Speaking engineer
The most difficult aspect of being on a multidisciplinary team is the fact that you don’t always speak each other’s language. Communication can be a problem. All of us are so immersed in what we do that we know what we need and our limitations. If we knew that the people we were working with didn’t understand those limitations, we would gladly explain them. However, it doesn’t become clear that there’s been a miscommuncation or lack of communication until we’re looking at a project and asking why the person didn’t do things a different way. From my perspective, it’s a bit difficult to do modeling and then hand my work to someone who will make the thing I’ve modeled. Often, the way I’ve designed the model isn’t exactly the way the object needs to be built. Then the question is whether the model is a sufficient representation of the device.…
Building Momentum
These past two months have been pretty crazy because it was effectively the playoffs for proposal season (NSF, DARPA, NIST, etc…). For you football fans out there, you can probably appreciate this analogy: I’ve had five completions in 3 weeks and now I’m sitting back and hoping for some nice YAC. That, combined with the time I spent with my students last semester is finally starting to gain traction on its own. The students working in my group don’t have any specific classes that train them to work on my specific research area so I’m left with the task of tutoring and training them in the lab on procedures and whatnot. Basically, my summer and first semester was spent training and acquiring equipment. And I can officially say: My group haz momentum! Yesterday, I was in the lab working on a few things and showing my student some new tips/tricks…
Research Group Dynamics
Lately, I’ve been wondering about my research group and if I’m bringing the right people on board in the right order. It’s not that I have specific doubts about a person or anything to directly point at. Rather, I think everyone in the research group should operate, well, like a well-meshed gear set (pun intended, [photo credit]). Mentally, this makes perfect sense to me. I just wonder if I’m suffering from delusions of grandeur and they’re going to mix like oil and water once we get past the initial phase. I’m currently up to 5 students with sufficient overlap on projects to ensure they have a reason to work together and I have reiterated it in almost every group meeting. My students seem to want to work together and are open/friendly with one another, so that is a very good sign. But more importantly, what are the key mechanics of running a…