{"id":9695,"date":"2016-05-30T10:00:09","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T09:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/?p=9695"},"modified":"2016-05-31T20:32:16","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T19:32:16","slug":"a-week-in-the-life-of-a-tenured-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/2016\/05\/30\/a-week-in-the-life-of-a-tenured-professor\/","title":{"rendered":"A week in the life of a tenured professor"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Chinese scientist considers the new responsibilities that come with his role<\/h1>\n

This piece was\u00a0cross posted\u00a0with Nature Asia. You can read the Chinese version here<\/a>.<\/em><\/h2>\n

Guest contributor Chenggang Yan<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent ten years of my life in research. In those ten years, I\u2019ve never been completely overwhelmed\u00a0until I accepted\u00a0a professorship at Hangzhou Dianzi University. Just like many other young scholars, I\u2019m working hard to win a good reputation with my research. I went into science because \u2013 like many others \u2013 I wanted to do meaningful\u00a0work, lead\u00a0a\u00a0new\u00a0era, and benefit\u00a0humanity in some way. But recently I\u2019m finding that\u2019s just not what I spend my time doing.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_0001<\/a>

{credit}Chenggang Yan{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

Take one of my busy weeks as an example. One day in March, my lab secretary reminded me of an important conference on time-of-flight imaging. So I needed to fly to Israel early Friday. The conference had two days of lectures and a half-day of leisure time at the Dead\u00a0Sea. I skipped the beach and flew over the Atlantic to attend a meeting with some of my collaborators.<\/p>\n

I was back in Hangzhou Thursday to attend a funding application presentation, which gave me the rare opportunity to introduce our lab and research achievements to the\u00a0National\u00a0Natural\u00a0Science Foundation\u00a0of\u00a0China; it was important for one of the funding applications we\u2019ll submit soon. After eight hours of meetings, I flew to Beijing that night. My iPhone bleeped. The next morning I needed to give a speech to the new graduate students in our lab at Tsinghua University. I opened my laptop and prepared a 25-page lecture. Though the new graduate students seemed positive, I didn\u2019t feel I had prepared enough. Where was my time going? I used to be more organised and careful. How could I be so busy?<\/p>\n

Having given this some thought, I started to understand. I hadn\u2019t lost my way as such, but my role has changed \u2013 when I became a team director, my burden got heavier. A graduate student can devote themselves solely to their research topic and they don\u2019t need to think about providing ideas and salary to their whole lab, but the team director has to consider\u00a0it every day. I need to provide good lessons and do good science;\u00a0and I also need to guide my graduate students, offer promotion\u00a0opportunities for my team members, and get enough funding to ensure\u00a0the lab\u2019s operation\u00a0and\u00a0growth.<\/p>\n

In order to achieve this, I need to market my lab and gain reputation in the academic community, both at home and internationally. By\u00a0my\u00a0rough\u00a0estimation, in 2015 I attended at least two external events every month. And that number could be much larger if I include the mountain of unofficial events I went to. Besides those, there\u2019s a lot of other administration work that a team director needs to do that eats up more and more of my time.<\/p>\n

So, for\u00a0these\u00a0reasons, my graduate students will always find me working late in the lab; I extend\u00a0my research life into the night. Sometimes I think about my situation: this should be the golden time for young researchers, when they can build experience easily and are full of energy. How can we free ourselves from the conveyor belt of secretly-obligatory social events and get back to work? I know I\u2019m not the only one.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve\u00a0tried\u00a0to\u00a0solve\u00a0this\u00a0problem previously,\u00a0but\u00a0nothing has worked so far. I tried to encourage my graduate students to go to more networking events, but they didn\u2019t know enough about funding or the big-picture work in my lab. I tried to hire full-time administration staff to cover my paperwork, but they didn\u2019t know enough about research and development.<\/p>\n

Still, I have hope. A member of my research staff is willing to take on and get to grips with some of the lab\u2019s administration work, as she\u2019s hoping to become a PI herself. This will \u2013 maybe \u2013 result in a win-win. I\u2019ve come to realise that when new responsibilities pile up with a new role, we must find the right way to delegate and \u2013 eventually \u2013 be freed enough to focus on the science.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chenggang Yan received a BSc in computer science from Shandong University in 2008, and a PhD in computer science from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2013. Now he is a professor at Hangzhou Dianzi University<\/em>,\u00a0China<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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