Next destination of a postdoc journey
Since March 2020, I started thinking of what happens after my current postdoc position at Trinity College Dublin. I want to share my search experience and reasoning to reveal what happens before social media messages, starting with "I am happy to announce that I join...". For me, it was a long and tiring process, complicated by the pandemic and almost an existential crisis and re-evaluation of life priorities that it caused.
First of all, a confession - I am often an anxious security-seeking risk-avoiding person. Second, my partner and I had some time in Ireland (almost one year pre-COVID), and we realized that it is not a country for us to "settle" (whatever it means, let's say, for middle to long-term planning). Like any country, Ireland has great things about it and not so great, and it all depends on your goals at a given time. People are amazing, there are lots of great tech companies, lots of opportunities in the Computer Science academic environment at the moment, but we missed the other things related to the quality of life. At some point, family-related factors will become more important to us than now, and - overseeing the future - we saw that Ireland is not the place for that, for us.
It is important to follow the path that makes sense from the research and career perspective, and it feels like that’s what is expected from an early-career postdoc. It does not make it easy to consider personal reasons as important as career opportunities. Both of us would have them in Ireland, especially working in a Computer Science research environment. Still, the COVID pandemic motivated us to think about longer-term planning and where we would like to be and what we would like to do in the next 5-7 years. Another important “push” to think about my goals came from the Aurora Leadership Programme 2020/21, and I am so grateful to be part of this network.
So, since March 2020, the search for a place and the position began. Why so early? My contract at Trinity is over at the end of June 2021, but:
I wanted to learn to write proposals and about the application process overall.
I am Russian, a non-EU in the EU (or in the US, even worse), and it takes even longer to move to the next job due to all immigration nightmare.
It takes lots of time to go through all the selection steps.
It's still a global pandemic. Everything takes even longer.
I had specific search criteria regarding the place and research focus of the position. I wanted to continue my research on usable security and privacy, HCI, and interaction design for digital health and wellbeing systems.
Just like with my PhD, I wanted to transition smoothly from one position to the next (it doesn't happen often, but worth a try).
My search criteria included Schengen EU countries, where my partner and I can find interesting positions that would move us towards our career goals. Besides the research-related factors, the transport connections with Russia and Italy, quality of life, social policies, and healthcare were also important. We considered Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Denmark, USA (because why not). There were many interesting positions in the UK, and sometimes it broke my heart to ignore them, but we decided to go for continental Schengen EU for immigration reasons. So, since March 2020, I have applied to:
6 UX Researcher industrial positions;
5 postdoctoral positions;
5 assistant professor positions and 1 associate professor position (bold, I know).
At first, I was open both to industrial and academic research positions. I enjoy working with software development companies since my Master’s, but here is the deal, most of the times, joining an academic research group, you bring along your collaborations, network, and even some ongoing projects. These assets are often seen as an advantage. In the case of industrial groups, you join existing projects or create them at the company. You contribute your skills and experience but usually leave behind whatever you have been doing before. This is not my case at the moment: I have research collaborations and ideas that I don't want to abandon.
I also decided to try and apply for professor positions, and an important lesson learned here - it's too early for me, as I am only two years after my PhD (it might not be a problem for others at the same stage though!). Even though it was far-fetched, the application process taught me a lot, especially thanks to Uppsala University. In Sweden, applying for a University position, you can have access to the documents all applicants submitted, which sounds very unusual to me. Still, it was a great learning opportunity, as I could compare the quality of my proposals to others’. To be honest, not very flattering to me, as their level and experience were much higher, but a great opportunity to learn from others.
At the same time, my partner was dealing with a similar challenge: he was a computer vision researcher at Huawei Research Center in Dublin, and there were interesting opportunities in cities/countries mostly different from my options: both in industry and academic research. We almost converged on Munich, but it didn't work out in the end. This is an illustration of a classic "two-body problem".
There were lots of evening proposal writing, series of interviews, test tasks, and evaluations. Finally, we reached the "perfect" destination (no place is perfect), and it is Helsinki, Finland. We both will join the Department of Computer Science at Aalto University as postdocs. For me, it will be the second postdoc. For my partner, it is the change from industry to academia with its pros and cons. I will join the research group of Janne Lindqvist, and I am looking forward to new research projects and (new and existing) collaborations starting in July. But meanwhile, there are still two months left of my postdoc journey at Trinity College, and I hope they will be productive and efficient, as there are a couple of projects to complete.
Let's see what this turn will bring us.
If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer and discuss them!