175 – The PhD to IDEMS Postdoctoral Fellow Journey

Lily: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the IDEMS Podcast. I’m Lily Clements, a data scientist, and I’m here today with George Simmons, a Postdoctoral Impact Activation Fellow at IDEMS. I still struggle to say it. Hi George.

George: Hi Lily. 

Lily: As you know, I was a Postdoctoral Impact Activation Fellow for two years, and I still struggle to say it now.

George: I always struggle with the order, whether it’s impact activation postdoctoral fellow or the other.

Lily: Doesn’t matter.

George: It doesn’t matter. And I don’t think there is a, I think my contract says one thing and the website says the other. 

Lily: That’s a weird thing about IDEMS, I like to be consistent, right? But it turns out that their lack of consistency is often on purpose, which I find strange. So like in our emails, this is something in our emails, we don’t have a consistent email. So your email isn’t like necessarily your initial or it might be your first name or it might be your initial and your second name type thing. And we don’t have [00:01:00] consistency there, it’s up to us, partly because apparently like robots can’t guess your email from learning what your company’s system is.

George: Interesting

Lily: I think.

George: I remember when I joined, I had this conversation, I was always quite adamant that I didn’t want my first name in my email. I just wanted my initial, and I can’t really explain that. It just feels right for me. So yeah, I kind of appreciated that flexibility. And I know another case of that, we’ve been updating our website recently and instead of having fixed roles, we’ve been encouraged to describe our role as we would like, which is, well, quite nice, except I didn’t really know, so I’ve just gone for Impact Activation Postdoctoral Fellow, or the other way round, whichever.

Lily: Well, It’s really hard. I find it really difficult to describe my role, it’s one of those things, I guess, that like someone else could probably describe your role a lot better because you can get bogged down in details. But that’s just one of those strange things about IDEMS, that kind of [00:02:00] flexibility, describe it yourself.

George: Yeah, and I think it just shows that you don’t have to take yourself too seriously to actually do good work. It doesn’t really matter what your title is, what matters is what you do and how you want to describe that.

Lily: Yeah, that’s true because honestly I don’t mind what I’m called, no one really calls me anything to be fair. But I can be called a statistician or I can be called a data scientist, and I introduce myself as a data scientist more because I feel that’s just the kind of community I’m more involved in at the moment. But my PhD is very well within statistics. So I guess it’s yeah, how do you identify yourself?

But some people can get really bogged down by it. Like the statistical community, some people in there can get quite adamant that they’re not part of the mathematical community or that they’re not mathematicians, they like to be called mathematical scientists, which is absolutely fine.

George: Yeah, I get that. I guess it’s nice that we can introduce ourselves how we like. It does create a bit of an issue with your family asking what you [00:03:00] do, or your friends and my responses can range from, oh, I help with software development, prototyping to, I support biological modelling to, oh, I do training, make courses, I have MSc students, and yeah, it can be a bit difficult to come up with something which encompasses all of that. 

Lily: In my head, Kate’s gonna pull out the correct word. In my head, Kate’s going through a dictionary and she’s gonna find that correct word, and when she finds that correct word, I’ll be able to tell people and they’re gonna immediately know what I do. And I’m starting to realize I don’t think that’s quite the case.

George: Yeah and Impact Activation Postdoctoral Fellow is meant to be fairly descriptive, but you end up still having to explain what that means. And, it does depend on the context of who you’re talking to, I think, like coming up with the piece that they can associate with. 

Lily: But, just, someone making small talk with you and they’re like, oh, what do you do? For me that’s currently like the dreaded [00:04:00] question. Maybe because I feel like I wanna tell them what I do, I wanna tell them everything, I wanna tell you, oh, I’m a data scientist. But that term, you probably have these other ideas of what I do with that. I actually work here and I do this, but people are just often being polite, saying oh yeah, what do you do?

George: Yeah. 

Lily: So I’m just having to bite my tongue. And I’m not surprised that people don’t know what an Impact Activation Postdoctoral Fellow is. I know that we’ve done a podcast on it and I know that this is something that we’re working on. Actually I think multiple podcasts on it. But this is something that kind of is being worked on to get a more broad, an actual kind of definition for what it is.

George: Yeah, especially around what impact activation means. I think people understand social impact, they understand postdoc. So I don’t think we’re too far away from, you know, getting, this is meant to be something I’m working on, coming from the workshop we did together with our other colleagues in, was it the end of February, I [00:05:00] think, in Edinburgh.

We’ve done some podcasts together around that, I think in March time for our listeners to go back and find out more about that. 

Lily: Interesting. We didn’t intend to talk about these strange things about IDEMS, but I guess we accidentally got into these weird little bits, which I guess is quite easy to talk about when it comes to IDEMS because there’s so many differences. We don’t have an office, for example, all of us work remotely and we have a lot of flexibility, I wanna say complete flexibility, but maybe I feel like I have complete complexibility. Oh my gosh. 

George: Complexibility, that’s a good… 

Lily: Complexibility. That’s a mixture of Kate and David in my head there.

George: We can definitely make something outta that.

Lily: Yeah, I don’t think that’s the magic word, though. That’s not the magic word for a dictionary that Kate’s gonna pull out for us.

George: Well, I guess to go back, we kind of thought us two should start having some conversations because we’ve come from, in some ways, similar places, in other ways, very distinct places. And yeah, we want to [00:06:00] try and talk about the things we do at IDEMS, mainly how different they are, but also maybe try and find some similarities or actually get into some of the differences.

Lily: We’ve come from similar places and I already referred to the fact that, as you know very well, I did a PhD in statistics. So I guess that’s probably where we should start is that we both did our PhDs together. That’s where we met was at the University of Southampton where you did your PhD in mathematics and I did my PhD in statistics. And you and the mathematics lot were very mean to me the entire time.

George: Yes, for some reason you were stuck into an office consisting of pure mathematicians. And a guy called Laurie who did photovoltaic cell analysis. 

Lily: That was Matt’s office. I guess Laurie also got made fun of a lot by the mathematicians. 

George: Yeah, so, I think it was you and Laurie were the people who were very unfairly shoved into…

Lily: Oh no, I loved it. I couldn’t compare myself to the other statisticians, which is exactly what you [00:07:00] need when you’re doing quite a, well, when you’re doing a PhD, otherwise, could have a lot of imposter syndrome and whatnot. And I still could speak to the statisticians, they were just in the other building for some reason, they didn’t want me in their building. 

George: But yeah, so we both started at the same time. Although I think you were on holiday in New Zealand, so we didn’t actually meet for, you know, a good month.

Lily: No, I was only there for the first week. But I was then hidden away in my office for a month because I was like, who are these people? What am I doing? I’m like, why am I doing a PhD? I’m not meant to be here, type thing. And everyone around me is so smart. And that whole imposter syndrome, which of course will never, ever go away for anyone.

But I have been told that in that kind of first week that I did miss, they did a thing with all of the new students. And there was another girl from the stats department who was meant to be new, but was having some visa [00:08:00] side issues so wasn’t there yet either. So all of the new students for PhDs were all guys. And I thought here I was just happily thinking that no one would notice I wasn’t there. Whoops.

George: It didn’t matter in the end. You were adopted by us lot and, I guess, fast forward is to COVID times where we were given, eventually after a few months of COVID, we were given, a day, a week to come in and share, work in the office, but nicely, socially distanced. That became a big lifeline, I think our group became pretty close at that point.

Lily: Yeah. Not physically. 

George: Exactly. 

Lily: Of course I’m again with the mathematicians, pure mathematicians to be exact.

George: But yeah that kind of became a lifeline. I think that’s when at least you and I started chatting more. I think we got into playing GeoGuessr [00:09:00] amongst many other things, obviously while still doing all our work.

Lily: All of our hard PhD work. Yeah. And then you were clearly playing a bit more GeoGuessr than I was ’cause I joined IDEMS six months, no, a year… Well, to be fair, I knew David before, so I was doing work with IDEMS alongside my PhD around that stage, around that time. And then I joined full time while also finishing off my PhD.

I actually got COVID in, yeah, it would’ve been April 2021, just before Easter. But I didn’t feel ill, but I didn’t wanna infect my whole family, of course. So I had to stay back. And so I was like it’s Easter, it was Easter weekend, and I couldn’t do anything. So I was like, fine, I feel fine, so I finished my thesis getting all these lovely pictures of everyone having fun. I’ll just finish my thesis then.

George: Yeah, that’ll show them.

Lily: That’ll show them.

George: Well, it showed me because, yeah, it [00:10:00] showed me, ’cause I was probably about 18 months behind that, so…

Lily: We’re all in the same place now anyway.

George: Exactly. But this ties into my story because you’d set up with IDEMS full time at least a year, if not more, before I even started thinking about jobs. And you were then, of course, the one who pointed out that IDEMS could be a viable place for me to look at. And you told me to reach out to David, which I did. The rest is history as they say. 

Lily: So yes, of course. So I pointed it out to you and said this could be a viable option. So what are you thinking now? You’ve been at IDEMS for nearly two years. You must be coming towards the end of your Impact Activation Postdoctoral Fellowship fairly soon. 

George: Yeah, alarmingly rapidly. Six weeks time.

Lily: Wow. Yes.

George: Where hopefully I can transition. So this is the thing, I guess I still don’t have much clue what I’m really doing, but I have [00:11:00] learned a lot and I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything I’ve been thrown into here. Yeah, I can turn this into a more permanent role with a slightly less confusing title. 

Lily: That would be nice. My understanding is you came in on a main project, which was very different to me because I had a bit of history with David, then I trickled in on helping out on some parenting work here with Chiara and then, okay, now you can help Esmee, okay, oh, actually you can also help here. And then it just very naturally became a full-time role where I was working on lots of different areas, whereas you were very different. You came in on this crops work.

George: Yeah, I guess my journey’s much more close to Chiara and Esmee who are brought in for a specific purpose and in theory on a 60-40 balance, which never quite works out to that.

Lily: What’s the 60-40, sorry?

George: The Impact Activation Postdoctoral Fellow is meant to be 60% towards the main project and 40% [00:12:00] towards other projects, which, in theory don’t even have to be fully focused on IDEMS, but could be towards my own personal development or interest. As it turns out you invest as much as you can into your main project because, they’re always so open-ended and there’s always stuff to do.

And then pick up other things when, I mean, so some things I’ve picked up because I’ve been invited into. I did a bit of work with David and James on some climate data courses quite early on. That was really good for me to be thrown into some kind of data science thing. You’ve gotta make resources for people to learn about how to analyze climate data and visualize it and so on.

That for me was like a really good thing to do on the side just to, yeah, get my first exposure into that. And then some things I’ve picked up because I have explicitly asked [00:13:00] to find something that was supplementary to what I’m doing. Because I think, trying to focus on one thing all the time can just get quite wearing, especially when it is, as is common here, it’s just you spearheading most of the work.

That’s how I’ve got into the Masters of Mathematical Innovation courses that we’re all pitching in on. And I guess we can have a further conversation, maybe another podcast around what we’re both doing around those. But yeah, by and large the bulk of my time has been on the CASAS work, which I’ve done a couple of podcasts about. I probably will do another one with David soon updating where that’s got to.

Yeah it’s been a really interesting journey. And, you know, it shouldn’t make it sound like you have one project, you do one thing day to day. It’s not, I interact with entomologists and plant biologists one day, I do formation of EU grants one day, I interact with Topos, these people who [00:14:00] do very pure abstract category theory another day. So I’m still kind of, learning a lot of different skills and interacting with a lot of different people just under one umbrella. 

Lily: And you do bits with Kate as well on, I don’t even know what it’s on, but bits with Kate.

George: Yeah. So I did a podcast with Kate a month ago, this is then about raising, how do we raise money to continue what we’re doing with CASAS, with Topos around my piece anyway. And one of those things is, you know, applying for grants, like the EU grants I mentioned. But another piece is just trying to develop our brand around it and trying to identify what niches there are and yeah, how we can kind of position ourselves to attract different types of funding around this.

Yeah, that’s a nice, it’s something I enjoy more than I thought I would. And I guess part of that is Kate actually takes the responsibility for thinking about stuff and kind of guides [00:15:00] me to think about things that I can think about. So it is enjoyable in that respect. Yeah, it feels rewarding to be involved in something that can actually keep your line of work alive. 

Lily: Yeah. I can imagine that is quite rewarding. And so you work on quite a lot of, you say that you’re predominantly on the crops work, but you’ve done a lot of work in other bits here. So what are you thinking, I guess going forward? We say you’ve got your six weeks or so, I’m not sure how many weeks, but you’re coming towards the end of your postdoctoral, sorry, Impact Activation Postdoctoral Fellowship. Sorry, I have to use the proper title. It’s not even a good acronym because it starts with two vowels.

George: PIAF, which is still not great, we’ll be honest, but pronounceable.

Lily: And so what are you thinking? You probably will hate this question, but going forward or what will change? Because I remember the end of my Postdoctoral Impact Activation Fellowship, and [00:16:00] I remember thinking like I don’t really know what will change here because I’m just like, I’m having fun and I was worried what would change would be, okay, Lily, it’s time to stop dabbling in all these projects, it’s time to stop having fun. Okay, it is time to stop on this, I guess 60-40 that you’ve alluded to.

But actually I was told like, actually no, you’ve just naturally done that anyway, so this is pretty overdue. And so it wasn’t a transition at all for me. From how you speak, from the kind of, I guess how you talk about your projects, it feels like it would be that way for you, but maybe David will listen to this and be like, Lily, don’t tell him that. 

George: No, I think the difference is that, you know, the exact role I do is probably dictated by what funding we get. So, I know that we have an extension to the CASAS funding until, it’s either March or May next year. But at [00:17:00] least another six months to continue the role that I’m currently doing. So in the near term that’s kind of settled.

Then it’s just about what grants that we’ve applied to actually come in and, the different schemes we applied to we have applied for slightly different lines of work, whether it’s more research focused, whether it’s more product focused, whether it’s more kind of community focused. My wish and want is to in the main part, continue on this project with CASAS, with Topos as I have been. But, yeah, it will be dictated precisely by where the funding goes. But that’s fine, that’s natural.

Another thing which is really exciting, which we’re in the early stages of thinking about is really expanding our understanding of how category theory can shape not just the work I do, but, you know, a lot of the things we work on. And David has a very good vision of even how setting up a way of [00:18:00] thinking categorically can help shape how our app should be structured and coded, how the chat bot should be structured and coded, and things like that. And I think that’s a very, exciting thing for me. I don’t think it’s a full role in itself, but it’s definitely something I’d like to keep having oversight and involvement with.

Lily: Sorry, is that stuff with Topos as well?

George: Yes, it will involve Topos. There’s always two layered, part of it is just understanding how to think of things in a way that ensures you have this natural interoperability and modularity in kind of the code and products you make. And then the second half of it is, I guess, actually formalizing what you’ve done and writing research on it. And that’s always the difference between us and Topos, Topos will build stuff from their research and go that way.

Whereas we will work out what needs doing, come up with a prototype, and then we can go back to [00:19:00] them and say, these are essentially the requirements that we need from the research. We can do it collaborative with them, and then we can build up further. It’s exactly what has happened with the CASAS work I’m doing.

There’s a really nice paper we’re writing with Topos, which has this story, they produced something, we picked it up, we refined it to our needs as much as we needed to, to the point where we could say this is what your research should look like as an end product, and then here’s the paper I’m writing. And then the paper will say, okay, and then this is going to lead to all these other things. I find that a really exciting way of working and I like the idea that research, especially around applied maths, I guess, is guided by genuine requirements, in our case what we require from it. 

Lily: I obviously only understand slightly about category theory. I don’t know the ins and outs.

George: We’ll brainwash you at some point. So there’ll be another day at our next team meeting that we’ll devote to this.[00:20:00] 

Lily: Yes, I’m sure. I know Kate started throwing around the word. 

George: Kate’s into it. Johnny’s into it. 

Lily: I remember when Kate first brought it up. Kate must have first mentioned it. Is everyone getting into it?

George: Georg’s getting into it.

Lily: Oh, I better get into it. I wanna, I don’t wanna miss out. You know, something about IDEMS is we should all think exactly the same and go the same way. 

George: I think that’s exact opposites of what we should do.

Lily: Yes. I think so. 

George: There is definitely merit to something like a categorization of R-Instat or the ideas behind it. Yeah, that’s what I see as my interaction with category theory is trying to make it, trying to take it away from the research language. Obviously to write research you need formal language, which can end up being quite difficult to unpick because you need to properly name and define the objects you’re working with and things can get, you know, quite confused. And my [00:21:00] job is to just digest that to be a bit more understandable. 

Lily: More accessible for…

George: For our collaborators, that’s the point, right? We’re trying to help and support and enable our collaborators.

Lily: Oh, particularly I guess if I compare the Impact Activation Postdoctoral Fellowship with say PhDs, in my opinion, this is a lot more collaborative.

George: Oh yeah.

Lily: You’re bouncing off colleagues running workshops, you’re designing assessments, you’re writing courses, you are bringing these ideas to life through this kind of conversation, teams, shared, this kind of shared purpose.

George: Yeah I like the empowerment of me holding meetings with the collaborators and I’m the main person in that meeting. I think often, even as a postdoc, you will always have your, I guess, they’re not supervisors anymore.

Lily: Yeah, your David.

George: Yeah, kind of in charge because they’re in charge of the funding and the outputs and it’s ultimately their grant. But [00:22:00] yeah, here you’re really given that autonomy quite early on, and, you know, creates a lot of stress for people who get stressed like myself. But yeah it’s very rewarding to have oversight of that, you know, the whole process of the collaboration. Then I can always go back to David when something goes wrong.

Lily: Yes, because he’s ultimately responsible, so you get to have that empowerment, that ownership without the responsibility.

George: Exactly.

Lily: That’s probably a good place to finish.

George: Yeah. I’ve enjoyed this. I think it’s been nice to reminisce a bit. 

Lily: Yeah. Maybe I’ll go back on GeoGuessr.

George: It’s about time. I even used to pay for a subscription to it on a PhD stipend. So that’s how important it was 

Lily: There wasn’t much else going on then to be fair.

George: There wasn’t a lot going on. 

Lily: We were in a pandemic and we had to spend money on something. You couldn’t go out anywhere.

George: Yeah, especially when you’re sat in office socially distanced. We [00:23:00] always used to play chess and throw stuff around, and suddenly that all disappeared.

Lily: I’ll never forget that week before, the week before lockdown and you are like, yeah, we’re still gonna Canada next week. On the Monday you were told, ’cause you’re meant to go to Canada for this conference, right? Oh no. You’re meant to go for a good few months, weren’t you?

George: No, it was about three weeks, I think. 

Lily: Okay. 

George: Yeah. And I was meant to fly on something like the Saturday. Yeah, and as you said, on the Monday, it was pretty certain we were going and it was only the Thursday that the university barred us from travel. But in a way that was good because that then meant the university took responsibility for cancelled fares and hotels and all that. That was a very strange, strange time.

And on reflection, obviously very glad I didn’t fly ’cause it would’ve been awful to get there and the conference would’ve been cancelled. And it would’ve just been [00:24:00] quite scary. ’cause at that point it had no idea what this thing actually was going to do. 

No, we’ve rabbited on.

Lily: Rabbiting on a bit more. Thank you very much. It’s been a very good discussion. I’ve enjoyed it.

George: Yeah, maybe we can have some more conversations diving in a bit deeper into what we do and compare. We always want to do, we always say, we’ll do R versus Python.

Lily: Which sounds like it’s one or the other and it’s not. But anyway.

George: No, it’s definitely not. 

Lily: No. But anyway, no, thank you very much.

George: Thank you.