Relevance of PhD dissertation and future research

[spectastic]

I know for Academia, the thesis topic will be large!y similar to what the person is doing in post doc or professorship. What about for industry? One piece of book wisdom I learned is that your thesis doesn't have to Address an important societal issue, especially if it's hard to do research on. My pi has high demand for earning a PhD, 6 first author papers. The good thing news is it's all applied. Bad news? 6 mofo-ing 1st author papers. So think it's better to stick to familiar ground, and get papers published. OTOH, the potential areas of my research is vast. There's no telling where the next breakthrough will come from. So in this case, is the ability to do research more important than relevance of research for long term?

[Quantum Buckyball]

On 6/20/2016 at 3:01 PM, spectastic said:

I know for Academia, the thesis topic will be large!y similar to what the person is doing in post doc or professorship. What about for industry? One piece of book wisdom I learned is that your thesis doesn't have to Address an important societal issue, especially if it's hard to do research on. My pi has high demand for earning a PhD, 6 first author papers. The good thing news is it's all applied. Bad news? 6 mofo-ing 1st author papers. So think it's better to stick to familiar ground, and get papers published. OTOH, the potential areas of my research is vast. There's no telling where the next breakthrough will come from. So in this case, is the ability to do research more important than relevance of research for long term?

Yes, the ability to do research is definitely more important. Applied science has an expiration date, kinda like nano-related topics, it was a hot topic 5 years ago but not anymore. My buddy's research is in nano (fundamental) rather than applied research and it was very hard for him to land interviews despite of his 8 first authored papers in ACS journals. 

Timing is everything

As for right now, some of the hot topics including MOFs (Inorganic), CRISPRS (Biochemistry), and Machine Learning (Data Science) 

Your problem-solving skills, creativity and soft skills are really important if you decide to go into industry. Most people know the number of pubs are influenced by the size of the research group you are in. 

If you decide to do a postdoc, limit to 1 postdoc only. My PI did two for a total of 6 years and it was too "long" for private sectors, a couple companies he interviewed thought he was too far in, and thought he would be too difficult to be re-trained. 

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I know that we have been told that as long as you do good science and being productive in graduate school you will be alright after graduation. I recommend you to take a look at couple profiles on LinkenIn to get a reality check. 

Edited June 23, 2016 by Quantum Buckyball

[Eigen]

It's not even true in academia that your thesis topic has to be similar to what you want to do long term. 

One of my colleagues did a PhD in inorganic chemistry, a first post-doc in biological chemistry, and a second post-doc in metabolomics at a medical school. 

Your research program as a scholar, once you finish all the training, is what you have the skills and background to propose. It pulls from what you've done, and what your dissertation is on, but that does not define you as a scholar. 

[spectastic]

it doesn't define you as a scholar, but why should a company or institution hire you to research printable electronics (or what have you), when you have 2 years of post doc on the topic, and someone else has an entire dissertation on that stuff?

[juilletmercredi]

it doesn't define you as a scholar, but why should a company or institution hire you to research printable electronics (or what have you), when you have 2 years of post doc on the topic, and someone else has an entire dissertation on that stuff?

 

Perhaps because you have other skills or experiences that the company wants? (Also, a two-year postdoc on a particular topic might actually be a lot more valuable than a dissertation, especially if the postdoc was productive.)

 

I work in user experience research, which is a subset of human-computer interaction; my background in social psychology and public health. I actually did zero related to HCI before I came to this job. But I got the position over many candidates who had their PhDs in HCI or more ostensibly "relevant" areas of psychology (like cognition, perception, etc.) From the outside looking in, it may make no sense. But I have a special skill set and experience in an area that's difficult to find in this field.

 

The thing is, though, "industry" is not a catch-all - different industry jobs want different things. My position is a generalist research position; we don't do research into any one thing very deeply. So instead of a subject matter specialist, what we really want are people who are broadly trained in my field and who can learn a bunch very quickly. But some industry positions *are* specialist positions and they want people who have been doing research in a specific area for a while. Those places are more likely to care what your dissertation was about and what you worked on in your postdoc.