How does daily life impact how one conducts science?
How does daily life impact how one conducts science? My exercise is to keep a diary of how my lives as a scientist, a married mother, and an American in Europe intersect.
So, let’s dive in.
Tuesday, I was at a showcase day for the INSERM’s Avenir program for its university, hospital, regional and industrial “partners�. I and some sixty-odd other young researchers have been chosen over the last couple of years to take part in a new program run by the French equivalent of the NIH.
Avenir means future, and the point of the program is to offer start-up packages to promising young scientists. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Usually, beginning French scientists don’t get start-up anything.
They are just so grateful to get a job at all. My classmates from my US Ph.D. program – those who have survived and gotten a U.S. tenure-track position – will be rolling on the floor. A lab budget of 60K euros (read more or less dollars, in terms of spending power) for three years, a salary for those, like me, who come into Avenir as postdocs, of 2300 euros/month before taxes but with benefits (a hefty salary here to compensate the fact that it’s an impermanent one), a prepaid guaranteed postdoc position to recruit someone, all if you can swing a welcome with a reasonable amount of space and access to facilities. As of today, last year’s program is available here.
Somehow I managed to get one of these golden opportunities, in the 2002 session. Dare I bite the hand that feeds me? Shortly after starting the Avenir program in April, 2003, I got recruited, under very adverse circumstances and through not so very much merit of my own, to one of the tenured government researcher positions that are good for life in the French system. Hundreds of seriously meritorious candidates are turned away every year, more so the years when these permanent positions magically dry up under adverse budgetary circumstances, like 2003 was. So I take a pay cut to 1770 euros a month starting February, 2004, still a fortune to anyone doing a postdoc in France (usually around 1500 euros under the table, so no benefits) or a Ph.D. (1100 euros above or below the table). Hey, I’m not as ungrateful as I sound – I have had the most incredible support from my laboratory and my bosses! My work environment is good, I’m doing research I love…
Then, the start-up package’s postdoc position never materialized. The unfortunate aspect of this is that I had recruited a European, desperate to return to Europe and get closer to his family, on his file and not on a personal interview (he was finishing 5 years of postdoc in the US). He came to France with his wife and children, and the position I promised him, that had been promised to me to give, did not happen. We’re not the only ones in the Avenir program to whom this happened. Someone in the INSERM, in 2002, was desperate to get the program underway but all the i’s had not been dotted – so the INSERM office that was supposed to pay foreign postdocs recruited through the “poste vertâ€? program found itself with 1/10 the funding it ought to have received, in order to meet its commitments. So, 90% of the promised postdoc positions vanished, including mine. Only the postdocs didn’t. I spent the last 10 months living this “it could have been meâ€? guilt-inducing scenario on my 60K (of which in the budget year 2003 I only had the right to 30K, of which only 50% is allowable in salaries) before I finally had to let this postdoc go in June, unemployed. I did encourage him to look for jobs the entire time, but that wasn’t very good for the continuity of his work, nor for his sense of security. Meaning, I shouldn’t have hired him. But maybe that means he would have just been unemployed 10 months earlier?
I see on 2003’s program, contrary to that of the year before, the postdoc position is qualified as “possible� rather than 2002’s unambiguous “He/she� (that is, I) “will be offered financial support to host a foreign post-doctoral fellow as well as a graduate student�. That’s somewhat more honest.
So, on Tuesday, when the general director of the INSERM kept going back up the aisle to take his phone calls, I smiled at him from my seat on the end of the row a little “greenly�, as they say in French. On one hand, I have everything to be grateful for with respect to my French colleagues. I’ve got independence and some means to get my research done. On the other, is it so bad to hope for more by my American standards? Like, to hire someone to work for me? Perhaps one needs an American publicly funded research budget to have American research standards. We’re still pretty short of that here. At least a master’s student is arriving in January for a 5-month research stint with me. She’s not even getting paid at all. That’s considered normal here. If I could have found someone a year older, starting her Ph.D. (but the candidates were scarce in my field), I might have indeed gotten funding for her through the Avenir program. Let’s stay optimistic.
I’m getting over a case of German measles (yes, at 33 years old, and no, my kids didn’t give it to me or me to them – *they* were properly immunized). The organizer of the showcase day begged me to come anyhow. I made my own 5-minute presentation around 2:30PM, but by then, all the people for whom the INSERM organized this day to begin with had left after the round table discussion after lunch. So, my fever starts going up by around 4PM and I leave. I feel bad for the presentations scheduled at 5:50, 5:55! I get my 5- and 8-year old kids after school at 4:30PM and they’re thrilled – usually they stay in after-school day care until 6:20PM. It’s downright dark here at that time, this time of year. Depressing.
Monday, I’m starting a two-week radioactivity safety qualification program, so that I can be my research unit’s “responsible� person. Lots of paperwork in sight ahead.
November 22nd, 2004 at 7:22 pm
Hello Alethea:
I guess I am having the experiences that you ran away from (as an European in the USA). I first came here for a postdoc when after a 4 months scientific exchange stay in the US I found out that IF you get funding here you get probably 5 times as much as you get when you get funded in Germany –> while in Germany I ususally heard from my supervisors , no we can’t do that this is too expensive, here I almost always heard,ok let’s do it…. nevertheless I want to get a new job, after five years of postdoc I need to move on. I don’t want to go back to germany (because of the fact that IF you get funded you still don’t have enough money or how the germans put it: too much to die, but not enough to live), tenure track positions are rare everywhere, so I tryto get an industrial postion. How is this wwith the networking? oh ya , yu need to network you won’t find a postion otherwise. So I start this, pronblem , the networking meetings I went too, so far turn out to be filled with peopel younger than me and less qualified: how are a bunch of grad students and technicians supposed to help me find a staff scientist position???? oh well, at leasts the bureau of citicenship and immigration recently woke up from hibernation and sent me a letter (maybe they will indeed find some time soon to give me my greencard after they approved my immigration visa almost two years ago…)
But I still love science!
Sandra
November 24th, 2004 at 5:13 pm
I think networking is necessary but it’s not something one can really force to happen, is it? It’s like saying that you must make friends on demand in order to attain personal fulfilment. It doesn’t always happen just when you want it to.
In industry, my experience is rather limited to an attempt I once made to go to L’Oréal. Two friends of my husband’s worked there, one has since left. After 7 interviews (!), L’Oréal didn’t end up offering me a position at the time, but I did meet two staff scientists whom I come across regularly at a specialist meeting in pigment cell biology. Whether or not they would have liked to have me join their ranks, the human resources department nixed it. So I honestly have no clue how to network in there. The best I could do was get my interviews. Do you not know *anyone* working on the inside? Perhaps someone in your discipline from whom you ask for reprints, even? I think even a casual e-mail contact might give you a few leads, and might qualify as networking.
I’d be really glad if someone who knew anything about industry took up this thread. There’s gotta be a lot of discussion about it in the forums, no?
But congrats for getting any positive notice at all from Immigration. I’ve only heard about flak up to now.
December 6th, 2004 at 5:29 pm
I was interested to read – L’Oreal has scientists studying pigment cell biology. That’s great – many people actually think there isn’t much science behind beuty products – just marketing. I’m happy to hear scientists are involved. Do you guys do the equivalent of clinical trials? Are they monitored by anyone?
December 7th, 2004 at 11:46 am
http://www.invitroskin.com/_int/_en/
describes some of the skin research efforts going on at L’Oreal. I don’t personally work for them, but was tempted to at one point. The hair site is here:
http://www.loreal.com/_en/_ww/loreal-hair-science/home.aspx
And as far as individual publications, you can look for Medline citations for BA Bernard or R Schmidt (hair and skin respectively). They are two very serious scientists that, in my opinion, are not given enough leeway by their corporate environment. But it’s good, as you say, that a cosmetics company does true R&D at all. And I am more convinced about some of the claims made by a multitude of products from this company relative to some others.
December 13th, 2004 at 9:49 pm
I think the grass is always greener on the other side. I have a position in an Australian government research institution which should become permanent next year. I am expected to deliver applied science to industry with an operating budget of $AUS6000 and 1 staff member that is only contracted to March next year. As young scientist I had no history of successful grants but luckily competed and received one in 2003 and have others in the system. I also have a 12 month old baby to love and care for. I am so greatful for the opportunity I have and am slowing building it up to be of a benefit to industry -which suprisingly we seem to be doing. So hang in there and look on the bright side……….there has to be one.