough research.

I spent a summer more or less jobless. Although I would swing by the lab once in a while to synthesize some material, I had lost a lot of interest as well after working in the same lab for 2 years. We even had a new project to transfer the materials embedded fiber-glass system to a carbon system for higher loading and perhaps more promising applications. But I just found myself burnt from work.

So I found myself with the least research-relevant year. While working on my graduate school applications, I worked in a Frozen Yogurt store first as a cashier but eventually as a night-manager to handle closing and training of new employees. I worked as a teaching assistant in a biomaterials laboratory handling cell cultures and preparing materials for the students, alternating teaching the lab class with the instructor, and grading lab notebooks. I volunteered to work for my friend in sales in his new t-shirt company. I was constantly forced out of my comfort zone to interact with others. I learned a very different skillset from when I was in the college classroom.

I wasn't always sure if taking that year off was the right decision. I had the option to go to UCSD for graduate school, or I could've always worked a little bit harder to find a job. But we play with the cards that are dealt to us and move on. When my year was up, I didn't want to leave Champaign-Urbana for all the experiences I had, but it was time for me to move forward again, to have new experiences, and to not stagnate.

As I'm finishing up my thesis now, I might not have made it to graduating this May, but I'm also ready to move forward past my PhD career.

TMS 2015 Re-cap

I attended my last TMS conference (as a graduate student) last week in Orlando, Florida.

Aside from my qualms on Disney World as the location of the conference, I had a great time overall. Partially this was because of the great weather in Florida, but also just the breadth of talks and discussion at the conference and "out of the conference."

What do I mean by "out of the conference"? For everything else that wasn't officially on the conference schedule. This included stopping by the TMS socializer in the Presidential Suite, where along with my culprits, we were clearly not appropriately dressed and (jokingly) not important enough. But I did get a great view from being up on the 20th floor...

I can't network like my friend, although I had the opportunity to reconnect with a wide variety of people whom I had met when I first started graduate school and attended the first 3DMS conference and workshop back in 2012.

The conference itself was excellent with a wide assortment of topics and great speakers. Although this also presented an issue of questioning what I wanted to do in the future? There is a lot of development in synchrotron techniques to obtain better 3D information, providing the answers to some long-time questions (such as where do critical events like crack and voids nucleate). Although at the same time this open up many questions as well. Along that line, there is increasing focus on the microstructural aspect and role of material failure, i.e. what pair of grains lead to failure or enable provide slip transmission? Then there is still the field of recrystallization and grain growth, which has been gaining momentum again now that the 3D techniques allow us to confirm behaviors that were proposed in the past. While the development of Olmsted et al. 388 grain boundaries by molecular dnyamics in cubic materials have opened up a number of new findings regarding the grain boundary property (i.e. energy, mobility, etc.) landscape. Then there's still the issue of grain boundary networks...

But aside from all of this, I attended a great talk given by Dr. Michelle Dickinson, or alternatively nano-girl, (see her TED talk!). The symposium was organized by a group of Purdue graduate students, called, "Messaging Research to a Broad Audience." Her talk was titled, The Power of Small Words for Big Impacts." The focus is entirely on how to get the message across correctly to a layman and not another scientist, and how this is important in the scheme of public outreach as a scientist. She openly admits that she has taken a set-back in her career to do public outreach, but it has also opened up a very different career path compared to her fellow co-workers. In doing so, she has had the opportunity to go on TV and discuss science topics, meet the prime minister of NZ, and even Sir Richard Bronson. As a result, her funding hasn't always came from the government, but from private individuals instead. This, in my opinion, is quite an accomplishment.

I also had the chance to talk to her on what a graduate student can do to improve his or her public outreach. Her response: "Keep blogging."

The Right Track

I had my weekly meeting with my advisers yesterday, where I provide them a 30 minute update on what I've been working on.

Recently I've been finding my advisers less. Partially because I know what still needs to be completed before I can defend, and slowly I'm learning they don't necessarily have the answers I want for the things I'm investigating. Also I fear that by talking to them more would generate new scientific ideas, that would delay the experiments I already am behind / still need to perform. (Although I secretly think they've been finding me less as well to be rid of me...)

Our EBSD microscope has actually been down the last two months, so I've avoided doing any of the experiments that I need / actually should be doing for my defense. Instead, I've been revisiting some old data from the abnormal grain growth in nanocrystalline nickel, as well as generating synthetic microstructures with annealing twins to match real FCC microstructures. Neither of which, at the end of the day, will end up in my thesis.

So I gave my update yesterday on these two topics and the corrections that were made such that everything is "right" now. As the three of us were leaving the room, Tony made the remark that I looked like I was on the "right track".

I was on the right track for doing research that wasn't related to my thesis, especially when I'm expected to graduate in the next four or so months?

This led me to think, what is the right track for a PhD study (and for the purposes of this discussion focusing on US institutions). Should one focus on publishing three papers and get out? I know this is quite popular. Or should one just do whatever their adviser tells them to do, without question, and eventually follow the path given to their defense (with whatever publications along the way). Or should one do what I've been doing, which is investigating three or four things all at once, such that one almost never makes strong progress on their work (or the other things either), but gain exposure to lots of other things for a more well-rounded scientist upon leaving?

I hope to update and write more frequently on this topic over the next few weeks.