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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?"
I would not necessarily give up on academia. Granted, the last five years has been particularly hard on basic science research (especially in biosciences), but there are still good options for the best and brightest. In academia, you really need to have the PhD if you want the flexibility that you are looking for. That said, I've found academia to be a tremendously rewarding experience that does not preclude you from work in industry either. For instance, we've been exploring the commercialization of some of our technologies and I am pleased to say that you *can* have it all with academic environments and industrial aspirations. The trick is that you have to create your own company to do this or find an academic environment that will support independent commercialization.
With respect to industrial labs that do basic research, the pressure from any federally funded labs from the Bush administration has been away from basic research and towards applied research that has mirrored the trend in industry for the few years preceding this administration. Years ago there were more far thinking companies like Xerox, HP, SGI and Bell Labs, but they got lazy and were under more pressure from shareholders to focus more on short term profits and less on long term viability of the company. This effect has been reflected in the long term performance of each of these companies as their influence has withered away. There are some current companies that are starting to invest more of their dollars in true R&D which is being reflected in their performance, but i worry that the trend in this country is going to hurt our international viability in a variety of the sciences both commercial and academic.
P.S. The other thing that you should be aware of is that many industrial labs require some post-doctoral training period as well to obtain positions....... Of course it will depend upon the appointment, but a post doc is viewed as a useful thing not just in pure academia.
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My computer engineering group works rather extensively with IBM's T.J Watson research lab in New York (off the top of my head, we're working with them on two new architectures they are designing, and they used us as guinea pigs to test a new multi-threaded programming language they are developing). I can say first-hand that they do some really great work.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Your university is only believed to be or assumed to be a university? I'd say get out now.
my pet machine
Navy Research Labs (NRL) and/or Army Research Labs (ARL) might be what you're looking for.
Regarding your desire to avoid sponsors: anywhere that you're going for DoD money, whether your at a university or in a lab, you're going to have to suck it up and try to get funding. On the bright side, once you have good relationships with sponsors, I'm told that getting money each year takes less time than the last year did.
NSF and DARPA money are reliably low-pressure. Sometimes money from MITRE is also low-pressure. NRL money can often be low pressure, depending on the program and sponsor in question.
Long story short, I think DoD labs can maybe offer the low-pressure you're looking for, if you can hook up with the right sponsors. Also, working as a civil servant, you'll have job security, vacation, and even pay levels that are better than most corporate research positions offer.
I don't know, of course, but you shouldn't be surprised at all if there are absolutely no privately-owned (like Bell Labs was. Not talking about private universities here) pure research labs in the U.S. anymore.
The U.S. is run almost entirely by bureaucrats, lawyers, and accountants now. Such people have no interest in anything beyond next quarter's profits and their own stock options. Why would they care about something so "unprofitable" as pure, undirected research?
Worse, I think the rest of the world is following suit. But I could be wrong about that, too.
Either way, it's quite depressing. Actually, most of the current trends are quite depressing. I should probably stop thinking about them, and probably would if it weren't so useful to have some idea of what to expect...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
... can be an interesting place to work. Very much depends what you would get to work on, though. I guess presure on results out is almost always there in industral labs. But still, an interesting problem to pursue for few years can grant you the illusion you seek.
http://ge.com/research/
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
Check out Southwest Research Institute, there is a variety of government and commercial R&D being conducted in many fields that relate to Mechanical Engineering. The environment is relaxed and encourages self motivated people.
You mention that you would like to work for the Bell-labs of old. What makes you think you need a CS degree?
In my limited experience, research labs for technology companies (like IBM, HP and Sun) employ a very diverse group of people from multiple disciplines. The common trait of these people is that they are interested in researching computers, without necessarily having a CS degree. In some ways having a CS degree might not help if you want to do radically innovative stuff (one never knows). I cannot comment on the likes of Google, Ebay or Amazon, but I am sure they have a lot of smart people working on their computing problems that do not have CS degrees. Consider this, if you work for Amazon and research interface design to guide customer decision making, I would *hope* you don't have a CS degree...
If your engineering degree will give you access to any of the research labs, I don't know. Part of it is luck of the draw - having some skills they want. The other part is pure brain power, e.g. are you smart enough to cope and flexible enough to adapt.
If you want to work at a research lab, be prepared to present yourself as a capable candidate.
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.
Research Triangle Institute, in the Raleigh / Durham NC area is a research organization founded by Duke, UNC, and NC State 40+ years ago. They are tied closely to academia which seems to be important to you, and are involved in research & development in just about any field you can imagine. They were even mentioned recently on slashdot.
:)
Disclaimer: I work for them
I recently got a job at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. The atmosphere there is very much like what you are looking for. Right off the bat, you might not be doing fundamental research but will get the opportunity to submit IR&D proposals probably within a year. They are loosely linked to academia and have a relatively laid back atmosphere because they are not-for-profit, and the stuff you do there even if it's not fundamental research, will be advancing existing technologies on the bleeding edge.
A second option would be MIT Lincoln Laboratory. They have a similar atmosphere. Very think-tank-ish. Also not-for-profit. I didn't like them as much because there's a lot of arrogance and apparently a high turn-over rate, but very interesting work.
Warning: these suggestions are useless unless you are a US citizen and can obtain a security clearance.
Really, a lot of advisors do consulting with their associated industry, or were once in such a research lab you are looking for. If that doesn't pan out, e-mail some other professors in the department whom you know. You'll find someone who knows the scene. Another option is to use CiteSeer or Google Scholar to search for papers in areas that you are interested in, and skim them for any that are published by private company labs, and apply there.
If you first do a year or two or real work in real industry, then go back to academia or fundamental research, you're more likely to have a far better appreciation of the industry and more likely to make valuable contributions.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The various national laboratories and other FFRDCs vary widely in their environment. I wouldn't necessarily write off all of them based on your experience at one. They have the large benefit of having research in their particular field being a core part of their charter, and government funding to boot.
While private labs may have dried up, that doesn't necessarily mean that research is coming to a standstill in America. As a PhD engineering student, I see a great number of projects, including my own, that are funded by private companies. While the company may have a very specific goal in mind, but if a professor is smart it accomplishes so much more. The nature of university research combined with the need to publish papers means that fundamental research is being done. Personally, my group is working with funding from a major corporation to answer some fundamental mechanics questions that they simply don't have the facilities, expertice (and patience, I think) to answer. The result will be a real-world product as well as some serious "pie in the sky" research. If you want to feel like you are in a corporate lab of yesteryear, get a teaching position at a university and seek funding from a corporation. You may be doing almost the same thing.
If you are looking for the kind of place that Xerox used to be, especially as a way to avoid the mindnumbing grind of chasing grants and spending your life in what amounts to temp job, forget it.
First, even at the "golden years" of blue-sky research, the only ones that had a permanent position were people that had already proven themselves by a long grind in the post-doc mill and found to be exceptional. Going from your thesis to a steady research job in a place like that didn't happen even then.
There are places like that today - around here we have NICT and ATR in southern Kyoto, for example. But there too, much of the research is implicitly or explicitly aimed at resulting in something useful, and you are no more free of the grant process than at a university. The people with a permanent position are again few and far between; the head researchers overseeing the groups of post-docs and visiting researchers having some temporary grant.
Really, the difference between university research and research institute or large-company research is in my experience mainly in the need to teach (and the opportunity for a semi-steady income) at a university on one hand; and the greater financial resources for equipment and travel at institutes on the other.
I know of only two ways to get to do free research without the teeth-grinding pain of grant-chasing and temporary job upon temporary job:
* Get a steady part-time job you can live on, and do research in your spare time. Teaching is not a bad option if you're reasonably good at it; you have access to the university, with seminars, labs and people, and teaching your subject forces you to pay attention to areas you perhaps would tend to ignore if left to your own devices.
* Make a fortune, retire and do research as a hobby, perhaps form and finance a small group with a couple of colleagues you like and work well with. Hey, we can all dream, right?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
From the horse's mouth:
Download the PDF on the linked page for the full skinny. In essence, any US Citizen (or qualified alien) may become a patent agent (which means you can perform patent registrations, etc.) if you pass the exam, and have an appropriate scientific education. As an ME grad student, you've got the education down.
As a Biomedical Engineering Grad student, I have considered becoming a patent agent, but I'd rather do research work instead of getting stuck doing all the patent work at a company too cheap to hire a patent attorney.
I know the parent post asks for labs in the USA, but there are plenty of options overseas - notably the government-funded CSIRO laboratories all around sunny Australia (disclaimer: that's where I work)*. If you are interested in computer science research, you can't go past the ICT Centre (/.). Specifically, if you're interested in cutting-edge robotics research, there's Autonomous Systems (who are frequent news items on ./), or if medical engineering is more your style, there's the BioMedIA lab. There are, of course, other research labs in Australia, but this is the one I know most about :)
:D
Australia offers a good place to carry out research, with many state governments (notably Victoria and Queensland) pouring millions into funding. Plus the lifestyle and standard of living is pretty hard to beat
* The usual oddities that associated with any large organisation (management & HR weirdness) are omnipresent, but these come and go and are par for the course.
Moo.
not true, the long range planning and r&d of companies in the mid 20th century was when we were much more capitalistic and much less "state capitalistic". Selling out the country to enrich non-capitalist societies, forcing people to accept less quality in goods and less quality of living, enslaving people, usury, theft and corruption are not capitalism. True capitalism only occurs when two parties mutually consent treating each other as rational beings. We're getting very, very far from that.
If you're doing applied research, you won't have to pursue the money, but you'll have to produce concrete results, on time, on work that's assigned to you.
I'm surprised you're nearly at your Ph.D. and this has not been made clear to you. You really, really need to be having this conversation with your advisor and other faculty (or senior researchers) within your department. Start with your committee--they know you and your work (hopefully!)
> McDonalds!
I suppose they could use an ME to research cheaper ways to flip burgers.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Your questions are interesting in that I know of, and have helped hire, a great number of refugees FROM private research labs (AT&T Research, Lucent, DEC/Compaq WRL...) who are interested in moving TO academia. I get the impression that a number of these traditionally great private research labs (notably the New Jersey ones, heirs of the storied Bell Labs mantle) have become less than great places to be. There has been mass exodus of top researchers from those places to academia. Why? The ones that I know well haven't liked the changes and don't want to be the last ones going down in a sinking ship. Overall, there has been less freedom about what kinds of projects they can put energy into, and more cost-justification/compromises made by short-term market-minded thinking. There is a great deal of uncertainty about the long-term direction of these labs, even those that have been great places to work recently. I think it's more than the usual "grass is greener on the other side" effect as some of these folks had been in academia before working for the various labs. For my university, it's been a great windfall, as we've had multiple strong hires in the last five years from the research labs- people who are quite senior and aren't too worried about the less-than-fantastic university salaries, but aren't interested in leaving the New York area, for a variety of reasons.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
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 read this as saying you'd like a great job without pressure. And maybe a pony as well. It may be worth noting that the people at Bell Labs of yesteryear were generally people who would cruise through tenure and get plentiful grant funding consistently. A place with opportunities to do interesting, independant research of your choosing requires a great deal of ability and drive, whether it is academic, private or governmental. If you don't want to work too hard, fine, but don't expect a dream job without fanatastic commitment and drive.
what you want is a CERN like facility, with sufficient funding and excellent oppurtunities.
"National labs are supposed to have such an atmosphere, but my stint in one of them makes me think otherwise. " ...labs where basic research in applied engineering is still done in the US, without the pressure of money and immediate results?"
If the national lab environment wasn't for you... the corporate environment may be even worse. As a PhD in chemical engineering working at an R&D lab in one of the biggest 'tech companies' in the US that still does physical sciences reseach... I can say this from first hand experience. And, by the way, we employ a LOT of PhD mechanical engineers (mostly with materials science expertise).
At one of the conferences I've attended, I talked with one of the pioneers in my area of research (organic electronics) that works at TJ Watson Lab. Even he complains at how 'managed' the research is at Watson. Actually - his particular project got shelved. All my friends (other PhDs) at Watson do seem to have this cloud of doubt looming over their head regarding the longevity of their positions.
"
As you know - physical sciences research (of which I suspect you are a part of) is extremely expensive. (~$4000 barely gets me an electronic weighing balance that allows me to weigh out the chemicals that I use, much less do anything with it) Someone's got to pay for this. The return on investment for research has gained huge scrutiny in the past several years since it's typically so bad. Many company's don't have such efforts (e.g. Apple, Dell) and are still successful as they concentrate on industrial design and business execution. They simply BUY this technology from smaller companies (or acquire them). And as far as working for those 'smaller companies'... this is even more stressful since it is really sink or swim.. so the 'pressure of money and immediate results' is even greater.
My best advice is this... on your interviews - ask as many questions as possible to learn about how serious the company is in making the appropriate investments for whatever project they are hiring you for. Talk to your would-be peers and ask them frank questions about the work environment.
Lastly - one of my close collegues at work left a senior scientist position at a national lab to work where we do now and he regrets it deeply. If you are really, truly into research and learning the nature of things, and have low tolerance for corporate bullshit - then stay in academina/national lab. If you can stomach it - as I can - there are definitely perks to working for a big company's reseach lab (e.g. the pockets are deep).
Why research cheaper ways to flip burgers when you can just build... the flip-less grill?
The above is only a half-joke, it really could work, though I suppose it would turn out to be like a toaster oven... for meat.
Find a mad scientist and aquire a limp. You may not get much say in the direction of the research, but you should find yourself doing somethng interesting soon enough...
Seriously, look abroad as well, and I mean anywhere abroad.
Good luck
Expect if you find a job where there is little connection to revenue and performance, the job will vanish due to failure of the company. As the anonymous reader self says: "..Like bell labs of YESTERYEAR".
I have worked as a R&D project manager for companies with these ivory towers of researches. While I need the algorithm next month, they usually propose to create some two year research project with some unclear goal.
I believe they should deliver or disappear.
You should just embrace the need to deliver, and have a lot of fun doing it.
"Fix it"
The guy is a Mechanical Engineer, not a CS. You are the second guy to reply with a very reputable EE/CS research center. Don't u ppl read the Full Post any more?
Being able to do great research in a stimulating environment is not about technology in the first place, nor is it about the formal type of structure you are conducting that research in. As one post said it below, it is about people. It **is** possible to find a privately owned corporation, even small or medium-sized, that will let you do exactly such a thing, simply because there is a good human contact between you and the management / executives. It's about trust. I am speaking from my own experience: a French ( now ) 800-employee tech company let me set up their research department. From scratch, and on a low budget. It was until now the greatest time in my life, professionally speaking. The morale of this story: think outside of the box. Go look for what you want in usual places taking the usual means - and what you'll find will be predictable. Go look for what you want in unusual places, take unusual means - and you'll find unusual things.
Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem - necnon voluptatem
( Ockam's razor, hack #3254.1 )
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Since the above are all illegal, especially in scientific quantities and are forbidden from schools and other training facilities, not much happens in terms of industrial science these days. I'm happily reinventing the wheel; how many mechanical engineering grads can build a wheel without going to a store?
OK, I'm a mechanical engineer with a PhD myself, and have been in a similar position so I think I can provide some ideas and/or advise. I did a couple of postdocs after finishing, realised being in the lab was not what I wanted and am now working in technology transfer which I absolutely love.
Firstly, I think it is important to distinguish mechanical engineering (probably include civil engineering too) from computing/software/IT type engineering. I'm don't want to get into arguments about why and I'm not trying to be controversial or put anyone down, but I do think the CS situation is not particularly relevant.
One of the things I would ask is what you enjoyed about the PhD. Did you do genuine blue sky research? Or was it industrially relevant (was there an industrial collaborator)? What did you enjoy - was it being able to go down every avenue and just "try stuff" to see what happens? This kind of freedom to research only really happens in (1) academia or (2) very very large (and rich) companies who often have research labs encouraging this kind of research in the areas the company operates in, e.g GE healthcare (Germany), Rolls Royce have an aero/turbine research lab (UK/Europe), Ford have an environmental research lab (UK).
If you're looking for industrially relevant engineering research, which is based on commercial decisions and reasons, then look to industry.
One thing to keep in mind with academia is that many research groups have partnerships with industrial companies whose input can vary from anything to just simply providing cash/resources to actually genuinely driving the research direction based on the company strategy. Many large research groups have a person who might act as the liason with the engineering company, project managing the research and reporting progress to the company, effectively acting as a company voice within the research group.
Hope that helps a little.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
At least in the biomedical sciences, the major alternative for academia is the not-for-profit research institute. The majority of these are run like academic labs, with PI's, post-docs, and staff researchers (and techs), but the funding for these labs is through collaboration with large pharma and biotech firms. That nearly eliminates the need for grant writing, and in these environments, creativity and ingenuity are still respected.
My buddy is a mechE (thermal guy) working there on very esoteric thermal problems (he got hired for his work in micro-bubble cooling as an undergrad and masters student, one of only 4 guys in his 50 person group without a PhD...)
his job description is "invent stuff, don't worry about practical applications, we have whole buildings full of engineers who take your work and find uses for it"
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
Anyway, here's a list of FCRCs. Maybe you'll find a home with one of them. Personally, I think you'd do better to rethink your position on academia. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/fedfunds/pubs/ffrdc/ ffrdc.txt
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I have a different experience with national labs. The bureaucracy was not too bad at PNNL, and friends at Oak Ridge have never complained about it.
On the other hand, a lot of Los Alamos employees have complained about it.
You could visit potential employers and ask people there about the work environment, office politics, etc. That would probably also give you the best feel of your possible future co-workers.
Do you have any preference for which part(s) of the country you would like to live in?