In my field, meeting with visiting scholars is an essential part of the training process of a graduate student or postdoc. There are several reasons why you should participate either in a group meeting or one-one-one time with a visiting scholar. First, the visiting scholar will ask you about your work. Even if the visiting scientist is not directly connected to your field, you will be forced to describe what question you are asking, how you are answering this question, and what results you might have, if any. All in the span of one or two sentences. This is not a simple task, but it gets easier.
If you've done a good job, usually the person will ask a question or two and, I say jump, at the chance to think and discuss your own work with someone more senior than you. Thirdly, sometimes 'talking science' can mean learning to have a conversation with a perfect stranger and/or someone whose work you have admired. One way initiate a conversation is to ask a question about their work - either specific or more general. This means reading one or two papers about their research. This in and of itself, gives you breadth as a scientist, something sorely lacking in my opinion.
Finally, while you may *think* that the visiting scientists work is completely unrelated and therefore irrelevant to your own research, think again. If they've been invited by a member of your department, it's for a reason. So take advantage of the expertise and network like heck. Now I'm not suggesting that if you work on neuroscience in newts you should meet with a particle physicist, but in my field, the type of work people do is quite broad. So I could meet with someone, who is say working on African toads, even though I study processes in SmallandFastUnits. Even if it is just once, there is the minute possibility that I would connect with someone and a collaboration will fall out of the conversation. The other reason. Job prospects.
So I really appreciate that Dr. Add'EmUp invites me to meet with him and the visiting scientist because it means that he cares about mentoring me. Dr.Add'EmUp is unlike most mathematical biologists, in that he wants to understand and implement the biology. For him biological reality matters in his models. They're not negligible error terms that can be ignored.
Although he does use continuous differential equations, much of his work is done with spatially explicit simulations so that he can account for biological complexity. The best thing about the work he does is the synergism between empiricism and theory. In this lab, the empirical work feeds theory which then ultimately feeds back into the empirical work. Its the best use of theory I have witnessed.
The meeting with the two male scientists started off interesting - SampleSize said to Dr. Add'EmUp in a hot danish accent,
"I was really suprised to hear that you had started a lab - I think that's very brave of you."
"Yeah, but it is only possible because I hired excellent people, like my postdoc." (Thanks Add'EmUp!)
And then SampleSize turned to me and asked about the science, we talked briefly and for a while the conversation was engaging. I asked him if he thought that the recent developments in technology had changed the way people were doing science, i.e. are we no longer interested in formulating interesting questions, or are we asking different types of questions, given the magnitude of data we are innundated with? He gave a somewhat satisfactory answer, but then it quickly degenerated into a discussion of stochastic calculus.
Unfortunately, this was the same pattern as our last meeting with another visiting scholar. And although I tried to participate, I'm tongue-tied when it comes to a Stratonovich integral or the Itō integral. I mean WTF? I do biology, people, not math.
For the last 5 minutes of our meeting, I found myself thinking these things.
1. This feels like a math boys club that I'm clearly not a part of. Hmff...I knew there was a reason I hated math.Ah well, there will always be another visiting scientist....
2. All the people these two have mentioned are men and mathematicians. Sigh!
3. If he's married (and he is because he mentioned his wife several times during the meeting), why the heck doesn't he wear a ring? I wonder what his wife thinks about this?
4. At least I managed to eat breakfast this morning so my stomach won't scare him.
4 comments:
lol, nice post!
I generally have the same thoughts although, as an engineer working in the biomedical field, its more along the lines of "oh shit, hes now rambling on about some complicated biology thing I should know but don't"
Being in an interdisciplinary field, I get this often, since my work is very much on the cusp between two fields and most researchers are at one extreme or the other. Often leaves me wondering if I should feign understanding and look things up later (because they are things I 'should' know), or ask for explanations.
Oh, and I found your comments on the value of meeting visiting scholars interesting. I've never considered it in quite those terms, but that is a good way to think about it.
Definitely helpful, especially for those of us still working to get to "the other side." There are always conversations where I think I should know more than I do - glad to see that doesn't change! lol
Great advice to those who blow off meeting with visitors.
However, in my department, only grad students are invited to lunch with visitors. Postdocs are generally excluded, which means the people who most need the job connections have to beg and plead to be allowed to meet with these people when they spend time on our campus. And we often don't find out about it in advance, so then we're in the middle of experiments when they come around asking for lunch volunteers. ARGH.
Don't know what to tell you about the awkwardness of mathematicians. I guess your options are to try to steer the conversation back your way (challenging if not impossible), or to learn just enough math to be able to follow what they're saying. Then eventually you might be able to participate? I don't know if that might help you with your research in the long run, too. This could be an ulterior motive of your advisor inviting you along to these things.
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