Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 12, 2013 at 8:06am

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The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud, and the Search for Hidden Universes

http://www.amazon.com/The-Invisible-Century-Einstein-Universes/dp/B...

Basic signs you're smarter than average. 

• You ask the right questions 
• You hang with other smart people
• You have no problem or shame not knowing 
• You're very self critical
• You like to find out how things work
• You're always seeking self improvement 
• You love to stay informed 
• You also love to learn 
• You're hard on yourself
• You're not concerned or obsessed whether or not you're smarter than average 
• And lastly you set high standards/ have high expectations 

and also

• You tend to prefer reasoning.
• You like puzzles and brainstorming
• You try to think out different ways to solve a problem
• You love science or philosophy
• You have deep thoughts
• You write well
• You have good sense of humor
• You are listening, not just waiting for speaking
• You want to know how smart you are.

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One person wrote to me after reading this article...

Excellent detailed explanation provided madam. Excellent writing skills too madam :-)

 https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-scientific-mind/answer/Krishna-Kuma...

The specific traits of a scientific mind

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 4, 2013 at 5:42am

Another example:
http://www.news.wisc.edu/slideshows/coolscience2013/8
Automeris banus
The larval form of the moth Automeris banus rests on a branch in Palenque National Park, Mexico, after releasing large amounts of toxins into the unsuspecting hand of a human researcher. The field biologist miraculously survived, and subsequently snapped this image with her rapidly swelling hand. This species of moth can be observed in tropical rain forests across southeastern Mexico, Central America, and South America.

1305

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Curiosity Changes The Brain To Enhance Learning

http://theconversation.com/curiosity-changes-the-brain-to-boost-mem...

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quest-for-quantum-compute...

When asked what he likes best about working for Google, physicist John Martinis does not mention the famous massage chairs in the hallways, or the free snacks available just about anywhere at the company's campus in Mountain View, California. Instead, he marvels at Google's tolerance of failure in pursuit of a visionary goal. “If every project they try works,” he says, “they think they aren't trying hard enough.”  Martinis reckons that he is going to need that kind of patience. In September, Google recruited him and his 20-member research team from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and set them to work on the notoriously difficult task of building quantum computers: devices that exploit the quirks of the quantum world to carry out calculations that ordinary computers could not finish in the lifetime of the Universe.

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 13, 2014 at 8:27am

Science has a currency, and the currency is facts, evidence, data. You can’t lead other scientists just by telling them what you hope to be true. And you can’t just say, “Well this is true because I said so”—because that isn’t going to hold up.

You have to be particularly willing to admit not just what you know, but what you don’t know. Be humble. Be honest about that. Be excited about that. Don’t be threatened by the absence of information, but see it as an opportunity to encourage other people to join you in an adventure to fill in those gaps.
Science can sometimes get a little lost in the details. The average scientific experiment fails. The average project is pretty into the nitty-gritty. It’s not impossible for people to lose the vision if it’s not brought back to their attention. That’s one of the tasks of the leader—to say, “You guys are doing great work, but let’s step back. Why are we all here? What’s this about?”

Science is this glorious adventure into the unknown, the opportunity to discover things that nobody knew before. And that’s just an experience that’s not to be missed. But it’s also a motivated effort to try to help humankind. And maybe that’s just by increasing human knowledge—because that’s a way to make us a nobler species. But maybe it’s also to come up with something that will have a practical benefit. But we can get lost in the details and forget that that’s what it’s about.

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1. Fearlessness. I don't see this answer often, but I attribute much of my personal success to it. While other colleagues fretted about all the ways a particular research problem could possibly fail, from reasons A to Z, I was already doing it. Often I see students paralyzed by the possibilities in front of them, instead of diving into the path most likely to succeed.

This is also very related to the ability to fail and to face failure.  We all fail, but to be able to see failure for what they are, and move past them, is hard. I've seen colleagues who are damaged by significant personal and professional failures, and they're not quite the same afterwards.

I've been lucky in both respects, because I had some personal tragedies early on in my research career that led to quite a bit of suffering.  After getting through those, failures in research were tame in comparison.  That really changed how I saw research, and taking risks and dealing with failures got a lot easier.

While I wouldn't wish my personal adversities on any one, I would suggest that to be fearless, you should fail, fail early, fail hard, and fail often. Once you get past it and get back up, you'll be much better prepared to succeed.

2. Creativity. This gets mentioned a lot. I think true creativity is a gift, but it can also be learned.

3. Humility.  Working in academic research is a constantly humbling experience. No matter what prizes you win, what papers you write, and what accolades you accumulate, there are always others who are better, faster, smarter than you.  Going to conferences, reading papers, talking with others, all these produce constant reminders of how limited you are and how much further you have to go.  It's extremely hard to overcome that twisted feeling in your gut, the fear that you're not good enough, that you'll never be as good as your colleagues, friends, and advisors.  If you're not careful, that can eat you up inside and paralyze you.

Even those with abundant humility will find it hard at times, when we're constantly faced with comparisons with numerous others in our field.  One solution is to learn to not give a F#@* what others think, good or bad, and to calibrate your metric for success solely on what you think of your own work. This is easier said than done. I think it took roughly 2 years for me to get this "under control." But even today, there are occasional moments when I wish I was as smart or as productive or as creative as some of my friends/colleagues.  At best, I can turn those into motivation to work harder. At worst, I'll go distract myself by burying my head in my favorite current project or some investments.

--There are so many qualities that help you succeed. Ranking them is near impossible, but I will try to list a few that I think really matter.

1. Fearlessness. I don't see this answer often, but I attribute much of my personal success to it. While other colleagues fretted about all the ways a particular research problem could possibly fail, from reasons A to Z, I was already doing it. Often I see students paralyzed by the possibilities in front of them, instead of diving into the path most likely to succeed.

This is also very related to the ability to fail and to face failure.  We all fail, but to be able to see failure for what they are, and move past them, is hard. I've seen colleagues who are damaged by significant personal and professional failures, and they're not quite the same afterwards.

I've been lucky in both respects, because I had some personal tragedies early on in my research career that led to quite a bit of suffering.  After getting through those, failures in research were tame in comparison.  That really changed how I saw research, and taking risks and dealing with failures got a lot easier.

While I wouldn't wish my personal adversities on any one, I would suggest that to be fearless, you should fail, fail early, fail hard, and fail often. Once you get past it and get back up, you'll be much better prepared to succeed.

2. Creativity. This gets mentioned a lot. I think true creativity is a gift, but it can also be learned.

3. Humility.  Working in academic research is a constantly humbling experience. No matter what prizes you win, what papers you write, and what accolades you accumulate, there are always others who are better, faster, smarter than you.  Going to conferences, reading papers, talking with others, all these produce constant reminders of how limited you are and how much further you have to go.  It's extremely hard to overcome that twisted feeling in your gut, the fear that you're not good enough, that you'll never be as good as your colleagues, friends, and advisors.  If you're not careful, that can eat you up inside and paralyze you.

Even those with abundant humility will find it hard at times, when we're constantly faced with comparisons with numerous others in our field.  One solution is to learn to not give a F#@* what others think, good or bad, and to calibrate your metric for success solely on what you think of your own work. This is easier said than done. I think it took roughly 2 years for me to get this "under control." But even today, there are occasional moments when I wish I was as smart or as productive or as creative as some of my friends/colleagues.  At best, I can turn those into motivation to work harder. At worst, I'll go distract myself by burying my head in my favorite current project or some investments.

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To succeed in research you will certainly need tenacity, hard work and good luck, but the essential factor is to develop an original vision about problems, and knowing which problems in your field you can solve with your particular skills. At the start of your career as a researcher you will learn an enormous amount from your supervisor, mentors and peers. Eventually you will need to progress from being a "novice" in research to being a fully functioning independent researcher able to guide your research students and younger colleagues.

I have known a few young would be researchers who were highly intelligent with top grades as students, and who were quite brilliant at solving problems suggested by their supervisor or other people, but who struggled to think of original problems themselves.

Conversely, I have known some researchers who weren't particularly good at tests and exams as students, but who turned out to be original and creative at knowing which problems to attack.  The secret of many successful researchers is finding collaborators with complementary skills, and setting up a research partnership which achieves more than the sum of what they could achieve separately.  For each of us there is a kind of "triage"; it is important to sort possible research problems into the three classes of too easy, too difficult and "just right".  It is a trap to accept a large amount of money from a granting body to "find a cure for cancer", and then to be left without any useful results at the end of the project.

Many researchers I have known who ended up doing brilliantly, started their careers by carefully working through existing papers and reports and not taking the assumptions for granted, and noticing gaps or mistakes.  Many published papers contain small or large errors!

Depending on your field, it is important to not just sit in your chair in your office or lab, but to go out and talk to scientists in other fields or in industry who may have problems you could solve with your expertise.  An extremely successful scientist is Michael Brady - Department of Oncology. He did a pure mathematics PhD in group theory, but has changed fields several times to computer science to robotics to image analysis to oncology. He has always gone out knocking on doors to find new problems he could work on and solve.

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Communication

Look, everyone here is right, and is telling you how to be a good researcher. But you asked how to be a successful academic. To do that you need to:

1. Raise grant money
2. Get others excited about your work
3. Recruit great students
4. Give conference presentations
5. Gain the respect of your peers
6. Write great papers
7. Teach

All of these require more than just great research skills.

The real equation to academic success looks more like this:

Success = Research x Communication

With little or no communication skills, the quality of your research won't get you far. With just communication skills, your are blowing hot gas and no one will respect you.

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As with any endeavor, the principal determinants of success are luck, skill and persistence.  Anyone can tell you that.  I will also tell you a non-obvious skill that will improve your chances for success: the ability to make other people feel smart.

Academia is populated mostly by very smart people, and almost all of them (narcissists excepted) worry that they are not smart enough.  This rule applies all the way up and down the academic hierarchy, from first-year students to senior faculty.  If you can assuage this anxiety, your path to success will be much easier.

If you make your students feel smart, they will sign up for your classes and give you good evaluations.  If you make your departmental colleagues and superiors feel smart, they are much more likely to support your bid for tenure.  If you make colleagues in your research field feel smart, they are much more likely to invite you to conferences, give favorable reviews to your manuscripts, and give strong scores to your grant applications.  All of these things will make for a successful academic career.

How do you make smart academics feel smarter?  Tell them things they already know, or at least believe to be true.  Push against the conventional wisdom, but only gently - enough to make your colleagues feel the thrill of being on the cutting edge, but not enough to truly challenge them or disrupt their settled beliefs.  They will honor and cherish you for this, and create a tide of support that will steadily lift your career.  This is the surest path to academic success.

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I'll add my most recent thoughts to this: Patience, a clear mind and self-compassion.

Patience. To deal with ideas that just wouldn't come, experiments that just wouldn't work, people that just wouldn't respond, skills that just take forever to develop (and seem like it never will), mastery that just wouldn't occur o and all the endless problems you will face in research. Heck, you need it to deal with yourself when you screw up or simply hit rock bottom.

I have no patience. I was always rushing... Rushing into ideas, reading through papers, writing up stuff. Because of that, I never developed a good strong foundation of knowledge I need. I was not detail oriented in my work. I made mistakes. I blew through things. It is hard to persist through anything if you do not have patience. Certain things just need time, and the faster I wanted it done, the worse it became.

Take the time you need to get things done. If you need 1 hour to prepare materials, take it. Don't rush. The amount of redoing and mistake-fixing just wastes more time.

Clear mind.
No clear mind = no logic = no good work.
No clear mind = anxiety = no good work.
No clear mind = poor mental state = no good work.
You get the point? We are often so bombarded with issues about job seeking, failed experiments, lack of publications etc etc that we don't have a clear mind to focus on the work we have. Our work is mentally strenuous and requires a clear mind to work through its problems and maximize our thinking time. When things fail, many times our minds get clouded by negative affect and cognition. Sometimes, people spin out of control from it and never recover. That's why people say we need grit and preserverance to overcome these things. What we also need is to have a clear healthy mind, so that when we push on, we are functioning optimally and efficiently.

Self-compassion. So many people get depressed and demotivated because things fail. We aren't used to things failing as star students. We see these papers get published everyday all the time. We see superstar academics thinking and working like there's no obstacles. We feel stupid, useless, worthless, pointless. What's the point of joining a field when you can't even get one experiment right?

You need self compassion. That gives you space to have patience and a clear mind. Self compassion makes you understand that mistakes and failures are normal - it is part of being human. We simply need to forgive ourselves, take note and move on. Having an attitude like that will afford you the patience you need to learn and master, the clear mind you need to perform and the preserverance you need to win the marathon not the sprint.

In the long run, I believe these will give you the equanimity and clarity you need for research work. When you are thinking of the work and not of your failings and when you take your time to work things properly rather than rush to finish sloppy work, that's when you are working calmly, efficiently and focusedly. Key themes to success!

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This may not apply to other disciplines, but in experimental biology, self-efficacy is everything.  You must believe that you can accomplish the task you've set out to accomplish. You may have a great track record at experiments that are technically hard but on a very basic model system (biologically irrelevant) and that's a good way to clock your 10,000 hours. But the experiments that make careers are technically challenging and biologically meaningful and you need to know that 95% of these experiments are likely to fail but still keep a cool head and maintain your confidence and get ready for your next challenge. You see so many 4th year grad students who have just burned out from an inability to keep going when the rate of experimental success is low. So, going in, the only thing to know is that success will be elusive but that you can get there, it just might take 20 failed attempts.

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Read read and read. When you constantly read the literature around your area of expertise you start to see gaps in knowledge. This requires you to see things in an unbiased fashion and make no assumptions. From this, you start to generate questions. Usually one project answers a single question but raises many more, so a single idea can keep you going for a few years.

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It has been said in several different ways but I will put my own spin on it.

When you have all of the prerequisites to become an active researcher,  independent thinkers and those with the grit to follow their own ideas are the ones who are among the most successful.

 Call it what you will but it comes down to staying with your ideas in the face of bureaucrats, jealous colleagues, criticisms from reviewers and all other adversity. Learning to cope and not giving up. The learning to cope often requires you to adjust your interpersonal style, your objectives, and sometimes the way you go about things. In the face of all of this, you know where you are going and what you are trying to accomplish -- and it will get done.

 For lack of a better word, I call it grit. Keep your eye on your own prize and do not let yourself be co-opted by a "chairmanship" or other minor recognition. Everything you do is in some way related to accomplishing your goals. Things like the offer of a chairmanship get in the way of where you are going. Aside from your family, life is about your research and everything else feeds into it. It is not for everyone. After you are well on your way you can take on other "social" activities that appeal to you but for the first ten years or so, research is your life.

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Having worked in both the fields for 40 years,I may add that: one needs to have the grit,firm determination & a flair for doing work for at least 12 to 18 hours a day - be it in a lab,class,or in fields.
2)Never get disgusted in spite of repeated failures - for they open our eyes as to the causes of our failure.
3) Have plenty of interaction & carry out lots of relevant reading in the concerned subject.
4) Never be shy of taking any higher responsibilities- for nobody is going to kill you if you don't succeed. Go for the extra mile & burn the midnight oil.
5) Don't let other chores effect your goal. If essential - work still harder to make up for the temporary lost time.

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At the doctoral level - just getting through the hurdles is the real test - so persistence tops my list - and a willingness to be so unbiased - to care so much about finding what is true in what you can measure that you risk failing.  That is why we grant doctorates for those whose research failed as long as they have written it well.

All of us learn as much if not more from failure - so keep at it, be personally as strong as you can be and have an open mind.

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A thick skin. You will repeatedly have work fail, papers and grants rejected and hypotheses destroyed. An ability to take the hit and move on is incredibly valuable.

Otherwise, a strong interest in the field will be a massive help and will keep you going when things seem less-than-ideal.

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I agree with all the others answered posted too, but here's my two cents:

1)  Original ideas!  You want to be the kind of person who is never at a loss for a cool topic.

2)  Follow-through.  You have to be organized and motivated enough to bring your cool ideas to fruition.

3)  Being a reasonably pleasant person and maintaining relationships.   Sometimes who you know really matters -- if you want to be invited to give talks, if you want to hear about the latest papers, etc.

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Similar to other answers: tenacity.  Keeping at it, even when things get hard to understand, or your research fails, or you get to a part of your discipline that is uninteresting or tedious. Maintaining your passion for your area of research!

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It is very important to stay focused on what you are doing and to work hard, and if you are really talented all this work could pay off, and you could discover something. I think that nowadays hard work isn't sufficient to be successful in science, and a researcher should be very talented. I also think that this is also the case with sports, the competition is getting bigger, and the challenges are more and more difficult.

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Be curious, childlike & persistent. That's all !

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Patience is crucial.
You may fail many times, but you shouldn't lose the track.

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Work hard and try you best. Though we can not get the perfect research result. We stick in it.

Patience and Perseverance

The desire to learn.

Persistence.Not giving up!!

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 29, 2014 at 6:36am

What do children think about scientists? Here are some of the views:

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 4, 2014 at 5:33am

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 28, 2014 at 6:48am

Here's why curious people are better at learning

A recent study has revealed that curiosity causes changes in the brain’s chemistry that help us to more effectively learn and retain new information.

New research by a team of US-based psychologists at the University of California, Davis has given us an insight into why curiosity plays such a crucial role in how we learn, and it turns out that our minds actively reward us for seeking out the information we’re most interested in.
According to Maanvi Singh from NPR, the team watched as the ‘pleasure centres’ of the participants’ brains lit up when they encountered the answers of the questions they were most interested in. "When the participants' curiosity was piqued, the parts of their brains that regulate pleasure and reward lit up,” says Singh. "Curious minds also showed increased activity in the hippocampus, which is involved in the creation of memories.”

"There's this basic circuit in the brain that energises people to go out and get things that are intrinsically rewarding,” one of the team, psychologist Charan Ranganath, told Singh. This means that not only does this part of the brain light up when we're eating chocolate or doing some exercise, it also sparks when we endeavour to satisfy our curiosities. This causes the release of a brain chemical called dopamine, which is responsible for a feeling often described as a 'natural high’.

What dopamine is also responsible for, says Ranganath, is retaining information. "The dopamine also seems to play a role in enhancing the connections between cells that are involved in learning,” he told Singh.
The results were published this month in the journal Neuron.

http://sciencealert.com.au/news/20142710-26398.html

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http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7322-467a

A CV of failures

https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/Johannes_Haushofer_CV_of_Failures.pdf

CV of failures

Others:

https://738d9b89-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/bradleyvo...

http://www.sararywe.se/

https://novoed.com/creativity13/reports/49074

http://everydayscientist.com/CV/sjl_CV-failures.pdf

Learn from mistakes: Failures in science labs: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lab-failures-turn-to-gold...

Machine learning assisted materials discovery using failed materials

http://www.nature.com/articles/nature17439.epdf?referrer_access_tok...

How failed expts help scientists:

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