Tell me a story #3 - From Luxembourg 🇱🇺 to Japan 🇯🇵 — and Back Again

I had the chance during my research to spend some time in Riken AIP in Tokyo, then later at the University of Cologne, and to reflect on how research was done in these institutions compared to how I lived my PhD journey in Luxembourg. I will be sharing in the following some of the reflections and thoughts I had and some of the lessons learnt.  

 What does doing a PhD really mean—for career, and personality?

I think a PhD is a very unique experience for each person who embarks on it 🙂 . My PhD was a set of unexpected events and directions. While my topic was originally on graph learning in a financial setting, my actual research covered tabular and computer vision ML. I covered a large set of topics and domains, and while I feel I didn’t go deep enough on each, my PhD years allowed me to find connections and convergence of problems (and solutions) in topics as different as robot navigation, medical diagnosis, and fraud detection. For me, then, the PhD meant simply connecting the dots and unveiling unsuspected patterns in the fabric of the world. And this is how I am continuing to build my career and my life. 

Why is collaboration the secret ingredient in modern science?

I remember someone saying that when walking alone, one goes faster, but when walking together, we go further. This is totally my feeling about the benefits of collaboration, especially with people from a different background. 

With like-minded people, the challenge for efficiency is the convergence of ideas. Having each a different methodology/vision on how to solve the challenges we face. Achieving common consensus on the way to take can be tricky, but the result we achieve is much better than the sum of the individual contributions. Each participant sees the flaws and opportunities of each idea, and the overlap of expertise avoids missing blind spots.

When working with people from different expertise, in my case with Power systems engineers at LIST, then brain cancer researchers at LIH, the initial adaptation time is about understanding the jargon, the priorities and the methodology of each community. I learned more in the year at LIST than in the last two years of my PhD, and I am learning now in my 6 months at LIH more than what I learned in my year at LIST. It is extremely challenging and exciting, and you discover new challenges and opportunities; but it also means you are not “productive” in the first 6-9 months when changing your field, which for a researcher’s career can be deadly (publication-metrics wise).

So yes, collaboration can yield more impactful and original research, but it requires some time to bootstrap, and expect from us additional efforts to learn about the others, and bridge the gap between the understanding; each of us moving half the way before peak “efficiency”.

How to make a successful collaboration?

I still don’t know. I think the most important is humility; yes you may know better than your collaborator on a specific sub-field, or even how to address a sub-sub-task; but taking notes and feedbacks even on your domain of expertise will make you reflect more on it, and improve it (which happened to me twice at LIST on graph neural networks).  Another criterion of success would be the shared growth, beyond the deliverables or publications. When you look back before the collaboration and where you are now, you should ask yourself whether you helped your collaborator grow into your field (or even his field), and similarly, whether (s)he helped you grow your skills and understanding. Having a collaboration where each party just brings their expertise to build a solution, without nurturing his/her growth with the support of their partners, is missing the point of the collaboration. 

What’s the surprising reality of working with labs and researchers abroad?

The main difference, I think, may be the competitiveness and the work-life balance between Europe (Luxembourg & Germany) and Asia (Japan). My visit to Cologne was in a quite efficient team that still was focused on preserving its students (4 PhD students, 4-6 ICLR/ICML/NeurIPS papers are year). My visit to Tokyo was in a team with much larger publication outputs, but also clear competition patterns. I am grateful to the professors leading these team for their support and guidance, and my understanding is that in both cases, the professors didn’t enforce any competitive spirit or pressure to publish; but my feeling in Asia is that the competition is so fierce that lagging behind only closes future job opportunities (or even work contract renewal, generally 2 years in Japan). 

Overall, my biggest shock was living in much larger cities than Luxembourg. Cologne has a 6 times larger population, and Tokyo is 60 times larger than Luxembourg. It was a bit challenging for me to focus on work and not on each’s unique attractions and activities on the weekend and evenings.

Where are the hidden pitfalls—and how do you avoid them?

I think the main challenge for me was to stay focused. When I went to Tokyo, we had a clear plan of the project and research to investigate…. And I failed miserably, as I explored not only this topic but also topics raised/discussed by people I met there. Similarly, in Cologne, the visit was originally on one topic, and with further discussion and understanding of the priorities and strengths of my colleagues, I started exploring in parallel a new topic.

In both cases, by the end of my time in Japan and Germany, I didn’t complete any of the projects, neither the planned one nor the new one. Once I was back, I had to go back to other responsibilities and work, and one of the topics I started in Japan was never concluded (and in the meantime, other researchers published on similar research). I think it is great to co-create new projects based on common interests and intense brainstorming, but it is more realistic (especially given the pace of research) to focus all energy on clearly completing one before moving to the next. It is something I tried to do better (not as well as I wished) in Germany.

What teaches patience—and what makes it all worth it?

I am not sure that I am good with patience 😅. Things are going so fast, and we get swamped by everything going on in our personal lives, professional, and international events. I see the benefits of patience, especially towards events or instances where you have no control over, and that need time to mature. So patience is probably one of the greatest virtues, but I still don’t think it is worth it… I’m probably not old enough to grasp its worth.  

Sincerely,

Salah