Slashdot Mirror
Industrial Labs that Still Do Fundamental Research
An anonymous reader asks: "I am a graduate student of Mechanical Engineering at a reputed University in the United States. I have had a lot of fun working towards my PhD. I have published papers and done exciting research. I should be finishing up in the next few months or so, but I would like to continue doing the same kind of work that I am doing now. One option would be to take up a post-doctoral research appointment and find myself a faculty position. I am somehow not attracted to this option because of the tenure and grant pressure. My ideal job would be in something like the Bell Labs of yester-years. Do you know of labs that have that kind of environment? National labs are supposed to have such an atmosphere, but my stint in one of them makes me think otherwise. Google does seem to have such an environment but I am not a CS person. Does Slashdot know of labs where basic research in applied engineering is still done in the US, without the pressure of money and immediate results?"
Personally I can add a my two cents working in Defense Labs and National Labs: the political forces are too strong for blue-sky research to happen there. But if they happen to be already involved in what you like doing, then you will fit. I'm guessing you want to stick with what the parent post suggested. Good luck!
To be honest, if you want to do "useless"/interesting research, your best bet may be a government lab. There's plenty of pie-in-the-sky research at places like JPL. I met a ton of interesting people there, and a lot of the challenges of exploring other planets actually bring about some rather abstract problems to be solved.
These are all fine words, but in most places this is not what happens by default.
First of all academia is about teaching students. It used to be that the students were advanced enough so that teaching a course actually related to the research work, but this is not true anymore. Today undergrad is like a highschool especially if one considers the development in science and technology.
Secondly, at best, postdoc is a three-year position, often less. Which means you will not be thinking about any longterm research - in the time you have left over from comittee meetings, teaching classes and applying for grants.
Thirdly, there is a question of money. I know that it is often considered good manners not consider this, but I always found this silly. Money is a way to apply engineering to resource problems. If you are in science you should practice it.
So, one benchmark is to see whether you can freely afford the tools to do your research. Can you buy a computer that you need ? Does your grant/salary has enough to buy those Wiley or Springer books that you wanted ? Can you take them with you when you go on to the next job ? Can you buy a car or have an apartment close by so you don't waste time getting to and from office ? Can you go to the conference you are interested in ? More often then not the postdoc gets a small cut above a grad student..
A second benchmark is to look at sustainability - will you get paid enough (eventually) to let your children take the same path ? Would you be able to send them to the best school suited to their abilities ?
Lastly, on a more positive note (for the original poster), there are places when you can have fun - but these are defined by particular people, not establishments. Find someone you would like to work with.. Don't look for a university.
Ohh, and there are places like Lincoln labs or LANL which can be a whole lot of fun.
The parent is absolutely correct. Much of the top level R&D work, even "6.1" work (DoD jargon for basic research) is contracted out. There are some DoD labs that still do cutting edge work. The NRL is one. The alternative is to work for one of the contractors. You don't need to work for a juggernaut like Raytheon or Northrup Grumman. There are plenty of small companies that do advanced research. You should take a look for companies that are winning SBIR awards in research areas that interest you. The great thing about looking for SBIR winners is that you aren't limited to DOD work. There's also money from NIH, NASA, etc.
Of course, there are pressures for project management and some of these programs need to turn into products. It's hard to get away from the fact that it's hard to get research funding unless you have an ultimate application and the money won't keep coming unless you have some success in your work. Even in the glory days of Bell Labs when there was some time and money avaiable for curiosity driven research, most of the work had an application. Academic research faces similar hassles. Your advisor might have shielded you from some of that, but a professer needs to pull in research grants, and if your proposals don't have an ultimate application, it's hard to get funding, especially when you're starting out. If you don't get funding as an assistant professor, you will find that once your start-up money runs out you can't recruit students. Furthermore, the speed of research will grind to a halt since your existing students must teach all the time and you can't afford new equipment. Professors in this situation don't get tenure. For the most part, the professors who get money for pure unapplied science have already established themselves as brilliant researchers who are leaders in their fields at top universities.
I too have been involved in projects where a bunch of PhD's who think that real life research has "no budget or time pressure" (read: who think they're still in school), have ended up costing taxpayers billions. Literally, and yes that billion is with an 's'. This happened as recently as the last 5 years. Meaning- everyone who has a job in the U.S. got charged because some PhD's wanted to play research.
Stay in academia and be true to yourself if you want to pursue abstract research. That's fine. Please don't apply to work for any commercial company or government lab if you have no intention of actually working on the applied research they need to pay your paycheck. Please.